Muscle metabolism

我实验室的工作重点是了解葡萄糖和脂肪酸等选定物质是如何被骨骼肌吸收的，b)它们是如何储存的，c)它们是如何被用来产生正常肌肉收缩所需的能量的。在健康的肌肉中，葡萄糖和脂肪酸在不同类型的运动中的调动取决于运动的强度。另外，在日常活动过程中，肌肉中脂肪酸和葡萄糖的使用失衡，可能会使身体走上肥胖或2型糖尿病的道路。然而，运动被认为是预防这些问题的好方法。这项工作的重点是确定肌肉中葡萄糖和脂肪酸的使用是如何被特定基因和最近发现的信号蛋白控制的，以及了解肌肉是如何应对和适应运动的。一种检验肌肉中这一点的新方法是通过实验改变一种蛋白质或一组蛋白质的水平，然后研究这如何影响肌肉中葡萄糖和脂肪酸的进入和使用，或者这如何影响肌肉适应运动或运动训练的能力。我们已经开发出一种最先进的方法，我们可以在7-14天内改变实验动物单个肌肉中的蛋白质水平。这种在活体动物而不是实验室培养皿中的细胞中进行实验的能力是向前迈出的非常重要的一步。我们工作的一个关键方面是，我们改变蛋白质的水平，以反映肌肉生理上可能发生的变化，即在现实生活中，而不是在基因改造的实验室小鼠中经常产生的巨大异常变化。通过我们的工作，我们期望更好地理解参与维持肌肉健康代谢过程的分子过程。

Work in my laboratory is focused on understanding how selected substances such as glucose and fatty acids are a) taken up into skeletal muscle, b) how they are stored and c) how they are used to generate energy for normal muscle contraction. In healthy muscles mobilization of glucose and fatty acids during different types of exercise depends on how hard one works. Alternatively, when, in the course of normal daily activities, fatty acid and glucose usage in muscle get out of balance, it can set the body on a path towards developing obesity or type 2 diabetes. However, exercise is recognized to be a good means to prevent such problems. The thrust of the proposed work is to determine how glucose and fatty acid use, in muscle, is controlled, by specific genes and by recently discovered signalling proteins, as well as developing an understanding of how muscles cope with, and adapt to exercise. A novel way to examine this in muscle is to alter experimentally the level of a protein, or a set of proteins, and then examine how this affects the entry and use of glucose and fatty acids in the muscle, or how this affects the ability of a muscle to adapt to exercise or exercise training. We have developed a state of the art method whereby we can alter the level of a protein within 7-14 days in a single muscle in a laboratory animal. This ability to now do so in live animals, rather than in cells in a lab dish, is a very important step forward. A key aspect in our work is that we alter proteins to levels that reflect the changes that can be expected to occur in muscle physiologically, i.e. in real life, as opposed to huge, abnormal changes that are often produced in genetically altered laboratory mice. Through our work we expect to develop a better understanding of the molecular processes that are involved in maintaining healthy metabolic processes in muscle.