Megha Ghildiyal, PhD

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I am a postdoc in Dr. Allan Spradling’s lab at the Carnegie Institution, Department of Embryology. We are very interested in understanding how a cell establishes and maintains an undifferentiated state and how does chromatin reprograming lead to differentiation. These questions have long perplexed us and have been a constant source of speculation, as has been the role of non-coding RNAs and their abundance in our genome. I am interested in studying the role of non-coding RNAs in stem cell division and maintenance. To identify such candidate RNAs, I use germ line stem cells from Drosophila as a model for my studies, and I am currently trying to understand the role of these RNAs in conferring the stem cell’s unique identity.