I received my undergraduate degree in Biotechnology from GGSIPU, New Delhi, India, where I focused on understanding the mechanisms by which transient pausing of RNA Pol II can be regulated by elongation factors. I completed my PhD from NCBS-TIFR, Bengaluru, India. During my PhD, I investigated the mechanisms by which the transcriptional activity of Estrogen Receptor Alpha (ERα) is regulated upon ligand stimulation. We found that stabilizing the binding of ERα to chromatin through its RNA interaction negatively impacts its transcriptional activity. My desire to join the Ingraham’s lab was motivated by my ongoing interest in ERα-mediated transcriptional regulation in neurons to understand how these events trigger different respoonses in female physiology.
- Soota, D., Saravanan, B., Mann, R., Kharbanda, T., Notani, D., 2023. RNA binding limits the ligand induced transcriptional potential of estrogen receptor-alpha (ERα). https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.08.10.552751 (in press EMBO J)
- Saravanan, B., Soota, D., Islam, Z., Majumdar, S., Mann, R., Meel, S., Farooq, U., Walavalkar, K., Gayen, S., Singh, A.K., Hannenhalli, S., Notani, D., 2020. Ligand dependent gene regulation by transient ERα clustered enhancers. PLOS Genet. 16, e1008516. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1008516
- Walavalkar, K., Saravanan, B., Singh, A.K., Jayani, R.S., Nair, A., Farooq, U., Islam, Z., Soota, D., Mann, R., Shivaprasad, P.V., Freedman, M.L., Sabarinathan, R., Haiman, C.A., Notani, D., 2020. A rare variant of African ancestry activates 8q24 lncRNA hub by modulating cancer associated enhancer. Nat. Commun. 11, 3598. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17325-y
- Chakrabarti, A., Kaushik, M., Khan, J., Soota, D., Ponnusamy, K., Saini, S., Manvati, S., Singhal, J., Ranganathan, A., Pati, S., Dhar, P.K., Singh, S., 2022. tREPs─A New Class of Functional tRNA-Encoded Peptides. ACS Omega 7, 18361–18373. https://doi.org/10.1021/acsomega.2c00661
- 2016 National CSIR-NET Fellowship
- 2016 DBT-JRF Fellowship
- 2016 GATE Biotechnology Fellowship
- 2016 Gold Medalist for Undergraduate Studies (B.Tech Biotechnology).