Rexford Ahima
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Physiology
Skeletal muscle burns a large share of the body's fuel, so how muscle senses and uses nutrients shapes the risk of obesity and diabetes. This project focuses on an enzyme called IPMK (inositol polyphosphate multikinase), which controls the production of inositol phosphates, small signaling messengers inside cells.
- Fields
Physiology
Biochemistry
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
inositol polyphosphate multikinase
inositol phosphates
skeletal muscle
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Feb 2027
What they work on
- Investigate how muscle IPMK, an energy-sensing enzyme, controls fuel use in living mice at rest and during exercise, using mice in which IPMK is deleted only in skeletal muscle.
- Examine how muscle IPMK regulates whole-body metabolism, including glucose tolerance and the body's response to exercise, in muscle-specific IPMK knockout mice.
- Determine how IPMK regulates nutrient use in muscle cells (myocytes), including mitochondrial function and fat breakdown, using biochemical, molecular and chemical-genetic tools that adjust IPMK activity.
- Uncover how IPMK controls genes involved in energy use, including through histone deacetylase-dependent acetylation, using transcriptomic and bioinformatic analyses.
More about the research
IPMK is abundant in muscle. Its levels rise with exercise and fall in diabetes, but its role in whole-body metabolism is poorly understood.
Why it matters
Obesity affects over a third of U.S. adults and raises the risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer. By showing how loss of IPMK in muscle may predispose the body to obesity, diabetes and abnormal fat metabolism, this work could point to a new target for therapies against diabetes, obesity and related metabolic diseases.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Erin Seifert
Thomas Jefferson University, PA·Physiology
Determine the fate of fatty acid fuel in skeletal muscle lacking the mitochondrial phosphate carrier PiC and in intact liver and heart, using fatty acid tracers and measurement of beta-oxidation intermediates in tissues and serum.
Han Tan
University of California-Irvine, CA·Neuroscience·Early-career
Test whether BNC2 neurons, leptin-sensing cells in the hypothalamic arcuate nucleus, control the function of glucose-regulating organs through direct nerve connections.
Ren Zhang
Wayne State University, MI·Biochemistry
Determine whether MNADK, the mitochondrial NAD kinase, preserves liver energy balance and insulin sensitivity and reduces risk of NASH and type 2 diabetes, using genetically engineered mouse models.
The school
Johns Hopkins University: 100 labs on PI Pages, $4.1B a year on research, 622 research doctorates a year.
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