Poster #058, CHLA LA-HIP
Investigating the Effects of Early-Life High-Fat Diet on Gut CCK+ Enteroendocrine Cells
Mentors: Meaghan Mccoy, PhD Student and Jason Perez, Graduate Student
A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that about 62% of daily calories for kids and teens come from ultra-processed foods. Since children are being fed these unhealthy foods at a young age it can affect their health negatively. In our gut, we contain cholecystokinin (CCK) and enteroendocrine cells (EECs). CCK is a hormone made in the gut
that signals satiety to the brain and contributes to food-reward learning. In relation to this, we hypothesized that early-life exposure to a high-fat diet (HFD EARLY) alters the number and/or proportion of CCK-expressing EECs (CCK+/CHGA+ cells, relative to total CHGA+ EECs) in the proximal small intestine at P21, compared to control-diet mice. We chose to study these cells in our gut because these cells signal back to our brain using the vagus nerve and it allows us to know the quantity of nutrition we intake. We aren’t sure whether early diet changes the number of these signaling cells, and not just their hormone output. CHGA is the total EEC population in the gut and we’re using that term so that CCK+ cells can be expressed as a proportion of all EECs. We are going to use two mouse groups, the control mice vs. HFD EARLY mice, in early-life exposure, and collect tissue at P21. The tissue we’re using is the proximal small intestine because this is the region where CCK+ EECs are concentrated. We are going to use immunofluorescence co-staining for CCK and CHGA, in confocal imaging. We are quantifying CCK+/CHGA+ cell density and the proportion of total EECs that are CCK+ in the proximal small intestine. Work published in other labs has shown that short-term exposure to a high-fat diet increases the number of CCK+ EECs in adults. We expect to see the same here.