Deanna Peperno

Diet is a lifestyle choice that plays a key role in health. Moderate Calorie Restriction (CR) involves reducing calorie intake by about 40% below ad libitum. While CR diets have recently aroused great enthusiasm, little is known about their effects on gut health and the intestinal epithelium. The intestinal epithelium encompasses crypts and villi in the small intestine and crypts in the colon. The crypts contain intestinal stem cells (ISCs) that renew the epithelium. In the small intestine, the villi contain absorptive cells responsible for nutrient absorption. The Yilmaz lab found that chronic 40% CR in the mouse intestine caused shorter villus height and fewer cells in villi and crypts. To complement this work, we decided to study the effects of an alternate day fasting (ADF) diet, which involves alternating days of fasting and feeding, on gut health in adult mice. We hypothesized that due to a caloric restriction, crypts and villi will decrease in size. Age-matched control mice were then fed or fasted for 17h prior to tissue collection to allow for the distinction between an overnight fast and a chronic intermittent fast. A tissue collection and staining was performed on SI and colon specimens and later analyzed. Overall, we found that ADF diet does not have a statistically significant effect on villus height or crypt depth in the small intestine and colon in adult mice. Future work will define whether this absence of ADF impact on epithelium morphometry is accompanied by an absence of impact on ISCs.