The NRI houses research cores that offer a wide range of services to researchers. Cores offer shared resources, including cutting-edge technologies, high-end instrumentation, technical support, and education. Our cores are committed to enhancing and expanding the collaborative capabilities of research at our institute, on the North Carolina Research Campus, and throughout the research community.

The Animal Metabolism Phenotyping Core provides contemporary phenotyping techniques for metabolism and energy balance in mouse models of nutrition and disease.

The Animal Metabolism Phenotyping Core offers technical support and expertise for measuring traits related to metabolism in mouse models of obesity and nutritionally relevant disease. With locations at both the Chapel Hill and Nutrition Research Institute (NRI) campuses, the Core provides access to state-of-the-art methods, equipment, and populations to support high quality and high throughput phenotyping of energy balance components in mice.

The Human Research Core provides human nutrition research investigators with multi-disciplinary services and equipment in one location. The core is complete with examination rooms and equipment, phlebotomy and processing laboratory, pharmacy, and furnished consultation rooms. For nutrition intervention studies, the HRC offers a metabolic kitchen specifically designed to support nutrition research.

State-of-the-Art Resources and Support

• Human metabolism and body composition assessments
• Clinical laboratory and support services
• Preparation and delivery of precisely designed meals for study participant

The Metabolism and Metabolomics Core provides cutting edge nutritional metabolomics services, biochemistry methods, and molecular biology techniques for nutrition research.

The goals of our core are to encourage and facilitate the use of biomarkers for nutritional epidemiological and intervention studies, to provide access to state-of-the-art techniques and equipment to bench scientists, and to provide cost-effective assays for investigators without lab facilities. The core also provides training for students and postdoctoral fellows. With locations at both the Chapel Hill and Nutrition Research Institute (NRI) campuses, we are able to provide a wide array of instrumentation and support to investigators at both locations.

The Precision Nutrition Core is an all-encompassing support system for investigators conducting research on nutrigenetic and microbiomic aspects of obesity and obesity-related diseases.

The goal for some obesity research is to identify genetic and environmental factors and interactions that affect an individual’s susceptibility and to identify high-utility targets for prevention and treatment. In the long run, investigators should be able to individualize or personalize diet and health recommendations based on knowledge gained from obesity research. Thus, there is a great need for studies with strong translational potential. Additionally, the Microbiome sub-core provides consultation (experimental design, grant writing assistance, data interpretation and publication help) on nutrition-focused microbiome studies.