The Majithia Lab
Translational investigation of insulin resistance
at the UC San Diego School of Medicine
Our Research
Insulin resistance is a major cause of the epidemic diseases of our society: diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, and fatty liver. Our goal is to understand who develops insulin resistance, how, and why. We use human genetics, functional genomics, and cell-based assays to address this goal. In addition to this discovery science, we focus on clinical translation by developing clinical tools to interpret large scale genetic, genomic, and longitudinal health data to diagnose and treat people with diseases related to insulin resistance.
About Us
Get to know Dr. Amit Majithia, meet the individuals in the Majithia Lab, and discover available positions.
Recent News
May 2026: Two new papers accepted in Nature and Obesity
The Majithia Lab contributed to two newly accepted studies spanning basic cholesterol biology and translational metabolic intervention. A collaborative study with the Saltiel lab, accepted in Nature, identified a Ral-dependent hepatic pathway controlling LDLR turnover and cholesterol homeostasis in response to high dietary cholesterol. A second study, the TREAD randomized control trial, accepted in Obesity, reports that time-restricted eating promotes weight loss and favorable adipose tissue changes in obesity.
April 2026: Dr. Majithia appointed Vice Chair of Research
Dr. Amit Majithia was appointed Vice Chair of Research for the UC San Diego Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism. In this role, he will help support the division’s research strategy, faculty development, and translational research programs.
February 2026: We are hiring: new postdoc and researcher positions open!
We are hiring postdocs in functional genomics and metabolic diseases and staff researchers! If you are interested in applying (i) in vitro or (ii) in vivo functional genomics to study metabolic diseases, look at our Open Positions.
February 2026: RO1 Renewal awarded
The Majithia Lab has been awarded a renewal of NIH/NIDDK grant 5 R01 DK124422-03, “Combining experiments of man and nature to target human insulin resistance.“
This project aims to identify novel therapeutic targets for insulin resistance by integrating high-throughput functional experiments, human genetics, and investigational studies of drug treatments with thiazolidinediones. Building on our previous work leveraging human proteogenomics, engineered adipocyte depot models, and in vivo adipose-specific proteomics to discover and validate novel adipokines, this renewal expands our approach to bridge large-scale genomic discovery with translational human studies.
December 2025: Congratulations to the newest graduate from the Majithia lab: Dr. Emily Kobayashi!
Congratulations to Dr. Emily Kobayashi on her successful thesis defense! Dr. Kobayashi was a graduate student in the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology graduate program with a background in computer science. While in the Majithia Lab, she led multiple projects to integrate and analyze longitudinal patient clinical data, proteomics, and metabolomics. Dr. Kobayashi also collaborated broadly, resulting in significant contributions to multiple published studies on continuous glucose monitoring.
December 2025: Our work identifying novel type 2 diabetes subgroups will be featured at the 2026 EASD Annual Meeting
We have been invited to been invited to the upcoming 62nd Annual Meeting of the European Assocation for the Study of Diabetes (EASD) to present our recent work on longitudinal metabolic trajectories in diabetes prevention program participants. Catch us there in September 2026, Milan, Italy!
October 2025: Welcome to our new undergraduate researchers, Alisa Zhang and David Georges!
Welcome to our two newest undergraduate researchers! Alisa Zhang is majoring in Bioinformatics & Cognitive Science with Specialization in Machine Learning and a minor in Computer Science. She will be working with staff scientist Michelle to identify causal relationships between genes of interest and metabolic diseases. David is a majoring in Human Biology. He will be working with staff scientist Alex to develop a cohort of TNFAIP8 knockout mice for studies to probe the role of TNFAIP8 in insulin resistance.
September 2025: New preprint on medRxiv featuring collaboration with Siddiqui lab to characterize a novel HNF4A variant
Read this hot-off-the-press preprint on the largest ever exome-wide association study for type 2 diabetes in South Asians, implicating HNF4A, GP2, and RNF19A in the etiology of diabetes and metabolic traits in South Asians. We collaborated with the Siddiqui lab to contribute to functional characterization of a novel HNF4A variant, with more studies to come!