Diane O'Brien Lab

Our lab investigates nutritional questions in public health and ecology using natural abundance stable isotope ratios. These are naturally occurring "signatures" at the atomic level that are generated by elemental cycling in the environment.  Stable isotope ratios vary in the foods we eat, such as fish, corn-fed meats, and sugar-sweetened beverages, and thus have potential as dietary intake biomarkers.   They can also be markers for nutrient sources in ecological systems.    A lot of the research we do is focused on evaluating the performance of stable isotope tools in different research contexts and pushing the boundaries of what we can infer from measuring the isotope ratios of specific molecules.