A doctoral candidate in the University of Waterloo’s Department of Kinesiology has been awarded a 2014 Women’s Health Scholars Award from the Council of Ontario Universities. The $20,000 award, which is funded by the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, recognizes outstanding research in women’s health issues.
Kristin Marks researches the ways estrogen affects the synthesis of different fats, and the results of her study will have wide-ranging implications for women’s health.
Kristin Marks. (Credit: University of Waterloo/Light Imaging. Download Image)
In cells, estrogen binds to a receptor that then binds directly to DNA and affects gene expression, including the way a cell produces the enzymes that make fatty acids. Marks has discovered that estrogen influences enzymes that increase the length of and the amount of unsaturation in saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acid in the body.
Marks is the first person to identify a clear link between estrogen and an enzyme called elongase 6. In the body, elongase 6 converts a fatty acid linked to cardiovascular disease and obesity (palmitic acid, 16:0) to a healthier saturated fatty acid (stearic acid, 18:0). These elongation reactions also affect other fatty acids, including omega-3 fatty acids such as DHA. DHA affects everything from reproductive health and fetal development to disease resistance.
The results of her work will help improve the design of clinical trials, and will also provide a foundation for dietary guidelines that account for women’s different needs during the premenopausal, pregnant, and postmenopausal phases of their lives.
The 24-year-old Marks grew up in Brantford and earned her BSc and MSc from the University of Waterloo. Now she works with associate professor Ken Stark, the Canada Research Chair in Nutritional Lipidomics, and assistant professor Robin Duncan, both in the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Waterloo. An avid runner, she says a long-standing interest in health and wellbeing led her to study fats as a graduate student. Now she’s something of an advocate for the oft-misunderstood molecules, which have been vilified for North America’s growing obesity crisis.
“I’ve always been interested in eating well and living a healthy lifestyle, and the more I learned about what fat does, the more interested I became,” says Marks. “So many people think fat is bad in general, and when I tell them what I do they say ‘Oh, so you’re going to tell me how to lose weight!’ But fat is so important to so many different functions in our bodies.”
Marks is one of six recipients of the Women’s Health Scholars Award across the province, and one of three PhD candidates to receive the prize this year.
The prize is part of a decades-long push from the health research and medical communities to include women’s health issues in scientific studies. Marks’s work will be relevant to both reproductive issues and sex differences in the treatment of disease, areas that have historically been neglected, as this recent editorial in Nature describes.
“I'm excited to see where all this work goes,” says Marks. “Hopefully it will be relevant to women of all ages. That’s why I’m especially thankful to have received this award.”
