Our research
The Natarajan laboratory investigates the fundamental process of cell cycle during embryonic development at single-cell level. We focus on understanding how the crosstalk between cell cycle and gene expression influences cell-state and fate decisions in embryonic stem cells.
We apply and develop a wide variety of experimental and computational tools to study mechanisms involved in stem cells state and during their differentiation. These bulk and single-cell approaches include advanced molecular biology, state-of-art imaging, Flow cytometry, genome editing and variety of single-cell functional genomics methods. Our research aims to gain a deeper ‘system biology’ single-cell view of biological systems.
"Simply, we study how a single fertilized cell divides, scales and generates an incredible complexity and numbers of cell types, tissues and organs during embryonic development."
Areas of research
Cell cycle control of transcriptional regulation
We study how transcriptional regulation is governed globally during cell cycle and across phases in embryonic stem cells at single-cell level.
We utilise FUCCI cell cycle sensors combined with candidate gene perturbation and single-cell profiling to understand different mechanisms involved in cell cycle regulation of pluripotency.
Cell cycle dynamics during differentiation
Distinct cell cycle changes accompany stem cell differentiation and can drive cell-fate responses.
We combine state-of-art single-cell methods to investigate how underlying single-cell gene expression dynamics contribute to cell-fate decisions.
New methods for single-cell biology
We have a strong interest in development, extension and utilisation of new experimental and computational methods for single-cell biology.
Working closely with collaborators, we develop new computational tools that integrate measurements from several single-cell technologies.
