Faculty Information

Farnaz Shamsi, PhD

Assistant Professor
Molecular Pathobiology
E-mail: fs2451@nyu.edu

Education

PhD, Developmental Biology, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Goettingen, Germany, 2014
MSc, Medical Biotechnology, University of Tehran, Iran, 2011
BSc, Biotechnology, University of Tehran, Iran, 2008

Honors / Credentials

NIH/NIDDK K01 Career Development Award; 08/2020-05/2024
Keystone Symposia Future of Science Fund Scholarship; 2019
American Diabetes Association Postdoctoral Fellowship; 2018-2020
Young Investigator Travel Grant, American Diabetes Association; 2017
Max Planck Society Scholarship; 2011-2014.

Research Interests / Professional Overview

The overarching goal of the research in Shamsi laboratory is to understand how adipose resident cells communicate to form a functional unit with the ability to sense and respond to internal and environmental stimuli. The adipose tissue plays a central role in the regulation of energy homeostasis and is a major contributor to the pathophysiology of obesity and its comorbidities. The role of adipose tissue as the key energy sensor and reservoir requires a great degree of functional and structural plasticity throughout life. By leveraging the innovative experimental and computational frameworks that we have developed, we study the pathways involved in adipose tissue adaptation to fluctuating metabolic status in physiological and disease conditions to understand how perturbations in the adipose niche contribute to obesity and metabolic dysfunction.

Current Funding

K01DK125608: The role of vascular endothelium in BAT expansion and remodeling

Representative Publications

Shamsi F, Piper M, Ho LL, Huang TL, Gupta A, Streets A, Lynes MD, Tseng YH. (2021) Vascular smooth muscle-derived TRPV1-expressing progenitors are a source of cold-induced thermogenic adipocytes. Nature Metabolism. 3(4):485-495. Featured in Nature Metabolism news & views "The genesis of brown fat- a smooth muscle origin story revisited" and Nature Reviews Endocrinology Research Highlight “Identification of thermogenic adipocyte lineages”.

Angueira AR, Sakers AP, Holman CD, Cheng L, Arbocco M, Shamsi F, Lynes MD, Shrestha R, Okada C, Batmanov K, Susztak K, Tseng YH, Liaw L, Seale P. (2021) Defining the lineage of thermogenic perivascular adipose tissue. Nature Metabolism. 3(4):469-484

Shamsi F, Tseng YH, Kahn CR. (2021) Adipocyte Microenvironment: Everybody in the Neighborhood Talks About the Temperature. Cell Metabolism, 33(1):4-6.

Wang CH, Lundh M, Fu A, Kriszt R, Huang TL, Lynes MD, Leiria LO, Shamsi F, Darcy J, Greenwood BP, Narain NR, Tolstikov V, Smith KL, Emanuelli B, Chang YT, Hagen S, Danial NN, Kiebish MA, Tseng YH. (2020) CRISPR-engineered human brown-like adipocytes prevent diet-induced obesity and ameliorate metabolic syndrome in mice. Science Translational Medicine. 26;12(558).

Shwartz Y, Gonzalez-Celeiro M, Chen CL, Pasolli HA, Sheu SH, Fan S, Shamsi F, Assaad S, Lin E, Zhang B, Tsai PC, He M, Tseng YH, Lin SJ, and Hsu YC. (2020) Cell types promoting goosebumps form a niche to regulate hair follicle stem cells. Cell, 182, 578–593.

Pirouz M, Wang CH, Liu Q, Ebrahimi AG, Shamsi F, Tseng YHT, Gregory RI. (2020) The Perlman syndrome DIS3L2 exoribonuclease safeguards endoplasmic reticulum-targeted mRNA translation and calcium ion homeostasis. Nature Communications,11(1):2619.

Sato M, Tsuji T, Yang K, Ren X, Dreyfuss JM, Huang TL, Wang CH, Shamsi F, Leiria LO, Lynes MD, Yau KW, Tseng YH. (2020) Cell-autonomous Light Sensitivity via Opsin3 Regulates Fuel Utilization in Brown Adipocytes. PLoS Biology, 18(2):e3000630.

