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Profile
Dr. Yelagandula Ramesh earned his Ph.D. from the National University of Singapore in 2014, focusing on the role of histone variants in genome organization and gene regulation under Dr. Frederic Berger's mentorship. Notably, his Ph.D. work identified and elucidated the molecular function of histone H2A variant H2A.W in heterochromatin organization in plants. Following his Ph.D., Ramesh relocated to Vienna, Austria, as an EMBO Long-Term fellow at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology(IMBA) under the guidence of Dr. Oliver Bell and Dr. Julius Brennecke. At IMBA, Ramesh explored the role of epigenetic mechanisms in cell differentiation, uncovering the molecular function of ZFP462, a sequence-specific transcription factor implicated in targeting and maintaining heterochromatin at lineage-specifying enhancer sequences. His postdoctoral work revealed the underlying molecular cause and pathophysiology of the complex neurodevelopmental disorder known as Weiss-Kruszka Syndrome. In 2023, Ramesh joined CDFD as a group leader, continuing his research on uncovering the role of epigenetic mechanisms in cell fate specification and disease.
Current Focus Areas
Selected Publications
Yelagandula R, Karin Stecher, Maria Novatchkova, Luca Michetti, Georg Michlits, Jingkui Wang, Pablo Hofbauer, Carina Pribitzer, Gintautas Vainorius, Luke Isbel, Sasha Mendjan, Dirk Schübeler, Ulrich Elling, Julius Brennecke, Oliver Bell. 2023. ZFP462 safeguards neural lineage specification by targeting G9A/GLP-mediated heterochromatin to silence enhancers, Nature Cell Biology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41556-022-01051-2
Vainorius G, Novatchkova M, Michlits G, Baar JC, Raupach C, Lee J, Yelagandula R, Wernig M, Elling U. 2023. Ascl1 and Ngn2 convert mouse embryonic stem cells to neurons via functionally distinct paths, Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40803-y.
Yelagandula R, Aleksandr Bykov, Alexander Vogt, Robert Heinen, Ezgi Özkan, Marcus Martin Strobl, Juliane Christina Baar, Kristina Uzunova, Bence Hajdusits, Darja Kordic, Erna Suljic, Amina Kurtovic-Kozaric, Sebija Izetbegovic, Justine Schaefer, Peter Hufnagl, Alexander Zoufaly, Tamara Seitz, VCDI, Manuela Födinger, Franz Allerberger, Alexander Stark, Luisa Cochella, & Ulrich Elling. 2021. Multiplexed detection of SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory infections in high throughput by SARSeq. Nature Communications, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22664-5
Wollmann H1,*, Stroud H2,*, Yelagandula R1,*, Tarutani Y, Jiang D, Jing L, Jamge B, Takeuchi H, Holec S, Nie X, Kakutani T, Jacobsen SE, Berger F. 2017. The histone H3 variant H3.3 regulates gene body DNA methylation in Arabidopsis thaliana. Genome Biology, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-017-1221-3
Yelagandula R, Hume Stroud, Sarah Holec, Keda Zhou, Suhua Feng, Xuehua Zhong, Uma M. Muthurajan, Xin Nie, Tomokazu Kawashima, Martin Groth, Karolin Luger, Steven E. Jacobsen, and Frédéric Berger. 2014. The histone variant H2A.W defines heterochromatin and promotes chromatin condensation in Arabidopsis. Cell, DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2014.06.006