Principal Investigator

Namakkal-Soorappan Rajasekaran (RAJA)

Email: rajnsr@uabmc.edu

Postdoctoral Fellow(s)

Sini Sunny

Email: sinisunny@uabmc.edu

Sini completed her Ph.D. at Sri Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Science and Technology, India in 2017 as an INSPIRE fellow in the field of cardiovascular biology. She was a post-doctoral fellow at CSIR – National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology (DST- SERB Fellow) from 2017 to 2019. She joined in PI’s lab in 2020. Her main expertise is in lipoproteins and inflammatory signaling in human blood cells. She recently received American Heart Association (AHA) – Post-Doctoral Fellowship for two years (Jan 2022 –  Dec 2023) and Grant Incentive Award from UAB Post-Doctoral Association. Since her joining in PI’s lab, she has received several awards including ISHR-NAS Travel Award, International Society for Personalized Medicine – Best Oral Presentation Award. In PI’s laboratory she is focusing on age dependent transcriptomic changes in reductive stress models and gained expertise in echocardiography imaging and analysis of right and left ventricle in different mouse models of reductive stress. She is also focusing in carrying out several next generation sequencing based transcriptome and proteome analyses in mice.

Graduate Student(s)

Arun Jyothidasan

Email: arunj@uab.edu

Arun Jyothidasan joined the lab as a Ph.D. candidate in the spring of 2020. He graduated from the University of Texas with M.S in Biomedical engineering, majoring in Tissue engineering and drug delivery. Arun worked as a graduate research assistant in the laboratory for 2 years before joining the graduate school.

Publications:
Jyothidasan, A.; Sunny, S.; Murugesan, S.; Quiles, J.M.; Challa, A.K.; Dalley, B.; Cinghu, S.K.; Nanda, V.; Rajasekaran, N.-S. Transgenic Expression of Nrf2 Induces a Pro-Reductive Stress and Adaptive Cardiac Remodeling in the Mouse. Genes 2022, 13, 1514. https://doi.org/10.3390/genes13091514

Sunny S, Jyothidasan A, David CL, Parsawar K, Veerappan A, Jones DP, Pogwizd S, Rajasekaran NS. Tandem Mass Tagging Based Identification of Proteome Signatures for Reductive Stress Cardiomyopathy. Front Cardiovasc Med. 2022 Jun 13;9:848045. doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2022.848045.

Sini Sunny, Abinayaa Rajkumar, Arun Jyothidasan, Rajasekaran Namakkal Soorappan. Cardiovascular regeneration, Tissue Engineering Current Status and Challenges 2022, Pages 449-465 Elsevier Academic press publication. DOI: 10.1016/B978-0-12-824064-9.00025-3

Sunny, S., Challa, A. K., Qiao, A., Jyothidasan, A., Krishnamurthy, P., Ramamurthy, M. T., Crossman, D. K., Pogwizd, S., Cinghu, S., & Rajasekaran, N. S. (2021). Transcriptional Regulation of Structural and Functional Adaptations in a Developing Adulthood Myocardium. Cardiology and cardiovascular medicine, 5(5), 454–470. https://doi.org/10.26502/fccm.92920215[Book chapter]

Jyothidasan, A., Shanmugam, G., Zhang, J., Dally, B., Crossman, D., & Namakkal-Soorappan, R. (2018). Basal Role for Nrf2-transgne on transcriptional (mRNA/miRNA) regulation in the mouse myocardium. BioRxiv. doi:10.1101/490953

Poster Presentations

Arun Jyothidasan, Sini Sunny, Saravanakumar Murugesan, Justin M. Quiles , Anil Kumar Challa, Brian Dalley, Senthil Kumar Cinghu , Vivek Nanda, and Namakkal-Soorappan Rajasekaran. Transgenic expression of Nrf2 induces a pro-reductive stress and adaptive cardiac remodeling in mice. American Heart Association (AHA) – Basic Cardiovascular Sciences (BCVS) 2022 Poster Session. July 24-28, 2022 (poster- P3091)

Arun Jyothidasan, and Namakkal-Soorappan Rajasekaran miR-320 is REDOX sensitive and targets antioxidant pathway during myogenesis Society for Redox Biology & Medicine (SfRBM) 2020 Virtual Conference. Poster Session. November 16–20, 2020 (poster-20)

Lauren Nassour, Sini Sunny, Arun Jyothidasan, Kishore Kumar S Narasimhan, Brian Dalley, Ivor J. Benjamin and Namakkal S. Rajasekaran. miRNA Signatures of Proteotoxic Heart Disease. Society for Redox Biology & Medicine (SfRBM) 2020 Virtual Conference. Poster Session. November 16–20, 2020

Arun Jyothidasan, Gobinath Shanmugam, John Zhang, Brian Dalley and Namakkal-Soorappan Rajasekaran. Basal role for Nrf2-transgne on transcriptional (mRNA/miRNA) regulation in the mouse myocardium. Society for Redox Biology & Medicine (SfRBM) 25th Annual Meeting 2018 at Chicago. Poster Session. November 14–17, 2018 (poster-332)

Arun Jyothidasan, Gobinath Shanmugam, John Zhang, Brian Dalley and Namakkal-Soorappan Rajasekaran. Regulation of miRNA and mRNA expressions in the myocardium of Nrf2-transgenic mouse. UAB Comprehensive Cardiovascular Center (CCVC) 2018 7th Annual Symposium. Poster Session Sep 6, 2018.

