Genetic Variation in Lipid Droplet Proteins and Metabolic Receptors
Implications for Metabolic Disease, Aging and Cancer
Johns Hopkins University · Baltimore, Maryland
Scientific vision
Humans as the model system
We use humans as model organisms to understand how genetic variants shape metabolic disease heterogeneity and aging and drive treatment response — translating genetic discoveries into precision therapeutics for cardiometabolic disease.
We employ a recall-by-genotype, deep-phenotyping strategy: carriers of informative variants are identified in large academic biobanks and characterized in detail, with and without pharmacological perturbation, alongside iPSC-based cellular models — humans as model organisms, an approach articulated by the lab's mentors (FitzGerald et al., Science, 2018).
Research
Research projects
Lipid Droplet Variants in Cardiometabolic Disease
How coding variants in lipid droplet proteins — PNPLA3, PLIN2, HSD17B13, MBOAT7 — shape steatotic liver disease and cardiometabolic risk.
Read more →Gene–Aging Interactions in Adipose Dysfunction
How lipid signaling from adipose tissue — and the genetic variation that shapes it — influences inflammaging and the aging process.
Read more →The lab is recruiting
The Scorletti Lab opens at Johns Hopkins in 2026. We are currently recruiting a postdoctoral fellow.
Support
Funding
Our work is supported by the National Institutes of Health — the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award) and the National Institute on Aging (R21) — with earlier support from the AASLD Foundation and the University of Pennsylvania.