BME Seminar: Control of Mitochondrial ATP Production and Blood Flow in the Heart

Cardiac mitochondria are responsible for the continual resynthesis of ATP to fuel contractile activity, and adequate blood flow is required to provide the mitochondria with oxygen and nutrients to meet the ATP demand. Dr. Kuzmiak-Glancy’s laboratory investigates how a lack of blood flow to the cardiac tissue (cardiac ischemia) and heart failure change the ability of mitochondria to produce ATP, how energetic driving forces are altered in these conditions, and finally, uses force-flow analysis to determine how ischemia and heart failure alter the effective activities of each component of the oxidative phosphorylation pathway: 1) the fuel transporters and dehydrogenase enzymes, 2) the electron transport chain (ETC), and 3) ATP synthesis and transport (ATP synthase/ANT/Pi transporter). Additional work in her lab investigates how age and biological sex can affect the ability of heart to respond to increased demands, and how the presence of estrogen, can affect these responses.

Dr. Kuzmiak-Glancy is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland. She is a lifelong athlete who has merged her love of playing sports with her research focus. After studying Exercise Physiology as an undergraduate at Rutgers University, she became captivated by mitochondrial energetics during her PhD at Arizona State University. Dr. Kuzmiak-Glancy completed postdoctoral training with Dr. Matthew Kay at The George Washington University and Dr. Robert Balaban at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Kuzmiak-Glancy’s research has been funded by the American Heart Association and focuses on determining how skeletal and cardiac mitochondrial energy production is exquisitely matched to energy demand and how this coordination is altered during exercise and in disease.

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