Electron

• But what exactly is your metabolism?
• Everything you expose your body to – from lifestyle to an airborne virus – influences your physical characteristics, such as your blood pressure and energy levels.

Metabolism is energy conversion

• At the chemical level, energy metabolism begins when the three macronutrients – carbohydrates, fats and protein – are broken down atom by atom to release electrons from chemical bonds.
• Simply put, a primary role of metabolism is to convert chemical energy into electrical energy and back into chemical energy.

• I am a biochemist who studies the various networks of metabolism that are used as your body changes.
• My team and I have been able to define specific traits of metabolism, such as the presence and amount of certain metabolites – products made from breaking down macronutrients – across a wide range of conditions.

Elite athletes define the upper limits

• Elite athletes offer a prime population to study metabolic function at its best, since their network of molecular and chemical reactions must be finely tuned to compete on the world stage.
• Traditionally, lactate threshold has been a critical measure of athletic performance by pinpointing exercise intensity when lactate starts to rise in muscles and blood.
• When comparing the lactate thresholds of a group of elite cyclists, we found that the cyclists with higher thresholds had markers of better mitochondrial function.

Dysfunctional metabolism in diseases like COVID-19

• Your metabolism also changes if you get an acute illness such as COVID-19.
• In contrast to elite cyclists, COVID-19 patients have an impaired ability to burn fat that appears to persist with long COVID.

Burning fat uses a lot of oxygen. COVID-19 damages the red blood cells that deliver oxygen to organs. Because red blood cells have a limited ability to repair themselves, they might not function as well during the remainder of their roughly 120-day life span. This may partially explain why COVID symptoms last as long as they do in some people.

Blood donors define the middle

• Blood donors, coming from every walk of life, also have a diverse range of biological traits as a study population.
• My team and I looked at blood from over 13,000 blood donors to shed light on their metabolic diversity.
• We found that blood from donors with higher levels of kynurenine was less likely to restore hemoglobin levels in transfusion recipients compared with donors with lower kynurenine levels.

In addition to his appointment at the University of Colorado, Travis Nemkov is an Affiliate Investigator of Vitalant Research Institute and a co-founder of Omix Technologies.