Welcome to
The Woodie Lab
at George Washington University
Where neuroscience, circadian biology, and metabolism meet...
Biological rhythms regulate just about everything that organisms do. From the slime mold to you and me, behaviors, metabolism, and molecular functions are rhythmic. Desynchrony exacerbates metabolic and behavioral diseases such as obesity, diabetes, stress, and mood disorders. But how synchrony and desynchrony are communicated to maintain time-of-day-dependent homeostasis within an organism is not well characterized.
Here in the Woodie Lab, we investigate the role of the autonomic nervous system in synchronizing chrono-metabolic rhythms. We use surgical, genetic, and dietary rodent models to induce desynchrony, disrupt autonomic signaling, and measure the metabolic outcomes arising from our treatments with the goal of discovering therapies for metabolic diseases exacerbated by chrono-disruption (i.e. jetlag and shiftwork).
Join us!
The Woodie Lab is actively looking for technicians, undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdocs to join us. Email Lauren for more information.