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Our research focus is on environmental
acclimation and phenotypic
plasticity in skeletal muscle and energy metabolic systems.
Phenotypic
plasticity permits acclimation to changing environmental conditions
along a "reaction norm" in the absence of adaptive evolution for a
specific quantity within that range. Mammalian skeletal muscle
plasticity is well described and this is likely a characteristic of
most vertebrates. Muscle is an important contributor to whole
body energy use and as such is a target tissue during
acclimation. This works spans biomedical studies that explore
molecular regulation of acclimation to the Western lifestyle (a hostile
dietary environment combined with sedentary living) to comparative
studies that seek to understand the role of phenotypic plasticity in
the ecology and evolution of avian life history. Work includes
whole animal studies, both in the lab and the field as well as cell and
molecular assays conducted in the laboratory.
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