Dudley Lamming, PhD, associate professor, Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism, and Jacob Brunkard, PhD, assistant professor, University of Wisconsin Department of Genetics, are pursuing interdisciplinary research that may lead to the development of healthier corn and soybean products.

Their collaboration—funded by a three-year, $600,000 Wisconsin Partnership Program (WPP) Collaborative Health Sciences grant—builds on previous work by Dr. Lamming, who established that reducing the amount of a single amino acid called isoleucine in the diet of mice improved their insulin metabolism and weight.

Analysis of diet and weight data from the ongoing Survey of the Health of Wisconsin (SHOW) confirmed that people whose diets included a higher percentage of isoleucine and a second essential amino acid, histidine, in their diets also had higher body masses.

The WPP project envisions Dr. Brunkard’s lab, which focuses on plant metabolism, creating soy and corn plants with reduced levels of the problematic amino acids, and then Dr. Lamming’s group feeding the beans and corn from those plants to the mice, to see if it improves their metabolism.

Their findings will inform future studies that, if successful, may lead to a day when Wisconsin farmers grow crops that result in delicious real food that promotes health and reduces the risk of diseases like diabetes and obesity.

Read the full story from the Wisconsin Partnership Program.

Banner: Dr. Lamming, left, with Dr. Brunkard, right, in a greenhouse. Credit: Clint Thayer/Department of Medicine.