AIMRC Seminar: How Rodent Housing Temperatures Alter Their Physiology, Reducing Ability to Model Human Metabolic Processes

The Arkansas Integrative Metabolic Research Center (AIMRC) will host Dr. Craig Porter, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, at 12:55 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 14, in CHEM 0144. Porter's research examines the role of mitochondrial energy transduction in regulating metabolic rates and how injury, disease, lifestyle factors and pharmacological interventions impact bioenergetics. In this talk, he will describe how rodent sub-thermoneutral housing temperatures profoundly alter rodent physiology in ways that reduce their ability to model human metabolic processes. He will further share how combining thermoneutral housing with high-resolution phenotyping can "humanize" rodent metabolism, thereby improving rigor, reproducibility and translational relevance in preclinical rodent models of human disease.

Abstract: Rodents represent around 97% of the vertebrate animals used in biomedical research in the United States. Guidelines in the U.S. recommend housing laboratory rodents at temperatures ranging from 20°C to 26°C. However, a growing body of literature indicates that thermoneutral housing temperatures for rodents may range from ~26°C to 30°C. Critically, sub-thermoneutral housing can fundamentally change rodent physiology to a degree that limits their utility to model human physiology. Accordingly, the translational value of many rodent models of human disease is dependent on appropriate control of housing temperature. We propose high-resolution physiological phenotyping combined with thermoneutral housing as a tool to "humanize" rodent metabolic physiology and thus enhance the rigor, reproducibility and translational value of preclinical rodent models of human disease.

Biography: Porter's research program examines the role of mitochondrial energy transduction in the regulation of metabolic rate and how injury, disease, lifestyle (i.e., diet/exercise) and pharmacological interventions impact bioenergetics. He is specifically interested in the settings of developmental programming, obesity, critical illness and burn trauma. His team leverages respiratory gas exchange and stable isotope approaches to determine metabolic rate and substrate metabolism at a whole-body level, as well as high-resolution respirometry and multi-omic approaches to assay tissue and cell mitochondrial function. Porter leads the USDA-funded Rodent Metabolic and Behavioral Phenotyping Core at Arkansas Children's Nutrition Center and the NIGMS-funded Center for Childhood Obesity Prevention's Metabolism and Bioenergetics Core at Arkansas Children's Research Institute (ACRI). These cores provide access to critical metabolic and bioenergetic phenotyping support at ACRI.

This event is supported by NIGMS of the National Institutes of Health under award number P20GM139768. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Pizza and beverages will be served. Please contact Kimberley Fuller, fullerk@uark.edu, for more information.

For those unable to attend in person, this seminar will also be available via Zoom.