Dr. Kenneth Dyar
Group Leader, Metabolic Physiology, Institute for Diabetes and Cancer"We use metabolomics to identify molecular signatures distinguishing health from disease. With this knowledge we seek to develop novel personalized therapeutics to mitigate unhealthy trajectories, and to recover or maintain health status"
"We use metabolomics to identify molecular signatures distinguishing health from disease. With this knowledge we seek to develop novel personalized therapeutics to mitigate unhealthy trajectories, and to recover or maintain health status"
Academic Career and Research Areas
1. Regulation of muscle metabolism by the skeletal muscle circadian clock.
During his doctoral work in the lab of Stefano Schiaffino (Univerity of Padova), Kenneth discovered that circadian clocks in muscles promote insulin sensitivity and glucose utilization during the fasting-feeding transition. His work showed how muscle-specific clock disruption causes insulin resistance, providing an important pathophysiological link between chronic circadian misalignment and type 2 diabetes risk. During his postdoctoral work in the lab of Henriette Uhlenhaut (Helmhotz Munich), Kenneth profiled genomic binding of clock transcription factors in skeletal muscles, and demonstrated mechanistically how muscle clocks also direct diurnal cycles of lipid storage and protein turnover in anticipation of feeding.
2. Circadian metabolomics for metabolic phenotyping and biomarker discovery.
Kenneth’s collaborative work with the late Paolo Sassone-Corsi (UC Irvine), Dominik Lutter (Helmholtz Munich) and Juleen Zierath (Karolinska Institutet) has highlighted the importance of integrating and comparing both temporal and spatial perspectives in metabolomics experiments. This approach has given unprecedented insight into how dynamic metabolism and tissue cross-talk changes according to time, genotype, and various dietary or therapeutic interventions, including exercise.
Fields of Work and Expertise
Circadian Physiology Metabolomics Functional GenomicsSkeletal Muscle
Professional Background
Group leader, Metabolic Physiology, Institute for Diabetes and Cancer (IDC), Helmholtz Munich, Germany
Postdoc, lab of Henriette Uhlenhaut, Molecular Endocrinology, Institute for Diabetes and Obesity (IDO), Helmholtz Munich, Germany
Postdoc, lab of Stefano Schiaffino, Venetian Institute of Molecular Medicine (VIMM), Padova, Italy
Ph.D. Student, lab of Stefano Schiaffino, Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Padova, Italy
Research Assistant, lab of Fiona Inglis, Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
Honors and Awards
2022 - 2025 DFG/TRR333-1 “BATenergy”
2020 - 2021 DZD Grant 2020/21
2019 - 2020 ExNet-0041-Phase2-3 (“SyNergy-HMGU”), Initiative and Network Fund of the Helmholtz Association
2013 Keystone Symposia Future of Science Fund Scholarship
Highlight Publications
More on PubMedCell Metabolism
Atlas of Exercise Metabolism Reveals Time-Dependent Signatures of Metabolic Homeostasis.
Methods in Molecular Biology
Int J Mol Sci.
Methods in Physiology
