Our Research

Research image

Dr. Jue applies nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopic/imaging, biophysical methods, and physiological techniques to investigate:

  1. Protein structure-function and metabolic regulation in vivo,
  2. Regulation of Oxidative Phosphorylation in Muscle,
  3. Altered Metabolic Regulation in Disease States,
  4. Biochemical Mechanism of Type 2 Diabetes Pathogenesis in Muscle and Brain.
  5. Increased Risk of Alzheimer's Disease with Type 2 Diabetes.

His studies have shown that

  • Mb plays no significant role as an O2 store or transporter in terrestrial mammals.
  • Oxygen alone does not regulate oxygen consumption and oxidative phosphorylation in exercising muscle. As exercise intensity and energy demand increase with exercise, the intracellular O2 level does not rise. It falls progressively.
  • During each muscle contraction cycle, the cell expends a significant amount of ATP, which requires a dynamic substrate replenishment during each contraction. That observation has led to the glycogen shunt hypothesis and agrees with the lactate shuttle hypothesis.
  • NMR can measure the efficacy of intervention strategies in improving muscle performance in chronic kidney disease (CKD) and Becker's muscular dystrophy (BMD) patients.
  • Enhancing only pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) activity in type 2 diabetes muscle does not improve oxidative metabolism to improve glucose metabolism. Other metabolic impediments must intervene.
  • The association of diabetes with enhanced risk of Alzheimer's disease (AD) questions the localization paradigm of the diabetes pathology to the fat cell, liver, muscle, and pancreas axes. The impact of insulin insensitivity on brain may involve a dysregulation in the astrocyte-neuron lactate shuttle (ANLS) cycle.