1. •Shweta submits her Ph.D.thesis. She used the COVID downtime effectively and wrote her 260 page thesis in May/June/July. Many congratulations to her! (4 Aug 2020).
   

2. •With the multiple serial lockdowns in Maharashtra coming to an end (31st July 2020), life is slowly tending towards normality. Integrated Ph.D. interviews are done. Grades for the last semester released. The Fall Semester, with online teaching, will restart on 1st September 2020. Restarting research and return of Ph.D. students to the laboratory however is still uncertain.
   

-------------------------------------------------------August 2020-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. •Bhagyashree generated and evaluated our laboratory’s first CRISPR/Cas9 site directed mutant. The preliminary characterization of the Caspar(K551) line is now online - accepted in the journal Micropublication Biology (https://www.micropublication.org/journals/biology/micropub-biology-000288/;July 2020).
   

2. •Shweta gave her Pre-synopsis on 17th July, 2020. The first such event using the new beast - Zoom, that we are suddenly friends with! Kundan had his Comprehensive examination the next day (Saturday, 18th July 2020). Many thanks to Shweta’s (Suhita, Nixon) and Kundan’s (Mridula, Kris, Sunil Laxman) RAC members for their comments and evaluation.
   

3. •Volunteers for the CTC are allowed to come back to Campus - though not allowed to work in the laboratory. This particular door allowed first Shweta (early July ’20) and then Amar (late July ’20) to be back on Campus. Both of them are using the time to write their thesis.
   

4. •Regular (online) lab meetings have now started after a 2 month break (April-May 2020). It took that much time to regain equilibrium and to realize that things were NOT getting back to normal in the near future.
   

5. •Neel Wagh has got an offer from Dr. Marion Silies group at UMB Mainz. Hasta la Vista Neel (May 2020). Departure delayed because of the epidemic - Neel has meanwhile volunteered for the Covid centre and is part of the team screening patient samples at the COVID Testing Centre Centre (CTC), IISER.
   

6. •Anjana has been selected for a Ph.D. position at TIFR, Mumbai (May 2020). Many congratulations.
   

7. •Our friendly neighboring group (Richa Rikhy’s laboratory) has published two nice stories in the J. Cell Science. Congratulations to Richa and her graduate students (5 May 2020).
   

8. •IISER now has a ‘Covid Action Group’ which is setting up a diagnostic centre (CTC) at the second floor of the IISER Animal House. We expect to start screening patient samples in May 2020.
   

9. •IISER formally shutdown in response to the COVID19 epidemic that is sweeping across the globe. Students, both undergraduate and graduate had to leave. Both teaching and research are effectively stalled (2/3 week of March 2020).
   

-------------------------------------------------------May 2020 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

March and April 2020 was a difficult time for our laboratory. Students had to leave Campus, with teaching and research shut down for the foreseeable future. Traveling under such conditions for students was not pleasant, and their dealing with the absence of what was normal life at IISER, even more so.

In the laboratory, with students and most of the Staff missing, Snehal took up the load, single handedly managing to make media and maintain fly stocks. All working stocks were thrown and it took 3 months, with part time help from students and casual labor, to just discard and clean vials/bottles. By May 2020, things had stabilized - with a never before accumulation of washed (and empty) bottles/vials decorating the laboratory. We could do without these ‘decorations’ in the future.

1. •COVID Days. The months from March-2020 to June 2020 were spent in a lockdown with all research stopped. All students (including Ph.D. students) were asked to leave campus and return home in the second week of March by the IISER Director, in response to a directive from MHRD. The subsequent weeks saw nation-wide lockdowns (6 weeks and running), as also a spread of coronavirus infections across India. Pune turned out to be one of the top hotspots in India, along with its bigger sibling - Mumbai. Restrictions are slowly being eased across the country - with hotspots being the exceptions (March2020 - May 2020).
   

-------------------------------------------------------Jan-March 2020--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. •Many congratulations to Amar Soory who got married to fellow student (and Int. Ph.D. batch-mate) Akhila Gungi at Hyderabad on 20th March 2020. The entire lab was meant to be in Hyderabad to celebrate and bless the event - but the viral pandemic played spoilsport. We look forward to their return to Pune and subsequent late-night parties.
   

2. •The lab has received its first grant from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) - aims to use CRIPSR/Cas9 gene editing to generate a Drosophila model of ALS8.
   

3. •The three MSckuteers from the lab (Jyothish, Aarti and Anjana) submitted their MS thesis from the safety of their respective homes. The student exodus in March meant that they had to leave without the usual going-away parties. Best wishes to all three for a bright future.
   

