People

Dr. Oh is an Assistant Professor in Touchstone Diabetes Center at UTSW. She received Ph.D. in Molecular Neuroendocrinology from Chonnam National University under the supervision of Dr. Jae Young Seong, where she made several important contributions to understanding the diverse signaling pathways of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) and ligand identification for orphan GPCRs using a high throughput system.

In 2007, she joined the laboratory of Dr. Jerrold Olefsky as a postdoctoral fellow at UC San Diego in La Jolla, CA. There she discovered GPR120 as an omega-3 fatty acid receptor that mediates anti-inflammatory and insulin sensitizing effects, and has published a number of high impact papers on the subjects.

In 2016, she joined the faculty at UTSW as an assistant professor. Her lab has had a sharp focus on the role of various GPCRs in the fields of obesity, inflammation, type 2 diabetes, and aging-related metabolic syndromes. The Oh Lab has been using various biochemical and physiological approaches including using GPCR KO animals (global, constitutive and inducible tissue-specific), molecular biology, nucleic acid/protein biochemistry, and eukaryotic cell-based studies with the long term goal to not only elucidate how GPCRs work in regulating metabolism, but also to identify new avenues for developing therapeutics to treat metabolic syndrome.

In her very limited free time, she enjoys spending time with her family (her husband, a teen-age son, and four furry babies) and doing her new hobby, abstract painting.