Welcome to Alavian Lab Home Page. Division of Brain Sciences, Department of Medicine, Imperial College London. Principal Investigator: Kambiz Alavian. The overall scientific interest of our group is to understand the molecular mechanisms that contribute to cellular energetics under physiological and disease conditions. We use a variety of techniques to study the mitochondrial metabolic processes underpinning cellular development, plasticity, malignancy, degeneration, and regeneration.
Mitochondria are the cellular powerhouses of the cells, responsible for providing most of the eukaryotic cellular energy. Dynamic changes in cellular energy production are regulated by changes in mitochondrial biomass, by altered activity of metabolic pathways and/or by modulation of mitochondrial metabolic efficiency. The efficiency of mitochondrial ATP production and the the import and export of substrates, such as pyruvate and citrate, depend on the integrity of the proton gradients produced as a function of the mitochondrial electron transport chain. Proton leak currents within the mitochondrial inner membrane, therefore, not only drive the the efficient production of ATP through the F1Fo ATP synthase, they also affect, mitochondrially-mediated processes leading to cellular and synaptic growth and proliferation
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