Honours Project Book - Faculty of Health Sciences - University of ...

Early Life Programming of Health and Disease
Contact Persons
Professor Julie Owens
Phone: 8313 4088
julie.owens@adelaide.edu.au
Dr Kathy Gatford
Phone: 8313 4158
kathy.gatford@adelaide.edu.au
Supervisors
Professor Julie Owens
Dr Kathy Gatford
Professor Claire Roberts
Dr Miles De Blasio
Ms Patricia Grant
Emeritus Professor Jeffrey Robinson
Our research group is part of the Research Centre for the Early Origins of Health and Disease (EOHaD) and an
international leader in the investigation of the intergenerational and perinatal origins of metabolic and
cardiovascular health in postnatal life. We focus on how our health can be profoundly influenced by events in early
life and possibly in previous generations, including diabetes, obesity and cardiovascular increasing risk of disease.
Common exposures in early life that affect our later health include placental and fetal growth restriction, maternal
vitamin supplementation and maternal obesity and diabetes.
Our aims are to:
• understand how these exposures interact with the genome and affect the epigenome to determine our later
health
• identify interventions to either prevent these conditions that program later health or to overcome or reverse
such programming.
Recent key discoveries include:
• placental restriction
o inducing diabetes in adult offspring via impaired beta cell function and growth and insulin resistance
o causing obesity in offspring via altered appetite control
• altering expression of novel small regulatory RNAs that target and repress expression of multiple mRNAs to
affect major pathways and funtions
• maternal folate deficiency or folic acid supplementation in changing the epigenome and physiology of
offspring.
Our research strategies include:
• novel experimental models of common early life exposures in non human species
• clinical research of human cohorts with exposure to common pregnancy complications
• in vivo characterisation of insulin action, glucose and lipid control and other physiological functions
• metabolite and hormone analysis by enzymatic analysis and immunoassay
• quantitative morphmetric analysis of tissue structures underpinning function
• molecular analysis of expression of regulatory RNAs and protein coding genes by quantitative PCR, microarray
and western immunoblotting
• analysis of epigenetic state of genes by bisulfite treatment of DNA and Sequenom or Pyrosequencing
• bioinformatics, including pathway analysis of array data of microRNA and mRNA expression.
We publish in the top discipline specific and general journals, are highly cited and regularly invite to speak at
leading conferences. Our students publish their work, present at conferences and have gone on to a range of
careers as researchers, academics, health professionals, in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industry and
management.
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