Doctoral Student

I received my Bachelor of Engineering (BE) in Biotechnology from Visvesvaraya Technological University in Bangalore, India. I entered the Graduate program at UNC Charlotte in the Fall of 2008 and have been conducting research in Dr. Goodliffe’s lab. I am currently studying the molecular and epigenetic mechanisms involved in auto-regulation of the dMyc locus in Drosophila. Myc is a transcriptional regulator which is upregulated, in more than 50% of human cancers. Myc also loses auto-repression in cancerous cell lines causing increased proliferation. To understand the mechanism and the key elements involved in auto-repression, we use extensive gene expression profiling, Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP) and genetic analyses to elucidate the role of Myc in coordinated regulation of its own locus and its other targets with other Polycomb Group proteins (PcG) at discrete times in Drosophilaembryogenesis.