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Assistant Professor
Cornell University
Martha S. Field, Ph.D is an assistant professor in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University. She received a B.S. in chemistry from Butler University in 2000 and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology from Cornell University in 2007.
The Field research group uses several in vitro and in vivo model systems to study the mechanisms that underlie physiological outcomes associated with perturbed one-carbon metabolism. Impaired folate-dependent one-carbon metabolism is associated with adverse physiological outcomes that include certain cancers, cardiovascular disease, neurological impairments, and birth defects. More specifically, the laboratory is interested in the contributions of folate and vitamin B12 nutrition to supporting mitochondrial DNA precursor synthesis, with a focus on understanding how folate nutrition affects mitochondrial DNA integrity and pathogenesis of metabolic diseases such as mitochondrial DNA depletion syndromes, chronic disease, and age-related decline in mitochondrial function.
The Field group has more recently focused on the metabolism of erythritol, which is a product of the pentose phosphate pathway and which has recently emerged as a predictive biomarker of weight gain, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. She has identified the enzymes responsible for endogenous production of erythritol and is currently using animal models to understand the metabolic pathways underlying the associations among dietary erythritol exposure, genetic variants that affect endogenous erythritol synthesis, and metabolic dysfunction.