Sanjna Singh
Autophagy researcher in Timothy Sargeant's group in Adelaide who measures autophagy directly in human blood cells and led a diet trial testing whether eating less protein switches it on in people
Lysosomal Health in Ageing group, South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, and School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, Adelaide University · PhD, University of Adelaide (2019–2024, supervised by Timothy Sargeant)
In mice and in cultured cells, cutting protein lowers mTORC1 activity, and lower mTORC1 releases autophagy, the cell's recycling system. Many diet books assume the same is true for people. Sanjna Singh's 2026 trial in Clinical Nutrition (SIN2026) tested it. In a randomized crossover design, 63 healthy adults each ate a normal-protein diet (20 percent of energy from protein) and a reduced-protein diet (10 percent) for four weeks, in random order. The team then measured autophagic flux in blood immune cells. Flux means how fast material actually moves through the recycling system, which is a stronger test than a single snapshot of autophagy markers.
Flux did not change between the two diets. The study is one of the few human tests of the protein-to-mTORC1-to-autophagy idea with a flux readout, and it suggests that a moderate cut in protein, without eating fewer calories overall, is not enough to raise autophagy in human blood cells. It says nothing about other tissues or about stronger fasting.
Singh did a PhD in Timothy Sargeant's group from 2019 to 2024 on cross-talk between autophagy and efferocytosis, the process by which microglia in the brain clear away dead cells. The group has also worked on lysosomal clearance of the Alzheimer protein tau. In 2025 Singh was first author of a JCI Insight study showing that a single high-protein meal did not change autophagy in human blood cells after one hour, and in 2026 co-wrote a review with Sargeant on what fasting and diet can and cannot do to autophagy.
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | H | Reduced dietary protein intake does not alter autophagy in human blood: A randomized crossover study in healthy adults SIN2026 First author: led the randomized crossover trial showing that four weeks of reduced protein intake did not change autophagic flux in human blood cells. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Sanjna Singh.
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- Timothy J. Sargeant Studies lysosomal recycling and autophagy in ageing and Alzheimer's disease, and develops ways to measure autophagy flux in people.
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