Muncie Center for Education building

Students

Faculty

Research

Facility

Home
 
Indiana University School of Medicine-Muncie on the campus of Ball State University Center for Medical Education Ball State University
Home > Research > Bart Pederson


Bart Pederson , PhD

Assistant Professor
Biochemistry

Phone: (765) 751-5114
Fax: (765) 751-5116
Email: bapederson@bsu.edu

Research Interests

My laboratory is broadly interested in glucose metabolism. Specifically, I am studying the role of the glucose polymer, glycogen. Glycogen is synthesized in most mammalian tissues and serves as a storage form of glucose. Glycogen is a readily available energy reserve to fuel contraction in tissues such as cardiac and skeletal muscle. In the liver, glycogen can be degraded to glucose, which is released into the circulation to raise blood glucose levels. The role of glycogen in other tissues is less clear.

We use mice genetically engineered to lack or overaccumulate glycogen to study the importance of glycogen in various tissues. Mice that lack cardiac and skeletal muscle glycogen were generated and found, in many cases, to exhibit heart defects in utero which were incompatible with life. Congenital heart defects are very common in humans and in most instances the cause is not determined. Mouse embryos lacking cardiac glycogen will be analyzed to better understand how glycogen is important in embryonic heart development.

Mice that survive in the absence of heart and muscle glycogen exercise normally and effectively regulate their blood glucose levels. These mice are being further characterized to understand these phenomena and to elucidate the importance of glycogen in heart function and disease.

Representative publications:

  1. Pederson, B.A., Foster, J.D., and Nordlie, R.C. (1998) Histone II-A activates the glucose-6-phosphatase system without microsomal membrane permeabilization. Arch. Biochem. Biophys., 357, 173-177

  2. Pederson, B.A., Cheng, C., Wilson, W.A., and Roach, P.J. (2000) Regulation of glycogen synthase: Identification of residues involved in regulation by the allosteric ligand glucose-6-P and by phosphorylation. J. Biol. Chem. 275, 27753-27761

  3. Pederson, B.A., Chen, H., Schroeder, J.M., Shou, W., Depaoli-Roach, A.A., Roach, P.J. (2004) Abnormal cardiac development in the absence of heart glycogen. Mol. Cell. Biol. 24, 7179-7187

  4. Pederson, B.A., Cope, C.R., Schroeder, J.M., Smith, M.W., Irimia, J.M., Thurberg, B.L., Depaoli-Roach, A.A., Roach, P.J. (2005) Exercise capacity of mice genetically lacking muscle glycogen synthase: In mice, muscle glycogen is not essential for exercise. J. Biol. Chem. 280, 17260-17265

  5. Pederson, B.A., Schroeder, J.M., Parker, G.E., Smith, M.W., Depaoli-Roach, A.A., Roach, P.J. (2005) Glucose metabolism in mice lacking muscle glycogen synthase. Diabetes, 54, 3466-3373