Shamsi F, Xue R, Huang TL, Lundh M, Liu Y, Leiria LO, Lynes MD, Kempf E, Wang CH, Sugimoto S, Nigro P, Landgraf K, Schulz T, Li Y, Emanuelli B, Kothakota S,Williams LT, Jessen N, Pedersen SB, Böttcher Y, Blüher M, Körner A, Goodyear LJ, Mohammadi M, Kahn CR, Tseng YH. (2020) FGF6 and FGF9 regulate UCP1 expression independent of brown adipogenesis. Nature Communications, 11(1):1421.

Lundh M, Petersen PS, Isidor MS, Kazoka-Sørensen DN, Pluci´nska K, Shamsi F, Ørskov C, Tozzi M, Brown EL, Andersen E, Ma T, Müller U, Barrès R, Kristiansen VB, Gerhart-Hines Z, Tseng YH, Emanuelli B. (2020) Afadin is a scaffold protein repressing insulin action via HDAC6 in adipose tissue. EMBO Reports, 20(8):e48216.

Leiria LO, Wang CH, Lynes MD, Yang K, Shamsi F, Sato M, Sugimoto S, Chen EY, Bussberg V, Narain NR, Sansbury BE, Darcy J, Huang TL, Kodani SD, Sakaguchi M, Rocha AL, Schulz TJ, Bartelt A, Hotamisligil GS, Hirshman MF, van Leyen K, Goodyear LJ, Blüher M, Cypess AM, Kiebish MA, Spite M, Tseng YH. (2019) 12-Lipoxygenase Regulates Cold Adaptation and Glucose Metabolism by Producing the Omega-3 Lipid 12-HEPE from Brown Fat. Cell Metabolism, 30(4):768-783.

Gupta MK, De Jesus DF, Kahraman S, Valdez IA, Shamsi F, Yi L, Swensen AC, Tseng YH, Qian WJ, Kulkarni RN. (2018) Insulin receptor-mediated signaling regulates pluripotency markers and lineage differentiation. Molecular Metabolism, 18:153-163.

Lynes MD, Shamsi F, Sustarsic EG, Leiria LO, Wang CH, Su SC, Huang TL, Gao F, Narain NR, Chen EY, Cypess AM, Schulz TJ, Gerhart-Hines Z, Kiebish MA, Tseng YH. (2018) Cold-Activated Lipid Dynamics in Adipose Tissue Highlights a Role for Cardiolipin in Thermogenic Metabolism. Cell Reports, 24(3):781-790.

Ramirez AK, Lynes MD, Shamsi F, Xue R, Tseng YH, Kahn CR, Kasif S, Dreyfuss JM. (2017) Integrating Extracellular Flux Measurements and Genome-Scale Modeling Reveals Differences between Brown and White Adipocytes. Cell Reports, 21(11):3040-3048.

Shamsi F, Zhang H, Tseng YH. (2017) MicroRNA Regulation of Brown Adipogenesis and Thermogenic Energy Expenditure. Frontiers in Endocrinology, 8:205.

Lynes MD, Leiria LO, Lundh M, Bartelt A, Shamsi F, Huang TL, Takahashi H, Hirshman MF, Schlein C, Lee A, Baer LA, May FJ, Gao F, Narain NR, Chen EY, Kiebish MA, Cypess AM, Bluher M, Goodyear LJ, Hotamisligil GS, Stanford KI, Tseng YH. (2017) The cold-induced lipokine 12,13-diHOME promotes fatty acid transport into brown adipose tissue. Nature Medicine, 23(5):631-637.

Shamsi F, Tseng YH. (2017) Protocols for Generation of Immortalized Human Brown and White Preadipocyte Cell Lines. Methods Mol Biol, 1566:77-85

Xue R, Lynes MD, Dreyfuss JM, Shamsi F, Schulz TJ, Zhang H, Huang TL, Townsend KL, Li Y, Takahashi H, Weiner LS, White AP, Lynes MS, Rubin LL, Goodyear LJ, Cypess AM, Tseng YH. (2015) Clonal analyses and gene profiling identify genetic biomarkers of the thermogenic potential of human brown and white preadipocytes. Nature Medicine, 21(7):760-8.

Shamsi F, Parlatto R, Collombat P, Mansouri A. (2014) A genetic mouse model for progressive ablation and regeneration of insulin producing beta-cells. Cell Cycle, 13(24):3948-57.