4. •The lab is now funded by the MHRD STARS Grant (January 2020). This is a collaboration with Dr. CV Srikanth from Regional Centre of Biotechnology (RCB), Faridabad where we compare and contrast roles for SUMO in gut host defense (fly vs mouse).
   

5. •The Asia-Pacific Drosophila Research Conference (APDRC5) was organized by four labs - Rikhy/Dey/Shashidhara/Ratnaparkhi at the Westin Hotel from 6th-10th January 2020. Tiring days for all of us, but we were happy to pull off a successful conference. Here is a picture of all the student volunteers from IISER who dealt with the actual running of the meeting. A link to the Abstract Book for APDRC5 - https://home.apdrc5.in/abstract-book.
   

6. •‘Signals from the Gut’ a mini-symposium (https://sites.google.com/site/gutnccs2020/) organized by NCCS and IISER. Amar Soory spoke about his research on the effect of SUMO conjugation on Jra function in the gut.
   

2019

1. •All eyes and all our time is spent on prepping for APDRC5 and ‘Signals from the Gut’.
   

2. •Girish is a Subject Editor (Genetics & Biochemistry) for the Indian Academy of Science Journal ‘Current Science’ (Nov 2019).
   

3. •On the eve of Krexit, a celebration of the fly model (Supa Dupa Fly; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHcyJPTTn9w).
   

4. •Subhradip Das joins the lab as a Ph.D. student (1 Oct, 2019). We are a  rather large lab now.
   

5. •Shweta is off to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to attend the ‘Neurobiology of Drosophila meeting; https://meetings.cshl.edu/meetings.aspx?meet=DROS&year=19’). Oct 1-5, 2019.
   

6. •Shweta is awarded the Disease Models & Mechanisms (http://dmm.biologists.org/) travel fellowship for her visit to CSHL (Oct 2019).
   

7. •Kriti gets a Post-Doc offer; Plans to join the lab of Iris Lindberg (https://www.medschool.umaryland.edu/profiles/Lindberg-Iris/) at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine (3 August, 2019). Tentative Krexit date is October 2019.
   

8. •Lab welcomes Lovleen Garg, who joins the laboratory as a Integrated Ph.D. student (1 August, 2019).
   

9. •Anuradha’s Mon1/Rab7 paper is accepted in the Int. J. of Dev. Biol.; Special Issue on ‘Developmental Biology in India’ Congratulations to Anu’s lab members as also Senthil from the GR lab (20 July 2019).
   

10. •The Mon1/Dendritic arborization paper is accepted in a Frontiers in Cell & Developmental Biology. Research done by Rohit Krishnan as an undergraduate, many years ago - wrapped up by Shweta in the last couple of years (15 July 2019).
    

11. •Shweta stars in a video made by the IISER Science Media Centre (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68Nc0fan0P0).
    

12. •The APDRC5 (5th Asia Pacific Drosophila Research Conference) Web-Site is open for registration (15 May 2019).
    

13. •Our collaboratory paper on Mon1, with Anuradha as lead investigator is accepted in Development. Finally! A long wait and grueling rounds of work before we saw this day! Many Congratulations to Neena & Shweta from our laboratory (May 2019). Neena was an undergraduate student who worked on this problem for ~4 years. She is currently at AIIMS Delhi.
    

14. •Amar Soory heads to France for a CNRS meeting on ‘Integrated Insect Immunology:Controlling Infections’ at Roscoff, June 24-28, 2019 (https://www.insb.cnrs.fr/integrated-insect-immunology-controlling-infections).
    

15. •Neel defends his MS thesis; Nice research followed by a great presentation on the day of his Defense (2 May 2019).
    

16. •Undergraduates Aarti, Anjana and Jyothish join the lab for the final year MS Project. Aarti is on MARS, Anjana is endocytosing while Jyothish FAFs around (May 2019).
    

17. •Kriti is now Dr. Kriti. Successfully defends her Ph.D. thesis with Parents (and Jayant) in attendance (29 April, 2019).
    

18. •DMM puts our research on its cover (http://dmm.biologists.org/content/12/2.cover-expansion).
    

19. •Mon1/Rab interaction paper is submitted. We have explored Mon1 and its roles in endocytic flux in the context of development of the larval Type IV dendritic arbors (March 2019).
    

20. •Amar Soory is selected as a ‘CSIR Senior Research Fellow’ after a competitive selection process. The CSIR SRF fellowship will fund his final year of research, i.e., 2019-2020.
    

