Hailey Parry

Parry leads a laboratory investigating how the subcellular location of mitochondria influences their activity in skeletal muscle and how these mitochondrial pools are altered by metabolic pathologies. She was trained at Auburn University in isolating mitochondria from skeletal muscle, liver, and brain, contributing to numerous studies on mitochondrial bioenergetics across diverse species, including mice, rats, birds, butterflies, lizards, and cows. To advance the study of intact mitochondria, Parry trained at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Focused Ion Beam Scanning Electron Microscopy (FIB-SEM) to assess 3D mitochondrial morphology and in Multiphoton Microscopy to measure intact mitochondrial function. At the NIH, she demonstrated that mitochondrial structure varies by subcellular location using FIB-SEM and coupled these findings with live-cell functional imaging to show how oxidative phosphorylation changes accordingly. At LSU, Parry will extend this work by examining how mitochondria adjacent to lipid droplets differ functionally from those near contractile proteins.

Mitochondria are the site of cellular fat oxidation and frequently interact with lipid droplets, the primary storage depot for fats. While it is widely assumed that lipid droplets directly transfer fatty acids to mitochondria, few studies have demonstrated this process. Parry is addressing this gap by applying spatial and temporal live-cell imaging to measure mitochondrial function in relation to lipid droplets in skeletal muscle from healthy and obese animals. Her long-term goal is to transform approaches to obesity treatment by defining how mitochondria and lipid droplets interact, identifying the proteins that mediate this connection, determining which fuels are transferred, and characterizing how metabolic state influences these interactions.