Current activity: The structural and functional organisation of the interior of a nucleus is brought about by the components of the 'Nuclear architecture'. These components are tissue specific respond to developmental and environmental cues and may be also altered during disease and ageing. I am interested in charcterising the components of nuclear architecture.
Runa Hamid
Current activity: The release of neurotransmitter into the synapse is essential for efficient flow of information across synapses. However, timely removal of neurotransmitter from the synaptic cleft is critical to curb the excess neurotransmitter in the synaptic cleft in order to avoid exaggerated signals. This process is facilitated by a special class of proteins called Neurotransmitter transporters (NTT). My research interests are largely directed towards understanding fundamental mechanisms regulating function of NTT class of proteins and the implication of their dysfunction in neuropsychiatric disorders. I combine the power of Drosophila genetics with advanced imaging techniques, molecular biology, Drosophila behaviour to explore the fundamental questions about NTT.
Nikhil Hajirnis
Current activity: Hox genes set up antero-posterior body axis of a developing bilaterian embryo. In most of the bilaterians and all vertebrates, these genes are present in a cluster and exhibit spatial collinearity. That is the order of the genes on chromosomes is collinear to their pattern of expression along the A-P axis. In Drosophila bithorax complex (one of the two Hox complexes in the fruit fly), even the cis-regulatory modules for segment specific expression of Hox genes are present in a spatially collinear manner. Using a combination of CRISPR-Cas9 and FLP-FRT, I am reorganizing the cis-regulatory landscape of the one of the bithorax genes and trying to comprehend the significance of their positioning. Further, I also generated endogenously fluorescent
tagged lines for bithorax complex genes to advance our understanding of these genes especially in extra-embryonic tissues.
Kundurthi Phanindhar
Current activity: I am trying to understand a particular kind of regulatory elements known as Simple Sequence Repeats (SSRs). These elements are mostly noncoding and represent double the amount of protein coding genes in the human genome. These elements are functionally relevant throughout life from prokaryotes to eukaryotes. They are also known to cause neurodegenerative diseases when they undergo uncontrolled expansion. We are trying to decipher the role of these elements in the general physiology of the cell.
Ashish Bihani
Current activity: Nuclear matrix is the insoluble fraction of the eukaryotic nuclei and is ascribed the role of nucleoskeleton. I am working to dissect its make up to understand the organization of proteins in subnuclear space.
Akshay Kumar Avvaru
Current activity: My work mainly focuses on studying evolutionary and polymorphic aspects of microsatellites. Microsatellites are tandem repetitive DNA elements, which have 1-6bp motifs contiguously repeated. Historically revered as highly polymorphic elements used to identify genetic linkages among humans, these are soon accepted as universally repeated elements found in the genome of almost all eukaryotes. Studies have delineated various non-coding functions of microsatellites in gene regulation and genome organisation. The scale of their abundance across the eukaryotic kingdom demands optimised computational tools for mining them and understanding them using the vast publicly available genome datasets. To this end we have developed efficient accurate tools for identification of microsatellites from genomes and allow comparison of distribution patterns between different organisms to understand their evolutionary conservation. Currently we are focusing on understanding the dynamics of their length polymorphism and its implications in population variation.
Ravina Saini
Current Activity: Understanding the mechanism of TEI
“You are what your grandparents ate.” Life’s experience can be inherited in the form of epigenetic memories known as transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (TEI). Ravina is fascinated to understand the epigenetic players in inheritance of stress induced memory. She plans to deploy next generation sequencing to understand behemoth of factors ruling the cascades. Further she will use genetic approaches for some stress related mutants in Drosophila melanogaster to confirm their involvement in the mechanism of TEI.
Soujanya M. S
Current activity: Genome organisation plays a vital role in regulating genome function. We use a well-established muscle differentiation system to understand the changes in genome organisation guided by a DNA- binding vertebrate GAGA factor. We employ cutting edge technology in the field like Micro-C, RNA-seq and ChIP-seq.
Sonu Yadav
Current activity: I am interested in studying the role of Ultra conserved non-coding elements (UCNEs) in vertebrate genomes. UCNEs are DNA elements which are more than 200bp long and absolutely conserved among human, mouse and rat. There are thousands of such highly conserved elements present in the genome majorly near developmentally important genes. Few such conserved regions are also found near Hox D cluster. I want to study what is the role of these conserved regions and are they important in the regulation of Hox D genes expression.
Saketh Murthy
Current activity: The eukaryotic genome is organized into functionally and structurally distinct domains, representing regulatory units for gene expression and chromosome behaviour. Boundary elements are DNA sequences that mark the border between adjacent domains, and critical for maintenance of their function. They play a variety of roles like enhancer blocker, barrier to spread of histone marks, enabling long range chromosomal interaction etc., and thus play a crucial role in genome organization and regulation.
I'm using a combination of bioinformatic tools and experimental approaches to identify and characterise novel boundary elements in vertebrates.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge."-Einstein
