UNC School of Public Health - Animal Metabolism Phenotyping

The Animal Metabolism Phenotyping Core provides access to state of the art phenotyping techinques for metabolism and energy balance in mouse models of nutrition and disease.

Study Design and Data Interpretation

Expertise on study design, quality control, and analysis methods that are appropriate for a wide variety of experiments requiring measurement of metabolism and energy balance.

Body Composition

Using MRI technology, whole body composition is evaluated including fat, lean tissue, free and total water in live mice without anesthesia. In addition to the live probe, the MRI also has a tissue probe for organs or samples up to 10 grams and a biopsy probe for samples up to 300 milligrams.

Voluntary Exercise

With home cage and running wheel compartments. This device is able to collect up to months running distance, time spent running and speed in requested intervals. Data can be converted to day/night total distance, on wheel time and maximum speed etc. Total food and drink taken during experiment are also available.

Endurance Exercise and Maximal Running Capacity

Using a treadmill and variable/flexible testing protocols, this exercise performance test service can be used to study cardiovascular performance, muscle strength and atrophy, stress, running, fatigue, and many other exercise paradigms.

Energy Expenditure

Evaluating and interpreting energy expenditure using brand new, state of the art indirect calorimetry from TSE Systems. The system measures O2 consumption & CO2 production, respiratory exchange rate, and energy expenditure in the home cage environment.

Home Cage Activity

Evaluating and interpreting 3D (X, Y and Z dimension) home cage activity via light beams for up to 10-days using intervals between 1 to 60 minutes.

Food & Drink Consumption and Behavior

Equipped with three sensors (drinking /feeding) per cage. In addition to simply evaluating food and drink consumption in real time, the system is able to monitor multiple diets or drink combinations and eating behavior patterns. The system will accumulate up to 10-days of feeding and drinking data, using intervals between 1 to 60 minutes.

Bone Mineral Density

Using the DEXA scanner, total bone mineral density (BMD), bone mineral content (BMC) and bone area (BA) are analyzed in anesthetized mice.

Microbiome Analysis

We have collaborated with the University of Nebraska Core for Applied Genomics and Ecology (CAGE) to provide NORC members a high-throughput microbiome sequencing and analysis service. Beginning with mouse fecal samples submitted to the NORC-AMP core, we will arrange with CAGE to perform automated DNA extraction, PCR amplification of the V1-V2 region of the 16S ribosomal RNA gene, and deep pyrosequencing of the amplicons from each sample using Roche-454 Titanium sequencing chemistry. Sequence data from each sample is provided to users as Quality-Controlled and Filtered sequences in the CAGE Microbiome Analysis Database (CAGE-MAD). Through CAGE-MAD, NORC users will be linked to a data processing pipeline that assigns taxonomic status to individual sequenced reads and reports data to users in statistics-ready format.

Request Animal Metabolism Services: Service Request Form

Last updated May 07, 2012