The Goran Lab aims to discover how the body regulates where excess fat is deposited, how increased body fat affects our health, and how this is all regulated during growth and development and across different segments of the population. We are interested in understanding the mechanism linking fat accumulation to risk of diabetes, heart disease, and fatty liver disease, and how this is established early in life from a developmental perspective. We are especially interested in examining how early feeding and dietary sugar affect development of the gut microbiome, obesity, the brain and cognitive function. We are also doing clinical trials to examine how these links can be reversed with novel dietary interventions.