21. •DST announces 25% increase in research fellowships, starting 1st January 2019. Many congratulations to all Ph.D. students.
    

22. •Kriti is featured in DMM’s ‘First Person’ Section (http://dmm.biologists.org/content/12/2/dmm038984).
    

23. •Kriti submits her Ph.D. thesis (4th Feb, 2019).
    

24. •Kriti and Anuradha head to Bangalore for an EMBO workshop, ‘Molecular neuroscience: From genes to circuits in health and disease’, 4th - 7th Feb 2019 (http://meetings.embo.org/event/19-mol-neuroscience).
    

25. •Girish and Anu travel to the Academia Sinica, Taiwan for the second Asia-Pacific Drosophila Neuroscience (APDRC2) meeting.
    

26. •Kriti’s paper is accepted in Disease Models & Mechanisms (http://dmm.biologists.org/). Many Congratulations to all stakeholders (Lokesh, Senthil, Balaji, Girish, Kriti & Siddhesh). 8 Jan 2019.
    

27. •Sushmitha Hegde and Kundan Kumar travel to NCBS for the “9th Bangalore Benny Shilo Course in Developmental Biology 2019; https://www.ncbs.res.in/events/devbio2019” (Jan 2019).
    

28. •Kundan Kumar formally joins the laboratory as a Ph.D. student (1 Jan 2019). Kundan is our putative proteomic arm.
    

2018

1. •Anuradha’s paper on Neuronal regulation of female germline by a novel Mon1/IPC axis (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/12/31/508598) is uploaded on BioArchive (31 Dec 2018).
   

2. •CRISPR ahoy! Prajna has successfully generated 5 Lys>Arg mutations in a single gene.
   

3. •Bhagyashree is offered, accepts and leaves for a Post-Doctoral position in the laboratory of Prof. Ethan Bier (http://bierlab.weebly.com/). Many Congratulations Bhagyashree - keep us posted from the land of shiny beaches and ‘active’ genetics.
   

4. •Bhagyashree’s paper is accepted in the Journal of Experimental Biology. Many congratulations to her and our collaborators from Pune University (Varada Abhyankar, Deepti Deobagkar) and of course our secret weapon (Siddhesh Kamat).
   

5. •Second lab paper (ROS triggers clearance of neuroaggregates) uploaded to BioArchive (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/07/13/368100 ) - again without peer review.
   

6. •First lab paper (DMt2 in immunity) uploaded to BioArchive (http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/362012v1) - without peer review. Entering an alternate universe.
   

7. •Aparna Thulasidharan is selected for the NCBS-CCAMP Bangalore Microscopy Course (2018).
   

8. •Kriti is awarded a ‘Disease Models & Mechanisms (DMM)’ fellowship to travel to a Gordon Research Conference on ‘Neurobiology of Brain disorders’ at Castelldefels, Spain.
   

9. •Darshini Ravishankar is selected for the Ph.D. Program at NCBS, Bangalore and at the Okinawa Institute of Science & Technology, Japan. Many congratulations - Big in Bangalore or Big in Japan?
   

10. •Vallari’s paper on Brickwall is accepted in G3; Congrats to all stakeholders (April 2018).
    

11. •Bhagyashree successfully defends her thesis (28th Feb, 2018). A long road, well travelled. Congratulations, Dr. Kaduskar.
    

12. •Lab members (Kriti, Shweta) travel to Hyderabad for the International Congress for Cell Biology (http://www.ccmb.res.in/iccb2018/) in Jan 2018.
    

13. •Lab members (Kriti, Neena, Bhagyashree) present posters at the IISER-Weizmann Conference (Jan 2018).
    

14. •A large contingent (eleven) of undergraduates join the laboratory for semester rotation; allowing us to consider entering the IPL (Cricket - IISER Premier League) (Jan 2018).
    

15. •Girish attends the NCBS Annual Talks (Jan 2018).
    

16. •The Padinjat lab VAPB paper is accepted in JCS (Jan 2018).
    

17. •The Dnmt2 and Mon1 papers are submitted (Jan 2018).
    

2017

1. •Bhagyashree gives her Pre-Synopsis seminar and follows up by submitting her thesis in the same month (Dec 2017).
   

2. •Members of the laboratory travel to IISER Bhopal to attend the Indian Drosophila research conference (InDRC; 6th-9th Dec, 2017).
   

3. •Girish is off to a SUMO meeting (EMBO, Dubrovinik, Croatia) and the European fly meeting (EDRC, London) (15-25th September, 2017).
   

4. •The Brickwall (August 2017) and the ROS paper (Sept 2017) are out for review.
   

