Affiliation: Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology

Dr. Rajendra Upadhya received his PhD from the University of Mysore in India for research on the exploitation of permeabilized yeast cells as enzymes for biotechnological applications, which he conducted at the Central Food Technological Research Institute in Mysore with a fellowship from the Baba Atomic Research Center in Mumbai. During his postdoctoral research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, he discovered a novel yeast protein called Maf1, which is a main regulator of RNA polymerase III transcription and so controls cell growth and proliferation. Later, he devised a number of genome-based methodologies to define the Toxoplasma genome, as well as approaches to functionally characterize the Toxoplasma gondii genome. Later, he began researching the important role of chitosan in the cell wall of Cryptococcus neoformans for fungal virulence at Dr. Jennifer Lodge's lab at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He discovered that a chitosan-deficient strain of Cryptococcus neoformans can be used to create a vaccine against lethal Cryptococcus infection in mice. His current research focuses on determining the specific mechanisms underlying cryptococcus cell wall alterations generated by the environment in which the fungal cells grow, as well as how these changes affect host immune responses, hence influencing fungal pathogenesis and virulence