Nikkhil Velingkaar
Postdoctoral fellow studying how the circadian clock times caloric restriction's effects on liver mTOR signaling and metabolism
Postdoctoral Fellow, Kondratov Lab, Center for Gene Regulation in Health and Disease, Cleveland State University
Kondratov Lab, Cleveland State University (where this work was done) (Cleveland, Ohio, USA) ↗ ORCID0000-0003-1571-0833 ↗
Nikkhil Velingkaar trained as a PhD student in the Kondratov lab at Cleveland State University, where his dissertation research (supported by a CSU Dissertation Research Award) examined how internal circadian clocks interact to regulate daily rhythms in metabolic activity. He has continued in the lab as a postdoctoral fellow.
His work has focused on calorie restriction as a circadian phenomenon: earlier studies from the lab, the first with Velingkaar as second author (Tulsian et al., 2018) and the second as first author (2021), showed that calorie restriction's effect on liver mTOR signaling depends on time of day, and that a two-meal calorie-restriction schedule induces 12-hour metabolic rhythms and improves glucose homeostasis. VEL2026 extends that line of work by directly comparing calorie restriction to fasting-refeeding cycles matched for food intake and fasting duration.
Milestones in the Atlas
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | A | Anticipatory metabolic regulation drives the distinct and improved metabolic state of caloric restriction compared to Fasting-Refeeding cycles. VEL2026 First author; distinguished caloric restriction's anticipatory, clock-aligned metabolic control (including hepatic mTOR signaling) from the reactive signaling seen under fasting-refeeding cycles. |
Co-authors in the Atlas
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Nikkhil Velingkaar.
- Roman V. Kondratov Showed the circadian clock protein BMAL1 gates TOR/mTOR signaling to control aging, and that calorie restriction's lifespan benefits require a working circadian clock