5. •Biology Annual Talks (#6) are now mentored by Nagaraj. Girish hangs up his boots after 5 years of Annual Talks (2011-2016). Posters that advertise ‘Biology Conclave 2017’ are fun! We also have new T-Shirts (4th August 2017).
   

6. •New Institutional responsibility for Girish as Dean, Doctoral Studies (July 2017).
   

7. •Lokesh and Apurv are GRlab-Alumni that turn up for InSDB. It is good to see them back in IISER.
   

8. •Indian Society for Developmental Biology (InSDB2017; (June 23-26 2017)) organized by members of the lab (amongst others). Great talks; We had a good time. Dr. Norbert Perrimon gives a nice talk and takes the time to interact with all lab members and chats about individual projects . 11 Posters from GR lab. Amar (formally) organizes the Crispr/Cas9 workshop with Sanjeev. Amar seems to have enjoyed the responsibility and the chance to be lord of the flies.
   

9. •Richa = Associate Professor (June 2017).
   

10. •Neena also wraps up her thesis, working with Anuradha on Mon1. She will stay on as a Project Assistant in GR lab.
    

11. •Darshini leaves the lab after wrapping up her thesis on Aac11/Api5 SUMOylation (May 2016).
    

12. •Exit Vallari (May, 2017).
    

13. •Vallari successfully defends her thesis (30th March 2017).
    

14. •DST-FIST grant awarded to Biology Department (Jan 2017). The money will fund a Departmental Mass Spectrometry Facility.
    

15. •We welcome Aparna Thulasidharan and Sushmitha Hegde, who join the lab as graduate students via the Integrated Ph.D. program.
    

2016

1. •‘Some more SUMO’. A short inter-lab symposium with Dr. Jomon Josephs group (NCCS) members (3 Dec, 2016).
   

2. •Vallari has accepted a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Copenhagen (Nov, 2016).
   

3. • Bhagyashree generates first Crispr/Cas9 genomic mutation for a SUMO target.
   

•  Vallari Submits her thesis (Oct, 2016).

•Comprehensive, Comprehensive, Comprehensive. Amar, Akbar and Anthony gear up to meet the anhoni challenge (July, 2016).

•Vallari is ready to write her thesis! Pre-Synopsis presentation on 1st July, 2016.

•Neena Dhiman starts her MS project as does Dharshini Ravishankar (June 2016).

•Our lab been awarded a DBT grant under the North East Region Twinning Program. Our collaborative partner and Principal Investigator is Sarat Yenisetti from Nagaland University (May 2016).

1. • Vallari gets hitched. We are still waiting for the treat! (May 2016).
   

2. • Girish is Co-Chair, Biology (April 2016).
   

•  The lab travels to NCBS Bangalore for a Conference on Ubiquitin & Ubiquitin-like proteins. 27-28th Jan. Girish gives a talk while Amar, Bhagyashree and Prajna present posters. Chris Lima unveils a spectacular new structure in his talk. 

•The Biology Department is reviewed by an International panel of Leaders in Biology. It was great interacting with the Cell & Dev. Biology group panelists - Drs. Maria Leptin, Helen Skaer, Mina Bissell and Thomas Lecuit. (20-21 January).

•We are now funded by three new grants, starting in Jan 2016. Two from the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and one from the Science & Engineering Board (SERB-DST).

2015

•The lab travels to the fly meeting at IIT Kanpur (Dec 2015).

•Senthil has accepted a Post-Doctoral offer from Dr. Cornelius Gross at EMBL, Monterotondo, studying the developmental programming of behaviour (Dec 2015).

•Sneha has been awarded a Newton International Fellowship for Post-Doctoral Research in the UK (Dec 2015). 

•Lokesh is busy exploring eating joints as he settles into a Graduate Program in Stephan Grill’s lab at TU, Dresden (Dec 2015).

•The Fly Media Facility & Stock Centre moves to the Main Building (Oct 2015). 

•Lokesh is accepted in a Graduate Student Program in Dresden, Germany (Sept 2015).

•Mithila’s SUMO proteome screen gets accepted in G3:Genes, Genomes & Genetics (August 2015).

•Senthil’s work on Mon1 in collabration with Dr. Anuradha Ratnaparkhi gets accepted in Genetics (August 2015).

•Amar Soory formally joins the laboratory as a Graduate Student (Jan/August 2015).

•Dr. Senthil “24/7” Deivasigamani sucessfully defends his thesis (May, 2015).

•Lokesh defends his Masters research and is awarded a BS-MS degree (May, 2015).

