Mahendra Sonawane
Assistant Professor
Department of Biological Sciences
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
India
Biography
Dr. Mahendra Sonawane is an Assistant Professor at he School of Biological Sciences . He uses zebrafish as a model organism to investigate the developmental and cellular mechanisms involved in the establishment as well as maintenance of the epidermal architecture and integrity. We combine genetic approaches with confocal microscopy to unravel the importance of cell size, cell shape, cell polarization and cell adhesion in epidermal morphogenesis. In addition, we are interested in understanding how the changes in cell size or cell-polarity lead to re-calibration of tissue homeostasis or to epidermal hyperplasia.
Research Interest
Genetic analysis of cellular adhesion in developing zebrafish epidermis.
Publications
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Chen YY, Harris MP, Levesque MP, Nuesslein-Volhard, C and Sonawane M (2012) Heterogeneity across the dorso-ventral axis in zebrafish EVL is regulated by a novel module consisting of sox, snail 1a and max genes, Mechanisms of Development 129: 12-23.
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Sonal, Sidhaye J, Phatak M, Banerjee S, Mulay A, Deshpande O, Bhide S, Jacob T, Gehring I, Nuesslein-Volhard C, Sonawane M (2014) Myosin Vb mediated plasma membrane homeostasis regulates peridermal cell size and maintains tissue homeostasis in the zebrafish epidermis. PLoS Genetics 10: e1004614.
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Nagendran M, Arora P, Gori P, Mulay A, Ray S, Jacob T, Sonawane M (2015) Canonical Wnt signalling regulates epithelial patterning by modulating levels of laminins in zebrafish appendages. Development 142: 320.
