Lipid Chemistry

Broad Areas of Research

  1. Dietary fats/oils on human health

  2. Dietary nutrients and obesity & its associated complications

  3. Membrane biology

  4. Nutrient-Gene interaction


Objective of the division

  1. To address the health impact of various vegetable/cooking oil with varying classes of fatty acids in humans.

  2. To analyze the nutritional quality of oils with respect to fatty acid composition, for human consumption.

  3. To evaluate the newly and indigenous developed oils for its efficacy; with respect to atherosclerosis, obesity and insulin resistance using genetic and diet-induced rodent models.

Research Achievements

  1. Human metabolic studies carried out suggest that coconut/virgin coconut oils have no adverse effects on BMI, body fat distribution and various plasma lipid parameters.

  2. Recent experimental results suggest that diet providing both n-6 & n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid improves reverse cholesterol transport, hepatic steatosis and insulin resistance in obese rats with impaired glucose tolerance trait rather than a diet providing n-6 PUFA alone.

  3. For the first time, we reported chronic feeding of vitamin A-enriched diet (129mg/Kg diet) decreased the weight gain and visceral adiposity in adult obese rats. Also, shown that activation of thermogenic pathway through brown adipose tissue-uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1) is the key player of vitamin A-mediated anti-obesity effect in obese rat model of WNIN/Ob strain.

  4. Studies from group have clearly shown the strong correlation between high stearoyl CoA desaturase 1 (SCD1) enzyme activity (as reflected by higher ratio of monounsaturated fatty acids to saturated fatty acids of plasma, hepatic and non-hepatic tissues) and body mass index (BMI) & adiposity index (AI).

Present Research Activities

  1. Impact of vitamin A-enriched diet on obesity and insulin resistance in NIN obese rat models; WNIN/Ob & WNIN/GR-Ob.

  2. Role of vitamin A on obesity associated dyslipidemia.

  3. Glucocorticoids: Implications in insulin resistance and obesity

  4. Impact of dietary fats rich in n-6 & n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids on adiposity and insulin resistance in diet induced obese rat model: A missing molecular link with vitamin A metabolism?

  5. Study on lipid metabolism with special reference to fatty acid composition & desaturase activities in human population

Thrust Areas for Future Research

  1. Understand the dietary fatty acids mediated heath & disease out come through lipidomic/transcriptomic/proteomic approaches.

  2. Dietary fatty acids particularly trans and saturated fatty acid consumption among human population and their relevance to the non-communicable disease outburst.