•Fly lab shifts from G1 to Main academic building (April, 2015).

•Dr. Sneha Bansode joins the lab as a post-doctoral researcher (April, 2015).

•Senthil submits his PhD thesis (March, 2015).

2014

•Girish gets promoted to Associate Professor.

•The lab moves from G1 block to Main building @IISER Pune. Our lab is on the second floor (SF-B).

•Ramya leaves the lab to join PhD program in Dresden, Germany.

•We bid farewell to Dr Mithila, first PhD student from the lab (November 2014).

•Mithila defends her Thesis. We congratulate Dr. Mithila Handu! (November 2014).

•We welcome PhD students Shweta and Prajna to the lab (September 2014).

•Senthil’s reverse genetic screen to identify interactors of VAPB is accepted in Biology Open (September, 2014).

•Mithila submits her PhD thesis (September, 2014).

•The President of India, Hon. Pranab Mukherjee inaugurates the Main Research Block (June 2014).

•Janavi joins the lab of Stephen Rogerson’s laboratory in University of Melbourne, Australia (August, 2014).

•Ramya gets married in March and so does Mithila; members of the lab travel to Delhi to attend Mithila’s marriage (May 2014).

•Prof. Balaram, Director IISc, inaugurates G1 block. The Biology Department is currently housed here.

2013

•Vallari’s paper, on redundancy and expansion in the MADF-BESS family is accepted in the journal Genetics.

•All members of our laboratory travels to Bangalore to attend and present posters at the AICBC meeting on Cell Dynamics and Cell Fate.

•Vallari Shukla is selected for a platform presentation in the All India Cell Biology Conference & Symposium on Cell Dynamics and Cell Fate (Dec 22-24) at IISc, Bangalore.

•Srija Bhagvatula starts Graduate School in the Knust Lab, Max Planck Institute for Cell Biology & Genetics, Dresden, Germany.

•Mithila Handu attended the 23rd European Drosophila Research Conference, 16-19 Oct, 2013 on a CSIR travel fellowship.

•The Laboratory shifts to IISER Main Campus, with new lodgings in PEB-III (christened G1) in September, 2013.

•Noopur Bhore will start Graduate School in Academia Sinica, Taiwan (September 2013).

•Bhagyashree Kaduskar & Mithila Handu attend “Workshop on Quantitative Proteomics” at IOB, Bangalore (Aug 2013).

•Kriti Chaplot joins the lab as a Graduate Student, the first project assistant to take the giant step (August 2013).

•Lokesh Pimpale visits NCBS to start a whole genome screen for neuroaggregation (July 2013).

•First laboratory research paper, on Hydra SUMOylation, published in the Journal Genesis (June 2013). 

2012

•Vallari Shukla gives a platform presentation at the Asia-Pacific Developmental Biology Conference (APDBC -2012) in Taiwan. She was awarded a APDBN travel fellowship to attend the meeting (Oct 2012).

•Vijay Barathi starts Graduate School in Academia Sinica, Taiwan (August 2012).

•Varsha starts Graduate School at Weil-Cornell University, New York (August 2012).

•Ankita Jha visits the National Institute of Genetics as a NIG Summer Intern (June-July 2012).

•Bhagyashree visits Ryu Ueda’s laboratory at the National Institute of Genetics, Japan (Jan-March 2012) on a JASSO-Sokendai fellowship.

2011

•Umair Khan & Swati Venkat are selected for the prestigious Khorana Fellowship (May-July 2011).

•Swati Venkat is selected for the NIG Summer Fellowship.

•Ritika ‘Awesome’ Giri leaves to start Graduate School in Northwestern University (August 2011).

•Shalaka Chitale starts Graduate School in University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (August 2011).

2010

•Sakshi Korde does part of her Masters Research in Solomon Snyder’s Lab in Johns Hopkins, Baltimore (Dec 2010-Apr 2011).

•Girish is awarded the Wellcome Trust Intermediate Fellowship.

•Mithila and Senthilkumar attend the 1st Asia-Pacific Drosophila Research Conference (APDRC) on APDRC-NIG Travel Fellowships.

•Senthilkumar visits Ryu Ueda’s lab at the National Institute of Genetics, Japan (Jan-March 2010), funded by the IISER-NIG program (2009)

•Mithila visits Cambridge to attend the Wellcome Trust Advanced Course in Drosophila Genetics.

2008

1. •Girish visits Thomas Bosch’s Lab at the University of Kiel (Nov 2008)
   

2. •Mithila joins laboratory as its first Graduate Student (Aug 2008).