Nagarajan Nandagopal, PhD

Dr. Nandagopal [Philip O’Bryan Montgomery Jr. MD Fellow] is focusing on genes in the bHLH family and their role in signal integration to help decide whether cells grow and divide, differentiate, migrate, or even die. bHLH genes are involved in fate choices in stem cells of the brain, intestines, skin, and other tissues. They are also commonly misregulated in cancers, such as neuroblastomas and glioblastomas. By comparing signal integration by bHLH circuits in normal and cancer cells, Dr. Nandagopal aims to discover how errors in fate decisions occur, and how they can be corrected.