Agricultural and Life Sciences (IFAS)
Best Lab
Led by Cora Best · Food Science and Human Nutrition
What we study
Best Lab studies how nutrition affects kidney and bone health, focusing on vitamin D metabolism and dietary interventions. The lab uses human subjects research and wet lab techniques to analyze nutritional biomarkers.
What working here is like
- Wet lab
- Clinical
- Computational
- Human participants
- Coding helps
- Projects
- 5
- Papers
- 5
Current projects
Vitamin D disposition in humans
The lab studies how vitamin D is metabolized in people with altered vitamin D metabolism, such as during pregnancy or kidney disease.
Clinical and genetic factors influencing vitamin D response
The lab investigates how clinical and genetic factors affect how people respond to vitamin D supplements in a large clinical trial.
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Nutritional interventions for kidney disease and aging
The lab tests therapeutic diets to improve musculoskeletal health and metabolic outcomes in older adults.
Comparing the Accuracy of a Mobile Food Record Against 24-Hour Dietary Recall for Dietary Intake Assessment
The lab compares a mobile app that records food as it is eaten with a traditional 24‑hour recall interview to see which gives more accurate intake data. The student analyzes energy, macronutrient, and micronutrient differences using Bland‑Altman analysis.
From the Spring 2025 UF Undergraduate Research Symposium · abstract book, p. 341
Popular Diets and Musculoskeletal Health in Aging Study: Menu Design Project
Students created and optimized recipe menus for a ketogenic diet and a Mediterranean diet to be used in a clinical trial with older adults, ensuring the meals matched on energy, protein, calcium, and sodium while differing in carbs and fat, and tested 30 recipes for taste, keeping 28 that met the goals.
From the Spring 2025 UF Undergraduate Research Symposium · abstract book, p. 173
Summaries are written by AI in plain language from public symposium abstracts and may be imperfect.
Recent papers, explained
- Influence of vitamin D binding protein isoforms on the total and free serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D responses to vitamin D supplementation in older adults in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis
2026 · Frontiers in Endocrinology
Tests whether a gene affects how older adults respond to vitamin D supplements.
- Identifying Determinants of Mother-Fetus Vitamin D Partitioning in Pregnant Adolescents at Risk of Vitamin D Deficiency
2026 · Current Developments in Nutrition
Studies how vitamin D moves from pregnant teens to their unborn babies.
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- Feasibility of a Very Low Carbohydrate Ketogenic vs Mediterranean Diet Intervention in Older Adults: The POPDIETS-Aging Pilot Study
2026 · Current Developments in Nutrition
- Vitamin D supplementation in pregnant or breastfeeding women or young children for preventing asthma
2025 · Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
Reviews studies on vitamin D supplements for preventing asthma in children.
- Genetic Variants Associated With the Biochemical Response to Vitamin D3 in the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis
2025 · The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism
Finds genes that may affect how people respond to vitamin D treatment.
Plain-language summaries are AI-written and reviewed by us; check the paper for details.
How to reach out
Cora Best hasn't set up this page yet. Their UF Scholars profile lists their publications.