Erik D. Marchant
Graduate student in Blake Rasmussen's lab in San Antonio who studies what overactive mTORC1 in skeletal muscle does to metabolism, inflammation and exercise adaptation in aging and overnutrition
Graduate student, Biology of Aging discipline, Department of Cellular and Integrative Physiology, UT Health San Antonio (Rasmussen lab) · MS in nutritional science, Brigham Young University (2022) · BS in nutritional science, Brigham Young University (2019)
Erik Marchant is first author of the Atlas study MARCHANT2026, with B. B. Rasmussen as senior author. Overactive mTORC1, the growth-control complex, in muscle is often linked with insulin resistance, the state in which the body handles sugar poorly. To test whether one causes the other, the team switched mTORC1 on permanently in mouse skeletal muscle by removing GATOR1, a protein complex that normally turns mTORC1 off when amino acids are scarce.
The muscles showed more signs of inflammation, but the mice still handled a glucose load normally. So muscle mTORC1 overactivity alone was not enough to cause glucose intolerance, and other metabolic inputs must be needed. A companion paper from the same group in 2026, with Marchant as second author, found that this kind of hyperactive muscle mTORC1 blunted the benefits of endurance training even though mitochondria and lipids changed. Both studies are in mice.
Marchant earned a bachelor's degree (2019) and a master's degree (2022) in nutritional science at Brigham Young University in Utah. Papers from that time include a 2020 study showing that, unlike a high-fat diet, bed rest did not appear to cause insulin resistance through mitochondrial oxidants, and a 2018 commentary on restricting branched-chain amino acids for metabolic health. Marchant is now a graduate student in the Biology of Aging discipline at UT Health San Antonio, in the lab of Blake Rasmussen, working on muscle metabolism in aging and overnutrition. Besides the mTORC1 work, the projects include testing ultrasound as a possible treatment for insulin resistance in old mice, and co-authored human studies of muscle disuse and rehabilitation in middle-aged adults (2025) and of PDE-5 inhibitors (2026).
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | A | Constitutive mTORC1 Activation in Skeletal Muscle Increases Inflammation but is not Sufficient to Impair Glucose Tolerance. MARCHANT2026 First author: showed that permanently active mTORC1 in mouse skeletal muscle, made by deleting GATOR1, raises inflammation but does not by itself impair glucose tolerance. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Erik D. Marchant.
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- Blake B. Rasmussen Muscle physiologist who studies how mTORC1 and nutrient signaling control muscle growth and loss in people, including during exercise and aging.
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