Broad Areas of Research
- Dietary fats/oils on human health
- Dietary nutrients and obesity & its associated complications
- Membrane biology
-
Nutrient-Gene interaction
Objective of the division
- To address the health impact of various vegetable/cooking oil with varying classes of fatty acids in humans.
- To analyze the nutritional quality of oils with respect to fatty acid composition, for human consumption.
-
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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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
- Impact of vitamin A-enriched diet on obesity and insulin resistance in NIN obese rat models; WNIN/Ob & WNIN/GR-Ob.
- Role of vitamin A on obesity associated dyslipidemia.
- Glucocorticoids: Implications in insulin resistance and obesity
- 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?
-
Study on lipid metabolism with special reference to fatty acid composition & desaturase activities in human population
Thrust Areas for Future Research
- Understand the dietary fatty acids mediated heath & disease out come through lipidomic/transcriptomic/proteomic approaches.
-
Dietary fatty acids particularly trans and saturated fatty acid consumption among human population and their relevance to the non-communicable disease outburst.