Jonathan Long

Jonathan Long, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Pathology, Stanford University School of Medicine 

Research Description: The long-term goal of the Long Laboratory is to discover new metabolite signaling pathways and to identify the enzymes, transporters, and receptors that regulate their signaling in mammalian metabolism and physiology. To accomplish these goals, we use a unique and multidisciplinary approach that combines synthetic chemistry, biochemistry, mass spectrometry, and genetics to uncover new metabolite signaling pathways directly in complex organismal settings. In recent years, we have mapped entire branches of previously unknown bioactive metabolites and identified their functions in mammalian physiology, including a circulating PM20D1/N-acyl amino acid pathway in blood that regulates energy metabolism. We hope to translate these discoveries into pharmacologically tractable opportunities (e.g., enzyme inhibitors, transporter antagonists, or receptor modulators) for therapeutic intervention in obesity or associated metabolic disorders including diabetes and cardiovascular disease. 

Selected relevant publications (Stanford DRC members are in BOLD):

  1. Wei W, Riley NM, Yang AC, Kim JT, Terrell SM, Li VL, Garcia-Contreras M, Bertozzi CR, Long JZ. Cell type-selective secretome profiling in vivo. Nat Chem Biol. 2021 Mar;17(3):326-334. doi: 10.1038/s41589-020-00698-y. PMID: 33199915; PMCID: PMC7904581. 

  2. Kim JT, Jedrychowski MP, Wei W, Fernandez D, Fischer CR, Banik SM, Spiegelman BM, Long JZ. A Plasma Protein Network Regulates PM20D1 and N-Acyl Amino Acid Bioactivity. Cell Chem Biol. 2020 Sep 17;27(9):1130-1139.e4. doi: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2020.04.009. PMID: 32402239; PMCID: PMC7502524. [Cites P30] 

  3. Kim JT, Terrell SM, Li VL, Wei W, Fischer CR, Long JZ. Cooperative enzymatic control of N-acyl amino acids by PM20D1 and FAAH. Elife. 2020 Apr 9;9:e55211. doi: 10.7554/eLife.55211. PMID: 32271712; PMCID: PMC7145423. [Cites P30] 

  4. Kim JT, Li VL, Terrell SM, Fischer CR, Long JZ. Family-wide Annotation of Enzymatic Pathways by Parallel In Vivo Metabolomics. Cell Chem Biol. 2019 Nov21; 26(11): 1623-29. PMID: 31587987.  

  5. Lin H, Long JZ, Roche AM, Svensson KJ, Dou FY, Chang MR, Strutzenberg T, Ruiz C, Cameron MD, Novick SJ, Berdan CA, Louie SM, Nomura DK, Spiegelman BM, Griffin PR, Kamenecka TM. Discovery of Hydrolysis-Resistant Isoindoline N-Acyl Amino Acid Analogues that Stimulate Mitochondrial Respiration. J Med Chem. 2018 Apr 12;61(7):3224-3230. doi: 10.1021/acs.jmedchem.8b00029. PMID: 29533650; PMCID: PMC6335027.