My research interests focus on hypothalamic pathways involved in the regulation of energy homeostasis. During my current post, I am contributing to fundamental systems physiology approaches in rodents. With extensive expertise in hypothalamic neuroanatomy and immunohistochemistry, I was able to develop the use of laser capature microdissection on specific hypothalamic nuclei or cell populations and subject minute amounts of the extracted RNA to further downstream gene expression profiling studies. The recent data generated from our nuclei specific microarray gene expression profile, has enabled us to identify a number of potential novel molecules and pathways involved in the control of energy homeostasis. I am currently establishing strategies such as in vivo knocking down technology coupled with downstream carbohydrate and lipid metabolism phenotyping for validating a subset of those potential candidates as targets for future pharmacological exploitation.
