Sara Di Rienzi, PhD

Sara Di Rienzi is an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Neuroscience and Cell Biology and a resident faculty member at the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine. During her graduate work, Dr. Di Rienzi studied how origins of replication contribute to and are affected by genome duplications and rearrangements. She transitioned to studying the gut microbiome as a postdoctoral research fellow at Cornell University. There she studied how the small intestinal microbiota adapts in concert with changes in the host’s consumption of dietary fat. Following, she moved to Baylor College of Medicine to apply her microbiome knowledge to study beneficial microbes that could be used as therapeutics. In this second postdoc, which later became a non-tenure track faculty position, she discovered that the probiotic Limosilactobacillus reuteri stimulates the release of oxytocin and other hormones not previously characterized in the intestinal epithelium. Her active research is pursuing the functions of these new intestinal hormones and how microbes that regulate these hormones can be utilized to promote health.