Laura Krieg, M. Sc.

PhD student in the working group Functional Genomics

Contact / Address

Project description

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) the percentage of people suffering from overweight has more than tripled since the 1970s. Unhealthy overweight (obesity) is one of the major risk factors, in children and adults, for the development of metabolic disorders like diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, hypertension or fatty liver disease. In previously studies it could be shown that environmental factors like phthalates promote the development of obesity. Understanding the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms is essential for the design of new prevention strategies and more effective treatment procedures for obese patients. Obesity is accompanied by the excessive extension of white adipose tissue, which secretes an array of hormones and cytokines, so called adipokines. Adipokines play a central role in the whole body homeostasis by influencing a variety of biological and physiological processes (e.g. food intake, insulin action, glucose and lipid metabolism) and are a key factor in the development of the metabolic syndrome. My PhD project is situated in the Collaborative Research Centre 1052 (DFG) for interdisciplinary research on ‘Mechanism in Obesity’. As part of this, I am establishing a mass spectrometry-based assay for the simultaneous identification and quantification of adipokines in human serum and tissue samples. This method allows the parallel detection and quantification of over 30 adipokines and apolipoproteins. Furthermore, also metabolites in human tissue and serum will be quantified in my PhD project. The overall goal is to investigate the impact of environmental factors on adipokine and metabolite levels and correlate these to clinical parameters and obesity-related comorbidities.

Cooperations

AG Dr. Antje Körner
Clinic for Children and Adolescents
University Hospital Leipzig
Medical Research Center
Liebigstr. 21
04103 Leipzig

AG Dr. Assaf Rudich
Faculty of Health Science
Department of Clinical Biochemistry and Pharmacology
Labpratory of Study of Obesity
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel