AU Diabetes Study to Use Swine as Research Models

AUBURN, Ala. — A team of Auburn University researchers is using pigs and advanced genetic technology to conduct a groundbreaking study investigating how a mother’s diet during pregnancy affects the likelihood that her offspring will acquire type 2 diabetes years later.

When completed, the novel research project — which involves an interdisciplinary team of six faculty members from AU’s colleges of Agriculture, Veterinary Medicine and Human Sciences — will provide invaluable insight into the impact that an inadequate prenatal diet has on the growth of a fetus and on the “programming” of developing tissues that are essential to establishing normal responses to insulin. Insulin is the hormone that controls blood glucose levels. Both fetal growth retardation and low birth weight have been associated with the development of insulin resistance, or type 2 diabetes, later in life.

“Numerous case studies and research involving rodents have established a clear connection between malnourished fetuses, low birth weight and the later development of type 2 diabetes, but rodents may not be the best model for the study of this problem in humans,” said Frank Bartol, an AU animal scientist and Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station (AAES) researcher who specializes in the reproductive biology of swine.

The swine model system the team will develop will more accurately bridge the gap to understanding the human condition of type 2 diabetes, Bartol said, because the pig is remarkably similar to humans on biological, metabolic and genetic levels. In fact, the pig already is used as a research model for studies of hypertension and related cardiovascular disorders.

Bartol said the Auburn study is a first in the area of fetal programming of type 2 diabetes to use the pig as a biomedical research model and to use state-of-the-art technology known as DNA microarray analysis, a technique that allows researchers to evaluate thousands of gene expression events simultaneously instead of only a few at a time. With microarrays, scientists can actually see how groups of genes in a particular tissue express themselves at a particular time under a particular set of conditions—in this case, as a consequence of poor fetal nutrition.

The swine study will help to define dietary factors that affect the development of these tissues during fetal life. Ultimately, the study should show that high-quality diets during pregnancy can help reduce the incidence of diabetes, Bartol said.

The two-year study is funded by a grant from the nonprofit Birmingham-based Diabetes Trust Foundation. Working with Bartol to lead the project is fellow AAES researcher Robert Judd, associate professor in the College of Veterinary Medicine and director of the Boshell Diabetes and Metabolic Disease Research Program at Auburn.

AU faculty in the study are specialists in reproductive, developmental and nutritional biology of swine; diabetes; nutrition; molecular biology; and statistical genetics and bioinformatics. Faculty in the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s School of Public Health also are cooperating in the study.

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News from:

Office of Ag Communications & Marketing

Auburn University College of Agriculture
Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station
3 Comer Hall, Auburn University
Auburn, AL 36849
334-844-4877 (PHONE) 334-844-5892 (FAX)

Contact Jamie Creamer, 334-844-2783 or jcreamer@auburn.edu
Contact Frank Bartol, 334-844-1506 or bartoff@auburn.edu

11/16/04

For immediate release