UCLA Mitochondrial Metabolism and Bioenergetics Laboratory

Welcome to the Mitochondrial Metabolism and Bioenergetics Laboratory! Our group studies how energy metabolism and metabolic flexibility – the ability to switch between sugar, amino acid, and fatty acid oxidation in response to biological cues – can control cell function and fate. Ultimately, we aim to discover novel regulatory points of metabolism and develop mitochondrial proteins and pathways as therapeutic drug targets.

Research

Mitochondrial remodeling during macrophage activation

How metabolic flexibility can control cell physiology

Assay development and experimental guides

Recent Publications

Ngo C, Takechi S, Sivakumar A, Villanueva M, Yu F, Ball AB, Rubio J, Biletch E, Burton NR, Boatner LM, Kim P, Turmon AC, Perumal N, Liesa M, Divakaruni AS, Nesvizhskii AI, Backus KM. (2026) Small-molecule binding-site discovery using silyl ether-enabled chemoproteomics. Nature Chemistry 18(8):1431-1442. 42045653

Veliova M, Ferreira CM, Montales KP, Villalobos F, Brownstein AJ, Acín-Pérez R, Ferreira GS, Jones AE, Stiles L, Divakaruni AS, Liesa M, Shirihai OS, Oliveira MF. (2026) The malate-aspartate shuttle supports thermogenic lipid mobilization in brown adipocytes. FEBS Journal 293(15): 4489-4507. 41704162

Scully JM, Sun MJ, Das S, Arias NJ, Kapelczak ED, Robinson TD, Vineall KG, Dean TS, TeSlaa T, Divakaruni AS, Schmitt DL. (2026) Illuminating spatial dynamics of glutamine metabolism with a sensitive genetically encoded biosensor RSC Chemical Biology Online ahead of print. 42564856

Lab News

Congratulations to PhD Candidate, Alex!

November, 2025

Congratulations to 3rd-year graduate student Alex on passing her qualifying exam and advancing to candidacy! Alex will be studying the role of mitochondria in retinal pigment epithelial cells in collaboration with the Williams Lab in the UCLA Stein Eye Institute. We are very proud of Alex and excited to see all she will accomplish as a candidate in the lab!

Welcome Summer 2025 Trainees!

July, 2025

We want to extend a big welcome to Steven Moreton who will be joining us for the summer from Morehouse School of Medicine. Steven is a fifth year PhD student and will be applying some techniques from our lab to his studies on brown adipocytes.

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