James Hurley
University of Washington, WA·Biochemistry
Photoreceptors, the light-sensing cells of the retina, burn glucose remarkably fast, drawing about half of their energy from aerobic glycolysis, a quick but inefficient way of breaking down sugar. All of that glucose must first cross the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), the cell layer that sits between the outer retina and the blood supply.
- Fields
Biochemistry
Physiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
retina
photoreceptors
aerobic glycolysis
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Aug 2029
What they work on
- Determine how daily cycles shape glycogen metabolism, the stored-sugar reserve, in RPE/choroid tissue, using ex vivo and in vivo measurements of metabolic flux and energy stores.
- Identify diurnal influences on fatty acid metabolism in the retinal pigment epithelium and how stored fat contributes to outer retina homeostasis.
- Test how mutations that cause photoreceptor degeneration, or that disrupt the RPE's engulfment of shed photoreceptor material, change stored glycogen and fat.
- Identify the biochemical changes that make glycolytic intermediates upstream of pyruvate kinase accumulate in degenerated retinas.
- Measure metabolic flux in living mice infused with carbon-13 labeled fuels through a jugular vein catheter, to test whether retina and RPE/choroid trade fuels in the intact eye as explant studies suggest.
- Analyze how disrupting specific metabolic enzymes in the RPE, using knockout mice, alters metabolic interactions with the retina.
- Complete metabolic analysis of mouse models engineered to slow photoreceptor degeneration by enhancing glycolysis in rod photoreceptors while suppressing it in the RPE.
- Operate a shared molecular and cellular biology core providing vision scientists with Sanger sequencing, quantitative real-time PCR, ultracentrifugation, spectrophotometry and cell culture facilities, plus technical training.
More about the research
Work in this lab treats retina and RPE as a shared metabolic ecosystem and asks how breakdowns in that partnership, from genetics, environment or aging, lead to vision loss.
Why it matters
Deficiencies in how the retinal pigment epithelium transports and recycles fuel contribute to vision loss from inherited retinal degenerations, environmental insults and aging. Mapping how retina and RPE share glucose and stored fuels, and how daily cycles affect them, could point toward metabolism-based strategies that make photoreceptors more resilient to stress and may apply across several forms of retinal degeneration.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Jianhai Du
West Virginia University, WV·Biochemistry
Trace how retinal pigment epithelium cells use the amino acid proline as fuel alongside glucose, using tracer methods and mass spectrometry.
Tylor Lewis
University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL·Neuroscience·Early-career
Comprehensively characterize retinal degeneration in global ADAM9 knockout mice, focusing on the interface between photoreceptor outer segments and the retinal pigment epithelium.
Nancy Philp
Thomas Jefferson University, PA·Neuroscience
Test whether the retinal pigment epithelium keeps some glucose for its own biosynthetic and phagocytic activities, using RPE-iΔGlut1 mice that lack the glucose transporter GLUT1 in the RPE.
The school
University of Washington: 81 labs on PI Pages, $1.7B a year on research, 694 research doctorates a year.
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