Fishy Folks

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Principle Investigator
Chetana Sachidanandan
Senior Scientist, CSIR-IGIB and Assistant Professor, AcSIR
Chetana earned her PhD from CSIR-CCMB (Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology) studying satellite cells, the skeletal muscle stem cells. During her post-doc at the Cancer Research UK, London she studied the Notch segmentation clock in mouse embryos. Her next stop was the Massachusetts General Hospital (Harvard Medical School) in Boston where she trained in chemical genetics and fell in love with zebrafish. 
At IGIB, she is also the coordinator of the PhD coursework for the first year students. She also occasionally writes on science in public forums and her blog, Savouring Science

Reasearch Associates
Nitisha Shrivastava
Nitisha is using a computational biology approach to build the molecular network in the liver that regulates systemic iron homeostasis.

Graduate Students
Zainab Asad
Zainab is the first PhD student of the ZCG lab. She holds an MSc in Biotechnology from Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology, Hisar. Her focus in the lab is in exploring pathophysiology of CHARGE syndrome, a congenital disorder caused by mutations in CHD7, an ATP dependent chromatin remodeler. She has discovered molecular effectors of the CHD7 that are responsible for the disease. She uses chemical and genetic approaches to dissect and modulate the Chd7-regulated events in the zebrafish embryos.  
Shruti Kapoor
Shruti joined the lab after completing a masters in Molecular and Human Genetics from the Banaras Hindu University (BHU). Once in the ZCG lab, she took a plunge into the world of  computational biology. She now works on a joint project with Vinod Scaria and Chetana Sachidanandan. She is interested in epigenetic regulation of development and looks at epigenetic marks, histone modifiers and long noncoding RNAs in the zebrafish genome. 
Sandeep Basu
Sandeep joined the lab after an MSc in Biomedical Genetics from Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT). In the ZCG lab he focuses on developing zebrafish models of human iron regulatory diseases for chemical genetic studies. His focus is on exploring the molecular mechanisms of Hereditary Hemochromatosis, a disease resulting in excessive iron accumulation, using both genetic and chemical genetic approaches. He is also interested in identifying novel chemical modulators of iron regulation in vertebrates. 
Aswini B
Aswini did her masters in Microbial Gene Technology from Madurai Kamaraj University. Her research interests now involve understanding the role of epigenetic modulator enzymes, such as histone acetyl transferases, in zebrafish embryonic development. She is currently focusing on a congenital disorder known as Rubinstein Taybi Syndrome, caused by mutations in histone acetyl transferase genes. 
Urmila P Jagtap
Urmila is interested in dissecting the process of liver regeneration using genomics and chemical genetics in a zebrafish model for liver injury.
Manoj K Singh
Manoj has created a model for chronic inflammation in zebrafish. He is interested in understanding the long-term effects of inflammation on the metabolic rewiring of the liver.
Rohit Yadav
Rohit is following up the leads obtained from Zainab’s studies in CHARGE syndrome model in zebrafish. He will use small molecules to probe and reverse the CHARGE-like phenotypes in the zebrafish model.

Project Assistants
Shashi Ranjan
Mageshi Kamaraj

Alumni-Project Assistant
Nikhil Bharti
Aditi Pandey
Kalai Mangai Muthukumarasamy (Graduate Student at Københavns Universitet)
Ikram Ullah (Graduate Student at Philipps University of Marburg)
Snigdha Sehgal (Teacher at Paradise School Goa)
Chitra Mohan (Graduate Student at SUNY Stony Brook, New York)
Kriti Verma (Graduate Student at Hannover Medical School, Germany)
Bibhuti Ballav Saikia (Graduate Student at Aravind Medical Research Foundation, Madurai)
Dharamdeep  (Regulatory Affairs at Hospira, a pfizer company)
Seshaphani Jonnalagadda (Analyst at Goldman Sachs)
Prateek Singh (Graduate Student at University of Oulu, Finland)
Benan John Mathai (Graduate Student at University of Oslo)
Anita Goyala (Graduate Student at National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi)
 
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