National Mouse Metabolic Phenotyping Centers (MMPC)

The Mouse Metabolic Phenotyping Center (MMPC)Live Program provides standardized, high quality, unique, and hard to find phenotyping services for mouse models of diabetes, obesity, and related metabolic disorders. Emerging as the next iteration of the MMPC Program (2001–2021), MMPCLive is an outwardly-facing consortium of service cores that offer investigators reduced-cost consultation and metabolic, physiologic, and behavioral phenotyping tests on live mice. Four MMPCLive Centers located at universities around the country perform complex and often unique procedures in vivo on a fee-for-service basis, typically on mice shipped from the client or directly from a repository or vendor. The Centers provide consultation, training, and services in the area of energy balance and body composition, insulin action and secretion, whole body carbohydrate and lipid metabolism, cardiovascular and renal function, food intake and behavior, microbiome and xenometabolism, and metabolic pathway kinetics in live mice. Data derived from experiments conducted at an MMPCLive Center belongs to the researchers submitting mice for testing and is made publicly available and accessible from the MMPCLive database following publication. The MMPCLive Centers apply broad-based strategies to optimize rigor, reproducibility, and translatability of biomedical research using mouse models. In addition to services, Centers staffs provide expertise and advice to researchers, develop and refine test protocols, engage in outreach activities, publish scientific and technical papers, and conduct educational workshops and training sessions to aid researchers in unraveling the heterogeneity of diabetes and obesity.