The National Centre for Biological Sciences is delighted to welcome Swadhin Chandra Jana, who joins the NCBS as its newest faculty member.
Swadhin is a cell and developmental biologist fascinated with the molecular mechanisms underlying the assembly, functioning and homeostasis of macromolecular complexes and cellular organelles. He joins the NCBS from the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC)- Portugal (PT), where he holds a Principal Investigator position (on a Research Grant funded by Fundacao Ciência e Tecnologia-PT), since autumn 2018.
During his postdoctoral work at the IGC- PT, he focused on the centrioles and cilia essential for cell and organism development. Swadhin, with his colleagues, discovered that centrioles act as natural concentrators of endogenous polo-like kinase-4, an auto-activator, and inducer of self-destruction, which regulates centriole numbers. In parallel, he showed that the bases of different cilium-types in the fruit fly, a multicellular model organism, are much more varied than previously recognised and began to explore how some of those diversities were achieved.
Prior to that, during his PhD work at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research-Mumbai, he probed the mechanisms of assembly and functions of multi-protein complex intracellular transporters, specifically Kinesin-2 and Dynein.
In Swadhin's own laboratory at the NCBS, called the Organelle Biology Laboratory (OBL), the focus is on investigating the mechanisms for building, diversity and maintenance of organelles, primarily Cytoskeleton, Centrosome, Cilia (he fondly calls them 3Cs) and others, in development, physiological, pathological conditions, and ageing in diverse organisms by applying a multifaceted approach.
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