Hiroki Morizono

Hiroki Morizono is a research professor whose lab focuses on nitrogen metabolism, a central process for converting nutrients and waste products into the building blocks of cells, energy production, and metabolic detoxification. His research uses the vertebrate urea cycle and bacterial arginine biosynthesis pathways as model systems to categorize and understand the biological scales and mechanisms by which mutations in urea cycle enzymes cause disease, and to develop therapies to treat disorders of nitrogen metabolism. He has a deep-seated interest in the relationships between sequence, structure, and function of proteins, and in how inherited mutations affect catalytic activity and biological outcomes. He completed postdoctoral training in pediatrics at the University of Minnesota Medical School and in pediatrics, genetics, and biochemistry at Children's National Medical Center, where he has continued to work at the intersection of basic science and clinical care.