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Faculty Detail    
Name ZACHARY A GRAHAM
  
Campus Address BBRB 342 Zip 2170
Phone  (205) 996-1344
E-mail  zgraham@uab.edu
Other websites
     

Education
Undergraduate  The Ohio State University    2007  BA in Spanish 
Graduate  University of Kansas    2010  MS in Exercise Physiology 
Graduate  University of Kansas    2014  PhD in Exercise Physiology 


Faculty Appointment(s)
Appointment Type Department Division Rank
Primary  Cell, Developmntl, & Integrative Biology  Cell, Developmntl, & Integrative Biology Assistant Professor

Biographical Sketch 
I am a Research Health Science Specialist at the Birmingham VAMC and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell, Developmental, and Integrative Biology here at UAB. I graduated cum laude from The Ohio State University with a BA in Spanish and then went to graduate school at the University of Kansas, where I received my MS and PhD in exercise physiology focusing on the response of skeletal muscle mechanosensors during various muscle loading. I did my postdoc in the National Center for the Medical Consequences of Spinal Cord Injury at the James J. Peters VAMC where I largely focused on the role of myostatin in regulating muscle in pre-clinical and cell culture models before joining the Birmingham VAMC and UAB.



Research/Clinical Interest
Title
Methods to protect muscle health after paralysis
Description
My main research interests are now focused on how paralysis after SCI affects the performance, biochemistry and molecular biology of skeletal muscle function and metabolism. Specifically, I am interested in whether connexin hemichannel expression in the early time frame after spinal cord injury leads to dysfunctional mitochondria and metabolism in paralyzed skeletal muscle. Coupled with this line of research, additional projects will look at mitochondrial-targeting drugs and their possible role in limiting mitochondrial and metabolic dysfunction after spinal cord injury. The overall goal is to find novel drug targets and to determine the efficacy of promising rehab and pharmaceutical therapies in treating metabolic dysfunction in paralyzed muscle.

Keywords
skeletal muscle, metabolism, mitochondria, exercise medicine