Faculty Contact Info
Preetish Kadur Lakshminarasimha Murthy, PhD
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF PHARMACOLOGY AND REGENERATIVE MEDICINE
B.S., Indian Institute of Technology Madras; Mechanical Engineering (2013).
PhD, Cornell University; Mechanical Engineering (2019).
Postdoc, Duke University Medical Center (2022).
DECODING CELL DYNAMICS
Tissues across the human body are maintained under homeostatic conditions by multipotent stem cells residing in them. Perturbation of these adult stem cells often results in the accumulation of aberrant cell types leading to diseases. Understanding the molecular mechanisms regulating these stem cells is crucial to development of therapeutic interventions to ensure pathological tissues return to homeostatic conditions. Primarily, we aim to characterize the states and fates of pulmonary and gastrointestinal cells.
Research Interests
Transcriptional regulation of adult stem cells
Transcription factors (TF) play a major role in establishing cell identity. We are interested in characterising the network of TFs that specify the airway and intestinal epithelial lineages.
Cell plasticity in tumours
Plasticity of tumour cells helps them adapt to new environments and evade the immune system. We aim to characterise the factors influencing tumour cell plasticity and work towards developing improved therapeutic interventions.
Stem cell niches
Tissue-resident stem cells are often supported by mesenchymal niche cells. We are interested in identifying the signalling pathways that support stem cells and the impact of their loss in diseases.
Tools and techniques
Organoids; Rodent and large animal models; Single cell based profiling; Bioinformatic modelling.
Selected Publications
* Equal contribution. $ Corresponding author.
Murthy PKL*, Sontake V*, Tata A, Kobayashi Y, Macadlo L, Okuda K, Conchola AS, Nakano S, Gregory S, Miller LA, Spence JR, Engelhardt JF, Boucher RC, Rock JR, Randell SH, Tata PR. Human distal lung maps and lineage hierarchies reveal a bipotent progenitor. Nature. 2022 Apr;604(7904):111-119. doi: /doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04541-3.
Murthy PKL*$, Xi R*, Arguijo D, Everitt JI, Kocak DD, Kobayashi Y, Bozec A, Vicent S, Ding S, Crawford GE, Hsu D, Tata PR, Reddy T, Shen X$. Epigenetic basis of oncogenic-Kras-mediated epithelial-cellular proliferation and plasticity. Developmental Cell. 2022 Feb 7;57(3):310-328.e9. doi: 10.1016/j.devcel.2022.01.006.
Preview: Kim J, Minna JD. AP-1 leads the way in lung cancer transformation. Dev Cell. 2022 Feb 7;57(3):292-294. doi: 10.1016/j.devcel.2022.01.007.
Huang Q, Cohen MA, Alsina FC, Devlin G, Garrett A, McKey J, Havlik P, Rakhilin N, Wang E, Xiang K, Mathews P, Wang L, Bock C, Ruthig V, Wang Y, Negrete M, Wong CW, Murthy PKL, Zhang S, Daniel AR, Kirsch DG, Kang Y, Capel B, Asokan A, Silver DL, Jaenisch R, Shen X. Intravital imaging of mouse embryos. Science. 2020 Apr 10;368(6487):181-186. doi: 10.1126/science.aba0210.
Murthy PKL*, Srinivasan T*, Bochter MS, Xi R, Varanko AK, Tung KL, Semerci F, Xu K, Maletic-Savatic M, Cole SE, Shen X. Radical and lunatic fringes modulate notch ligands to support mammalian intestinal homeostasis. Elife. 2018 Apr 9;7:e35710. doi: 10.7554/eLife.35710.