Unlike in monogastric mammals, absorption of dietary carbohydrates is insignificant by ruminants since they are efficiently digested by the rumen microbes. Therefore, their liver has a greater critical significance in energy metabolism, as virtually all of their physiological glucose requirements rely on hepatic gluconeogenesis. As energy needs peak toward late gestation and early lactation, they often exceed the level consumed in the diet. In such a state of negative energy balance, animals, including human, mobilize fat from adipose tissue to the liver where it can be degraded to provide energy. However, during glucose insufficiency the liver capacity for complete oxidative breakdown of fatty acid is limited, therefore hepatic ketogenesis and lipogenesis are enhanced. If prolonged, such physiology may lead to sever metabolic pathology characterized by fatty liver and toxic levels of blood ketone bodies that result in the clinical signs of pregnancy toxemia. For poorly understood reasons, some individuals are more susceptible than others are to such metabolic failure.

Research in the lab involves the application of tools from Biochemistry and Animal Physiology to:

• Develop methodologies to quantify liver metabolic performance.

• Selection and breeding of sheep toward improved metabolic capacity to reduce the prevalence of pregnancy toxemia.

• Investigate fatty liver pathology.

OPEN POSITIONS

• Postdoctoral position Liver Metabolism & Sheep Physiology

• Postdoctoral position in Biochemistry & Structural Biology of enzymatic triglyceride breakdown.

• M.Sc. and Ph.D. positions in Sheep Metabolism.