Heejin Jun
Texas Tech University, TX·Physiology
Chronic heavy drinking raises the risk of type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and heart disease, yet how alcohol triggers these metabolic disorders is not well understood. One clue involves branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs): valine, leucine and isoleucine, three building blocks of protein.
- Fields
Physiology
Biochemistry
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
alcohol
branched-chain amino acids
leucine
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Characterize how chronic excessive alcohol alters branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) handling in mouse and human primary brown fat cells, including BCAA accumulation, oxidation and heat production.
- Define the cell-intrinsic mechanisms by which alcohol impairs the BCAA-utilization machinery of brown fat cells, including transport of BCAAs into mitochondria and their breakdown.
- Validate the cell-culture findings at the whole-animal level by testing whether alcohol-fed mice show impaired brown fat BCAA use, elevated circulating BCAAs and metabolic dysregulation.
More about the research
High blood levels of BCAAs are linked to obesity, diabetes, fatty liver disease and cardiovascular disease in both rodents and people. Brown adipose tissue, a type of fat that burns excess energy as heat, takes up and uses BCAAs, which helps clear them from the blood and improves how the body handles sugar.
Why it matters
Alcohol is the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States, and heavy drinking promotes type 2 diabetes, fatty liver disease and heart disease. If impaired BCAA clearance by brown fat proves to be a driver of these disorders, restoring brown fat function could become a therapeutic strategy to reverse a range of alcohol-induced metabolic problems.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Ian Williamson
North Carolina State University, NC·Physiology·Early-career
Quantify how much intestinal metabolism of dietary and circulating branched-chain amino acids contributes to whole-body circulating BCAA and downstream metabolite pools.
Trayambak Pathak
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center-New Orleans, LA·Physiology·Early-career
Test whether calcium entry through Orai3 channels drives mitochondrial heat production in brown adipose tissue to limit fat buildup, by measuring mitochondrial metabolism in Orai3 knockout mice.
Sona Kang
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Physiology
Define how FAM3D, a protein genetically linked to type 2 diabetes, suppresses heat production and mitochondrial function in mouse and human brown fat cells.
The school
Texas Tech University: 9 labs on PI Pages, $257M a year on research, 415 research doctorates a year.
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