Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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Description
Type II diabetes is a serious, chronic metabolic disease that has serious impacts on both the health and quality of life in patients diagnosed with the disease. Type II diabetes is also a very prevalent disease both in the United States and around the world. There is still a lot that is unknown about Type II diabetes, and this study will aim to answer some of these questions. The question posed in this study is whether insulin resistance changes as a function of time after the start of a high fat diet. We hypothesized that peripheral insulin resistance would be observed in animals placed on a high fat diet; and peripheral insulin resistance would have a positive correlation with time. In order to test the hypotheses, four Sprague-Dawley male rats were placed on a high fat diet for 8 weeks, during which time they were subjected to three intraperitonal insulin tolerance tests ((NovoLogTM 1 U/kg). These three tests were conducted at baseline (week 1), week 4, and week 8 of the high fat diet. The test consisted of serially determining plasma glucose levels via a pin prick methodology, and exposing a droplet of blood to the test strip of a glucometer (ACCUCHEKTM, Roche Diagnostics). Two plasma glucose baselines were taken, and then every 15 minutes following insulin injection for one hour. Glucose disposal rates were then calculated by simply dividing the glucose levels at each time point by the baseline value, and multiplying by 100. Area under the curve data was calculated via definite integral. The area under the curve data was then subjected to a single analysis of variance (ANOVA), with a statistical significance threshold of p<0.05. The results of the study did not indicate the development of peripheral insulin resistance in the animals placed on a high fat diet. Insulin-mediated glucose disposal was about 50% at 30 minutes in all four animals, during all three testing periods. Furthermore, the ANOVA resulted in p=0.92, meaning that the data was not statistically significant. In conclusion, peripheral insulin resistance was not observed in the animals, meaning no determination could be made on the relation between time and insulin resistance.
ContributorsBrown, Kellen Andrew (Author) / Caplan, Michael (Thesis director) / Herman, Richard (Committee member) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Adaptive thermogenesis is an innate mechanism that assists the body in controlling its core temperature that can be stimulated in two ways: cold and diet. When adaptive thermogenesis is stimulated through diet, the metabolic rate of the body should increase and the metabolic efficiency of the body should decrease. This activation should, theoretically, help to control weight gain. A protocol was developed to study four male Sprague-Dawley rats throughout a fourteen week period through the measurement of brown adipose tissue blood flow and brown adipose tissue, back, and abdomen temperatures to determine if diet induced thermogenesis existed and could be activated through norepinephrine. The sedative used to obtain blood flow measurements, ketamine, was discovered to induce a thermal response prior to the norepinephrine injection by mimicking the norepinephrine response in the sympathetic nervous system. This discovery altered the original protocol to exclude an injection of norepinephrine, as this injection would have no further thermal effect. It was found that ketamine sedation excited diet induced thermogenesis in periods of youth, low fat diet, and early high fat diet. The thermogenic capacity was found to be at a peak of 2.1 degrees Celsius during this time period. The data also suggested that the activation of diet induced thermogenesis decreased as the period of high fat diet increased, and by week 4 of the high fat diet, almost all evidence of diet induced thermogenesis was suppressed. This indicated that diet induced thermogenesis is time and diet dependent. Further investigation will need to be made to determine if prolonged high fat diet or age suppress diet induced thermogenesis.
ContributorsJayo, Heather Lynn (Author) / Caplan, Michael (Thesis director) / Herman, Richard (Committee member) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12