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Frankie D. Heyward, Ph.D. (he/him/his)

Assistant Professor
UT SOUTHWESTERN MEDICAL CENTER
Dallas, Texas, United States

Frankie Heyward is an assistant professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center with appointments in the departments of Internal Medicine and Neuroscience. His lab investigates neuroepigenetic mechanisms regulating synaptic plasticity in the hypothalamus, their role in maintaining body weight set-point, and their dysregulation during obesity, weight regain, and aging-related impairments in appetite. His group employs bulk and single-cell multiomic genome-wide assessments of gene expression, epigenetic modifications, chromatin accessibility and transcription factor DNA binding dynamics, as well as mouse genetic and epigenome engineering tools.

Heyward completed his postdoctoral research fellowship and became an instructor at Harvard Medical School and the Division of Endocrinology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, working with Evan Rosen. During his postdoctoral work, he studied transcriptional regulation within a population of AgRP neurons within the hypothalamus that control hunger. Using an AgRP neuron-specific integrated transcriptomic and chromatin accessibility profiling approach during states of hunger and leptin-mediated hunger suppression, he identified interferon regulatory factor 3 (IRF3) as a key mediator of leptin’s acute hunger-suppressing effects.

Heyward earned his Ph.D. in neurobiology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham under David Sweatt, investigating the epigenetic basis of obesity-induced cognitive impairment.

Disclosure information not submitted.

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