Congratulations! SNSF awarded Thanvi a PostDoc Fellowship Grant
Dr Thanvi Srikant has been awarded a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation for studying how chromatin architecture can affect genome stability during polyploid evolution. She was among the 90 successful candidates from 531 applications.
The project is titled PolyChromoSoMe (Polyploidy-associated Chromatin organisation in Somatic and Meiotic tissues). The main aim is to reveal how genome duplication affects chromatin accessibility genome-wide, whether this will affect gene regulation and phenotypes, and how these features compare between new and evolved polyploids. Thanvi will study natural diploid and autotetraploid populations of the plant species Arabidopsis arenosa, together with neo-tetraploid lines generated in the lab. She will employ sequencing technologies such as ATAC-seq and RNA-seq to study the chromatin accessibility landscape and transcriptome in somatic and meiotic plant tissues. Furthermore, candidate genes associated with chromatin accessibility changes will be tested for their potential to restore stable phenotypes in new tetraploids. Ultimately, the results from this project could improve our understanding of how plants can adapt to whole-genome duplication and polyploidy.
