University of Birmingham
Application closed
The University of Birmingham have announced their 125th Year Anniversary Scholarships designed to create opportunities and address the underrepresentation of talented Black or Black mixed heritage students in academia. All students classified as “home” for tuition fee purposes are eligible to apply.
About the project
Exercise represents a crucial element of health and wellness. The integrated response to the energy demands of movement produce adaptations associated with improved health and wellbeing that are incompletely understood. An intriguing observation we have made of late is that exercise stimulates the appearance of 20-300nm sized vesicles (small EVs) containing important regulatory proteins, raising the possibility that this process may facilitate some of the systemic adaptations to, and health benefits of, regular physical activity. In addition, we have shown that small EVs released during exercise have preferred localisation to the liver and importantly, weekly doses of small EVs from exercising rodent donors improve liver function in a preclinical rodent model of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). These initial findings have highlighted the possibility that small EVs provide a delivery mechanism of regulatory proteins to the liver and provides a mechanistic link between regular exercise and prevention/treatment of disrupted liver metabolism.
The aim of this project is to characterise the release and metabolic significance of small extracellular vesicle secretion, with a particular focus on liver health. Using a combination of in vitro and in vivo experiments, the dynamics of sEV release and metabolic impact will be investigated, incorporating cutting edge characterisation methods and ‘omics’ based investigative approaches.
References
- Whitham, M., et al (2018) Extracellular vesicles provide a means for tissue cross talk during exercise. Cell Metabolism 27(1) 237-251
- McIlvenna, L. C. et al. (2023) Single vesicle analysis reveals the release of tetraspanin positive extracellular vesicles into circulation with high intensity intermittent exercise. Journal of Physiology 601, 5093–5106