Sureshkumar Balasubramanian

Research Overview

Suresh's research group focuses on two key areas. His group is interested in deciphering mechanisms through which plants sense and respond to changes in temperature. They use a combination of mutant analysis, natural variation and genomics to understand thermal responses in plants. The second area is related to understanding molecular mechanisms of genetic diseases. Recently his group discovered a triplet repeat expansion associated genetic defect in Arabidopsis. Triplet expansions underlie several human genetic diseases such as Huntington's disease and Friedreichs ataxia. The Arabidopsis model shares striking similarities with the human situation at a molecular level. This provides an excellent genetic system to investigate fundamental aspects of repeat expansion associated genetic defects. His group explores this system in combination with studies on cell lines to develop broad spectrum therapeutics for repeat expansion associated genetic defects.

Research Group

Research Fellows

• Dr Champa Bandaranayake

PhD Students

• Craig Dent
• Calvin Krauppner-Taylor
• Avilash Singh Yadav