Welcome to Deepa Agashe’s lab at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore!

Organisms often face new, changing or otherwise challenging environments, which can drive evolutionary adaptations. However, different populations and species often respond differentially to the same environmental change, potentially altering their evolutionary trajectories. For instance, some organisms flourish in new environments, whereas others go extinct. What factors determine individual and population-level responses, and what are the... Continue Reading →

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Welcome Kshitija!

We are so lucky that Kshitija has joined the lab! Kshitija has a background in microbiology — most recently working on yeast transporters — and has a reputation for never giving up at the bench. We look forward to learning all about the new, fun challenges she takes on for her PhD! Kshitija Shetty, PhD... Continue Reading →

Welcome Pahil!

We are so happy that Pahil Sen has joined the lab for her PhD. Her previous degrees are in Biotechnology and she is interested in molecular evolution. Pahil is a big bundle of energy, and we can't wait to see what she discovers! Pahil Sen, PhD student

2025 RVP (Bhatnagar) award

Deepa received the 2025 Rashtriya Vigyan Yuva Puraskar (Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award) from the President of India, in recognition for our lab's work in molecular evolution and evolutionary ecology. We are grateful for the generous support from NCBS staff, which makes it possible to do high quality work. The recognition is a nice boost for... Continue Reading →

What to do when life gets costly?

Organisms have to deal with many kinds of costs, but dissecting and quantifying each of them, and how they affect adaptation and evolution, is tricky. This is especially true when some costs are "internal" (e.g., due to deleterious mutations) and some are "external" (environmental). In a study led by former postdoc Laasya Samhita (now Assistant... Continue Reading →

Welcome Basabi!

We are very happy that Dr Basabi Bagchi has joined the lab as a Postdoctoral fellow. For her PhD at Ashoka University, Basabi asked several interesting questions about host-pathogen interactions using flour beetles. During a short postdoctoral stint at the University of Montana, she explored cytoplasmic incompatibility in insects. In our lab, Basabi plan to... Continue Reading →

Founders shape long term population fate

The first set of findings from our long-term beetle populations are now out! In a massive effort, collating data across over 5 years, Vrinda and other lab members monitored flour beetle populations exposed to a new, poor habitat — corn flour — instead of the optimal ancestral wheat flour. While we expected some extinction, nearly all... Continue Reading →

Mutation bias shapes fitness effects

Mutations are central for evolution, and recent work has suggested that the type of mutations sampled by organisms may be important for evolution. Earlier work from our lab and that of Lindi Wahl suggested that flipping a long-term mutational bias should be generally beneficial, by allowing populations to sample unexplored mutational space. We have now... Continue Reading →

Congratulations Dr. Singhal!

Shivansh just defended his PhD thesis, summarizing nearly 6 years of hard work to understand the genomic basis of adaptation and divergence in flour beetles. Along the way, he assembled a new genome for Tribolium castaneum, picking up serious genomics chops and expertise on population genetics and flour beetle biology. Apart from his own thesis,... Continue Reading →

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