You are invited to our next AMP Science for the Rest of Us virtual event featuring an engaging lunch-hour talk with Dr. Louis Ptáček, a UCSF researcher whose work explores fascinating connections between genetics, sleep, and metabolism. The registration link can be found in the email sent to AMP members on December 15, 2025. Please reach out to us at [email protected] if you did not receive the email and are a current member.
Dr. Ptáček will discuss his recent research with co-senior author Ying-Hui Fu, PhD on how fatty snacks in winter might trick the body into gaining weight—a topic recently featured in UCSF News. You can read the article here. Join us for this accessible and thought-provoking discussion about how science impacts everyday life!
Dr. Ptáček MD, is a professor of Neurology whose research spans sleep disorders, circadian rhythms, and metabolism. He has studied how genetic mutations influence sleep patterns, migraines, and metabolic health, providing insights into how sleep affects overall well-being. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Association of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Science of the USA.
UCSF welcomes everyone, including people with disabilities, to our events. To request a reasonable accommodation for this event, please contact [email protected]as soon as possible.
Dr. Louis Ptáček short bio:
Dr. Louis Ptáček has used the tools of human genetics in the study of patients with an impressive range of human phenotypes. He pioneered the field of “Channelopathies” which encompasses a large group of episodic/electrical disorders of muscle, heart, and brain. Subsequently, his group has done extensive work in characterizing the functional consequences of disease causing mutations. In another line of work motivated by a family with an interesting phenotype, he embarked into the challenging field of behavioral genetics. He and his colleague, Ying-Hui Fu, study the genetics of human sleep phenotypes. Familial advanced sleep phase (FASP), is manifest as a lifelong trait of extremely early sleep times and early morning awakening (1 am – 4 am). Ptáček and Fu have gone on to characterize mutations in a growing list of genes that underlie the phenotype in ~15% of FASP families. Furthermore, they’ve gone on to model human mutations in Drosophila and mice. In vitro and in vivo experiments focused on regions harboring the human mutations have led to novel insights in fine tuning of circadian period regulation by phosphorylation and other post translational modifications. They have shown an important effect in some of the human sleep mutations in increasing risk for migraine or metabolic disease, and further show that Familial natural short sleep mutations are protective for neurodegeneration. He serves on a number of editorial boards, including Neurogenetics, eLife, and the Journal of Clinical Investigation. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, the American Association of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Science of the USA.