Metabolism, Ageing, and Physiology
The role of muscle mass and function in health, ageing and disease is somewhat underappreciated, our research is aimed at understanding the regulation and maintenance of muscle mass, and the development of interventions to maximise muscle quality and function, and limit muscle loss.
We have long standing expertise in studying the regulation of and mechanisms underpinning the turnover i.e., synthesis and breakdown of muscle protein in health, ageing and disease, where loss of muscle mass and function contributes significantly to the development and progression of the disease. We apply state of the art molecular and mass spectrometric stable isotope and -omics based approaches to understand the regulation and dysregulation of muscle metabolism and turnover, by nutrition, activity/inactivity and pharmacological agents.
Our laboratories house a state-of-the-art stable isotope mass spectrometry facility (13 mass spectrometers of varying configuration), which permits the dynamic measurement of muscle metabolism, substrate utilisation and energy expenditure. In addition, we have many years’ experience of using genomic and transcriptomic approaches in the study of human muscle physiology.
In the last 5-10 years we have also developed expertise in applying both proteomic and metabolomic analyses, coupled with stable isotope methodologies to apply to the understanding of metabolism in ageing and disease. More recently we have incorporated expertise in neuromuscular physiology with the application of in-vivo techniques exploring brain-muscle communication in humans, and translational interventions in tandem with our understanding of the role of nutrition, exercise (pre-habilitation & rehabilitation) and pharma-. All of which is applicable to clinical and frail elderly populations with overarching aim of maintaining muscle mass, quality, and function, thereby improving recovery, independence, quality of life and health-span.
Our research