Patrick T. Griffin

Patrick T. Griffin

Postdoctoral Fellow · Buenrostro Lab · Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard
griffinp@broadinstitute.org | Google Scholar | GitHub | X / Twitter

About

I am a postdoctoral fellow in Jason Buenrostro's lab at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and the Harvard Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology. My research bridges endocrinology and genomics technology — I study how chronic psychosocial stress remodels endocrine tissues using single-cell multiomics, and I develop new platforms for single-cell epigenomic profiling. A central theme across my work is understanding how stress and our environment shape how we age.

I completed my Ph.D. with David Sinclair in the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School, where I invented TIME-seq — a high-throughput method for epigenetic age profiling (Griffin et al., Nature Aging 2024) — and built the first multiomic aging clocks in mice (Vera*, Griffin* et al., J Gerontol A 2025), contributing to work showing that loss of epigenetic information drives mammalian aging (Yang, Hayano, Griffin et al., Cell 2023).

Research

Adrenal Biology & Stress Physiology

I use single-cell multiomics to map how the adrenal cortex responds to chronic social isolation stress. This work connects HPA axis physiology to the molecular programs of individual cortical zones, with the goal of understanding how psychosocial environments become embedded in endocrine tissue.

adrenal cortex HPA axis social isolation single-cell multiomics

Genomics Technology Development

I develop platforms for profiling DNA methylation and other epigenetic modifications at single-cell resolution. These methods aim to make single-cell epigenomic profiling more accessible and scalable, enabling questions that current platforms cannot easily address.

DNA methylation single-cell epigenomics technology development
Patrick Griffin presenting at the Broad Institute
Presenting at the Broad Trauma Initiative, 2025

Selected Publications

  1. Vera DL*, Griffin PT*, Leigh D, ..., Kane AE, Sinclair DA. Multiomic clocks to predict phenotypic age in mice. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci (2025). *co-first author doi
  2. Zhu D, Wu JZ, Griffin PT, Samuelson BA, Sinclair DA, Kane AE. Metabolomics biomarkers of frailty: a longitudinal study of aging female and male mice. NPJ Aging (2025). doi
  3. Griffin PT, Kane AE, Trapp A, ..., Gladyshev VN, Sinclair DA. TIME-seq reduces time and cost of DNA methylation measurement for epigenetic clock construction. Nature Aging (2024). doi
  4. Yang JH, Hayano M, Griffin PT, ..., Sinclair DA. Loss of epigenetic information as a cause of mammalian aging. Cell (2023). doi
  5. Yang JH, Petty CA, Dixon-McDougall T, ..., Griffin PT, ..., Gladyshev VN, Sinclair DA. Chemically induced reprogramming to reverse cellular aging. Aging (2023). doi
  6. Finnegan EJ, Ford B, Wallace X, Pettolino F, Griffin PT, Schmitz RJ, ..., Trevaskis B. Zebularine treatment is associated with deletion of FT-B1 leading to an increase in spikelet number in bread wheat. Plant Cell Environ (2018). doi
  7. Bewick AJ, Niederhuth CE, Ji L, Rohr NA, Griffin PT, Leebens-Mack J, Schmitz RJ. The evolution of CHROMOMETHYLASES and gene body DNA methylation in plants. Genome Biol (2017). doi
  8. Griffin PT, Niederhuth CE, Schmitz RJ. A Comparative Analysis of 5-Azacytidine- and Zebularine-Induced DNA Demethylation. G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics (2016). doi

Full list on PubMed.