Department of
Biology

Mridula Nambiar obtained her PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India on the mechanisms of genomic fragility in leukemia and lymphoma. She then moved to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, USA where she worked on understanding the spatial control of meiotic recombination events on yeast chromosomes. She joined IISER Pune as an Assistant Professor in 2020.

Research

Genetic recombination and chromosomal segregation during cell division

Dr. Mridula Nambiar's group is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying errors in chromosomal segregation during cell division. Using the genetically tractable fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe as an experimental system, the group investigates the role of recombination in generating errors during meiosis. The group is also interested in exploring the molecular interactions between cohesins and heterochromatin at the centromeres in maintaining chromosomal segregation fidelity both in meiosis as well as during mitosis in human cancers.

Dr. Nambiar's group primarily use yeast genetics, cell and molecular biology, proteomics and biochemical approaches to decipher the mysteries of meiotic recombination and chromosomal segregation. They further aim to expand our findings in yeast to mammalian model systems as well.

Selected Publications

Smith, G.R. and Nambiar, M. 2020. New Solutions to Old Problems: Molecular Mechanisms of Meiotic Crossover Control. Trends in Genetics, 36:337-346.

Nambiar, M. and Smith, G.R. 2018. Pericentromere-specific cohesin complex prevents meiotic pericentric double-strand breaks and lethal crossovers. Molecular Cell, 71:540-553.

Ma, L., Milman, N., Nambiar, M. and Smith, G.R. 2015. Two separable functions of Ctp1 in the early steps of meiotic DNA double-strand break repair. Nucleic Acids Research, 43:7349-7359.

Nambiar, M.*, Srivastava, M.*, Gopalakrishnan, V., Sankaran, S.K. and Raghavan, S.C. 2013. G-quadruplex structures formed at the HOX11 breakpoint region contribute to its fragility during t(10;14) translocation in T-Cell Leukemia. Molecular and Cellular Biology, 33:4266-4281 (*Equal first authors).

Srivastava, M., Nambiar, M., Sharma, S., Karki, S.S., Goldsmith, G., Hegde, M., Kumar, S., Pandey, M., Singh, R.K., Ray, P., Natarajan, R., Kelkar, M., De, A., Choudhary, B., Raghavan, S.C. 2012. An inhibitor of nonhomologous end-joining abrogates double-strand break repair and impedes cancer progression. Cell, 151:1474-87.

Nambiar, M. and Raghavan, S.C. 2012. A novel mechanism of RAG cleavage induces breaks at BCL2 minor breakpoint cluster region during t(14;18) translocation in follicular lymphoma. Journal of Biological Chemistry, 287: 8688-701.

Nambiar, M., Goldsmith, G., Moorthy, B.T., Joshi, M.V., Choudhary, B., Lieber, M.R., Hosur, R.V., Raghavan, S.C. 2011. Characterization of G-quadruplex structure at BCL2 major breakpoint region of t(14;18) translocation in follicular lymphoma. Nucleic Acids Research, 39:936-48.