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

Boone C, Judge S, Shami A, Danna B, Ball AB, Waingankar TP, Saqub H, Divakaruni AS, Lewis SC. (2025) Saturated lipid stress attenuates mitochondrial genome synthesis in human cells. bioRxiv [Preprint]. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.07.28.667051. 40766347

Mekkittikul M, Zhu C, Danna BT, Xiaohong Z, Rios A, Yang K, Villanueva M, Agarwal D, Castro D, Gu X, Strofs AR, Shirihai OS, Stiles L, Frautschy SA, Oscarsson J, Esterline RL, Cole GM, and Divakaruni AS. (2025) ¹³C tracing in synaptosomes reveals that SGLT2 inhibition with dapagliflozin prevents metabolic deficits in the 5X-FAD model of Alzheimer’s Disease. bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2025.04.30.651373. 40654760

Ball AB, Jones AE, Nguyễn KB, Rios A, Marx N, Hsieh WY, Yang K, Desousa BR, Kim KKO, Veliova M, Del Mundo ZM, Shirihai OS, Benincá C, Stiles L, Bensinger SJ, and Divakaruni AS. (2025) Pro-inflammatory macrophage activation does not require inhibition of oxidative phosphorylation. EMBO Reports. 26(4):982-1002. 39753784

Lab News

Congrats PhD Candidate, Nataly!

May, 2024

Congrats to Nataly for passing your qualifying exam and advancing to candidacy! We are excited to see all your will accomplish in lab for these next few years!

Congrats PhD Candidate, Marisa!

October, 2023

Congrats Marisa on passing your qualifying exams in October 2023 and advancing to candidacy! We are excited to see all you will continue to accomplish these next few years in lab.

...