Laura Mikél Mc Nair

Current research

I am currently applying my skills from a master's degree in pharmacy and PhD in neuroscience biochemistry in the field of food sciences. I contribute to research striving at making food more healthy and safe. In particular, I investigate the mechanisms underlying improved shelf-life of fermented milk-products. This line of work will be concluded January 2019, and I am eager to take on new challenges continuing my post doc research with Prof. Dan Stærk.

Short presentation

I am an enthusiastic and self-driven research scientist, with an organised work style, flexible mind-set and outgoing personality. I enjoy challenges, team-work and the pursuit of new knowledge. I have contributed to laboratory research since 2011, including two stays at excellent foreign universities. Having mastered multiple in vivo and in vitro laboratory techniques and complex data analysis approaches, I am prepared to face any new challenging research adventures.

Fields of interest

Food sciences: fermented milk-products; Microbiology: Interactions of microorganisms; Cellular energy and mitochondrial metabolism; Body and brain interactions; Neuroscience incl. neurone-astrocyte relationship & transmitter homeostasis; Cognition and memory formation; Addiction and reward; (Type three) Diabetes; Aging.

Knowledge of languages

Speaks and writes Danish and English fluently.

CV

Introductory remarks on publicationslist

My latest results include identification and characterization of a new antifungal peptide in fermented milk product containing bioprotective Lactobacillus cultures (McNair et al. 2018 FEMS Yeast). A project conducted in tight collaboration with a food company. I am currently continuing this line of work and expect to present new exciting findings in the near future.

The work from my PhD include thorough characterisation of cellular energy metabolism in acutely isolated hippocampal and cerebral cortical mouse brain slices using ¹³C-mapping, GC-MS and HPLC (McNair et al. 2017 Neurochem Res) and provides evidence of metabolic similarity of these two brain regions. Moreover, I propose new interesting approaches for interpreting ¹³C-mapping data. This work was followed-up by evaluating the specificity of ¹³C-substrates for assessing astrocytic and neuronal metabolism individually in acute brain slices (Andersen, McNair et al. 2017 J Neurosci Res). Other parts of my work in acute brain slices have contributed to a recent review discussing the role of glutamate dehydrogenase and amino transferases in connection to glutamate oxidation in astrocytes (McKenna, Stridt, McNair et al. 2016 J Neurosci Res).

As part of my PhD I also completed two large rodent ex vivo studies combining ¹³C-mapping with GC-MS and ¹³C/¹H NMR, in collaboration with excellent researchers at Yale University and Harvard Medical School (USA), respectively. I reveal significant brain regional differences in the rate of pyruvate carboxylase, an astrocytic enzyme essential for de novo synthesis of the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate (manuscript in progress). Furthermore, I provide data suggesting that the glutamate transporter GLT-1 expressed in neurons is important for glutamate homeostasis and synaptoc energy metabolism (submitted to J Neurosci).

Results from my undergraduate research (2011-2012) at Bath University (UK) provide indications of differential changes in neural plasticity induced by addictive drug exposure with and without the context of a place-preference learning task, measured as long-term potentiation in hippocampal slices. This work was presented on scientific poster at the British Pharmacology Society meeting in 2012 and my data formed the basis for further work within Prof. C. Bailey's group.

Finally, my Master’s thesis elucidates the significant impact of pre-natal exposure to nicotine on brain function, measured as calcium responses to glutamatergic stimulation in brain slice from pubs born of nicotine treated mice (McNair & Kohlmeier 2015 J Dev Orig Health Dis).