"My name is Maggie Murphy and I am a postdoctoral scholar in Dr. Analia Loria's laboratory here
at the University of Kentucky.
I actually began my career as a dietitian but when I was in the hospital setting while
I enjoy talking with people and encouraging to adopt heart healthy diets, I really wanted
to understand the molecular mechanisms, why are people getting sick?
Yes, we know we can treat through food but we could actually make a more individualized
therapy if we better understood the factors driving these diseases.
So right now I'm studying obesity and metabolic syndrome, so kind of emphasizing in childhood
with early life adversity.
It's a very wide range from childhood neglect to even parent bereavement, early parental
loss, or even divorce.
And I grew up in a household where my parents divorced early and it was very emotionally
traumatic for all three of us.
I have two older brothers and I took a lot of comfort in palatable high fat foods.
I ended up quite overweight.
My mom took me to see a dietitian when I was in the fifth grade and I just wasn't quite
ready to lose weight at that point but it was a couple of years later when my brother
and my father challenged me to go running with them.
As a result we ended up doing a 10K as a family event every summer, the one that's run here
downtown on the fourth of July.
As I was going through this metamorphosis, becoming more knowledgeable about how the
food we eat, the type of physical activity that we perform, how that can really affect
our health, I'm able to take some of the life experiences I have and put that into my research.
So when I joined the laboratory last year, Analia had started a pilot project in mice
that are, they are first exposed to the maternal separation, or the first hit, early in life,
to mimic chronic behavioral stress.
We challenge these mice with a high fat diet and then we measure metabolic outcomes in
adulthood.
And it's very interesting because we've been studying both males and females and we find
that even though both genders gain a significant amount of weight, it's more exaggerated in
the females.
And interestingly, which also coincides with what we see epidemiologically or in humans,
so if we actually want to target and provide individualized medicine which is the direction
of the future, we need to understand what's going on between males and females.
What makes a female more susceptible to weight gain?
What inside the brain and the adipose tissue is driving this response?
So that's what I'm trying to tease apart is, is the adipose tissue the main contributor,
the liver or is it the hormones that regulate appetite within the brain.
We have some exciting preliminary data indicating that it's a combination of all of the above.
So I grew up here in Lexington.
I don't really come from a family of scientists, primarily accountants, except for my grandmother.
I'm named after her and she was the first female medical technologist in Western Kentucky.
So when I finished my PhD also here at University of Kentucky, I was happy to dedicate it to
her because she really wanted to become a physician but due to the times, so it's very
important and I very much appreciate that I'm here in a laboratory primarily of women
to see the advancements women have had in science.
My boss is very real with me.
We have a very great relationship and I think it does help that she's female and she largely
understands what I'm going through and we're able to be there.
It's much more than employee, employer type of relationship and I want people to keep
that in mind when they enter science that, this team is, not only do we work together
in a laboratory but we also go out and do fun things together.
And we try to practice what we preach, eating nutritiously.
We all grow vegetables and Diane our research analyst actually has a very large farm in
Winchester and she's brought fresh grown kale, tomatoes, squash.
Analia's brought in zucchini.
I'm, I don't really have a green thumb so all I can really contribute are herbs.
But I just, I really enjoy that not only are we co-workers, but we're also friends."