Elke Albrecht

Dr. Elke Albrecht is a Researcher at the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN), leading the Working Group Muscle-Fat Crosstalk. She holds a PhD in Food Engineering and Biotechnology from the Technical University of Dresden and has been a Scientist at FBN since 2005. Her research focuses on skeletal muscle biology in farm animals, meat quality, marbling, and interactions between muscle and fat cells. She teaches 'Methods for Characterization of Skeletal Muscle Tissue' at the Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, University of Rostock (M.Sc. level).

Her work spans molecular mechanisms of muscle and fat development in cattle, pigs, and poultry, with emphasis on adipogenesis, nutrient supplementation effects, and environmental stress impacts. Notable contributions include studies on glutamine supplementation’s role in muscle development, heat stress effects on dairy cows, and endocannabinoid system regulation in livestock metabolism.

Publications span 1990s to 2025, covering topics like bovine muscle fiber development, intramuscular fat deposition, and myokine biology. Key projects include metabogenomic analysis of long non-coding RNAs in cattle and molecular adaptations in heat-stressed dairy mammary glands. She collaborates widely, with co-authors from institutions in Germany, China, Japan, and beyond.

Labs/Teams: Her research group integrates histology, molecular biology, and metabolomics to study muscle-fat crosstalk in livestock. Current projects explore nutrient partitioning mechanisms and environmental stress impacts on meat quality.