Katie Whytock is in the third year of her PhD at Liverpool John Moores University
Type 2 diabetes effects millions of people worldwide but has a higher prevalence in men than women. Katie Whytock is undertaking her PhD at Liverpool John Moores University to better understand this global epidemic.
The way we store and use fat in our muscle is linked to skeletal muscle insulin resistance. Katie’s research has used high-fat, high-calorie diets as a method to investigate how insulin resistance develops between genders and as a model to investigate the mechanisms behind how our muscle stores fat.
A major part of the PhD has been developing immunofluorescence microscope techniques to detect how we store and use fat in skeletal muscle and how this links to obesity-induced insulin resistance. In the future, this could help researchers develop interventions and targets to prevent or reduce the onset of the disease.
