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 →

Our campus recently hosted an open Science day, when hundreds of school students visited the campus and explored exhibits set up by students and postdocs from many labs. All accounts suggest this was a lot of fun for everyone. Here is an article describing the events. Here are some pictures of our lab's tables showcasing... Continue Reading →

Our campus recently hosted a conference on Conflict and Cooperation in Cellular Populations (CCCP), featuring a wonderfully diverse set of talks and participants alike. Kruttika presented a poster summarizing her results on the bacterial communities of butterflies, and Laasya put up a last-minute poster on the benefits of altered initiator tRNA content in E. coli.... Continue Reading →

I am pleased to announce a symposium on the genetic bases of adaptation and evolution, co-organized with my colleagues Gaiti Hasan and Krushnamegh Kunte. The meeting (28 Nov - 2 Dec at NCBS) will bring together evolutionary and development biologists, geneticists and theoreticians. Together, we will aim to synthesize current understanding of and future goals... Continue Reading →

Ashwin's Master's thesis work on the gut bacterial communities of dragonflies has been published in Current Science. The paper is highlighted in the "In this issue" section of the journal and supported by a Cover image of a Globe Skimmer (Pantala flavescens) by Shantanu. Good work, both! In this paper, we describe culturable gut bacterial... Continue Reading →