Studying neural metabolism - and building new enabling tools

Our overarching goal is to understand the fundamentals of neural metabolism and the interplay between metabolism and excitability.  We got engaged in neural metabolism through our work on the ketogenic diet and other mechanisms of metabolic seizure resistance, but we quickly learned that much more needs to be learned about the basics of physiological changes in metabolism. 

To this end, we have developed new tools for learning about the dynamics of cellular metabolism. We develop fluorescent biosensors of metabolism, and study these using newly engineered, fast, digitized fluorescence lifetime microscopy (FLIM).  To complement these live cell imaging approaches, we have also developed a new workflow, Slice-MSI, for linking physiological manipulations of live, acute brain slices from mice with powerful mass spectrometry imaging approaches.

Our work on metabolic seizure resistance continues, using a genetic model of altered cellular metabolism that produces seizure resistance as well as well-defined changes in metabolism and neuronal excitability.

Previously, the lab focused on understanding the "moving parts" of voltage-gated ion channels, which are the membrane proteins that control electrical excitability in neurons. Beyond their basic interest, these studies have implications for the interaction of therapeutic drugs with ion channels.