Gregory W Williams, Andrea K Dodgen, Arun Jyothidasan, John Zhang, Justin M Quiles, Gobinath Shanmugam and Namakkal-Soorappan Rajasekaran. Distinct effects of lipid peroxidation on myocyte proliferation and differentiation in vitro. UAB Comprehensive Cardiovascular Center (CCVC) 2018 7th Annual Symposium. Poster Session. Sep 6, 2018

Undergraduate and Masters Students (Honors Thesis)

Dr. Namakkal-Soorappan’s lab always encourages/support the undergraduate/master students for their research credits.

Matthew Jarrell Thomas

UAB Heersink School of Medicine

B.S. in Neuroscience (Graduation: May 2022)

UAB College of Arts and Sciences

UAB Honors College

Navaneeth Shibu

Email: shibunav@uab.edu

Navaneeth is an honors student at UAB and is co-currently completing a BS in Immunology and a MS in Multidisciplinary Biomedical Sciences at UAB and is expected to graduate Spring 2024. Since joining the NS Raja Lab in January 2022, Navaneeth has learned a variety of lab techniques, practices, and methods while also actively partaking in ongoing research within the lab and developing an honors thesis of his own. He was trained in techniques such as genotyping, protein estimation, gel preparation, buffer preparation, EKG conduction, western blotting, zymmography, microscopy, and mice handling. He also worked to analyze experimental data and assemble figures for publication. As a result, he has gained proficiency in online tools such as GraphPad Prism, ImageJ, Adobe Illustrator, and Excel. More recently, he has begun his training and experiments associated with his honors thesis work which is concerned with the effect of reductive stress on the inflammatory response in a cardiac ischemia injury.

Poster Presentations

Navaneeth Shibu,  Sini Sunny, Abinayaa Rajkumar, Aniqa Sayed, Periandavan Kalaiselvi, Rajasekaran Namakkal-Soorappan. N-acetyl cysteine administration impairs EKG signals in the humanized reductive stress mouse. Society for Redox Biology & Medicine (SfRBM) 29th Annual Conference 2022 in Orlando, FL. Poster Session. November 16-19,2022.

Rachitha Avatapally, Aniqa Sayed, Navaneeth Shibu, Sini Sunny and Namakkal S. Rajasekaran N-Acetyl Cysteine alters EKG Pattern in hR120G-CryAB mice, Submitted to Summer Science Institute III program, University of Alabama.

Awards

2022 Travel Grant for SfRBM 2022, Service Learning and Undergraduate Research, UAB

2022 Travel Grant for SfRBM 2022, Undergraduate Student Government Association, UAB

Dr. Aniqa Sayed

M.S. in Public Health

UAB College of Public Health

B.S. in Dental Surgery

John Kofi Afortude

MS in Biomedical Sciences

UAB Department of Biomedical Sciences

Alumni

Graduate Students

Justin M. Quiles – Graduate Student (2016 to 2019)

Current: AHA-Postdoctoral Fellow, UCDS

Guna Ravichandran – Graduate Student (2016 – 2021)

Research Scientist, CFTRI, Mysore, India

Chellamuthu Gounder – Graduate Student (2010 – 2013)

Current: Senior Scientist, Stem Cell Laboratory, Malaysia

Dinesh Venkatesan – Graduate Student (2010 – 2014)

Current: Research Instructor, University of Southern Florida, FL, USA

Titto A. Augustine – Graduate Student (2008 – 2012)

Current: Research Assistant Professor, Indiana Police

From UAB

1. Sandeep Balu Shelar – Postdoctoral Fellow – 2014 to 2017

Current Position: Scientist D/BARC, Mumbai, India

2. Gobinath S – Postdoctoral Fellow – 2015 to 2021

3. Kishore SN – Postdoctoral Fellow – 2018 to 2020

4. Rajeshkumar Radhakrishanan – Postdoctoral Fellow – 2015 to 2017 (Research Instructor, UTHSC, Taylor, TX, USA)

5. Daniel Bolus – Undergraduate Trainee – 2016 to 2018

6. Neelu Chacko – High School Student (ASFA)

7. John Zhang – Researcher I – 2017 to 2019

8. Andrea Dodgen – Undergraduate Trainee (UAB-CORD) – 2017 to 2019

9. Srihari Prahadeeswaran – Undergraduate Trainee – 2019 (MD – Year 4/UAB School of Medicine)

10. Bradden Garrison – Undergraduate Trainee – 2019

11. Reese Palmer – Undergraduate Trainee (UAB-CORD) – 2019

12. Rachitha – High School – 2022 (UAB-CORD)

Collaborators

Internal (within UAB)

  1. Dr. Victor-Darley Usmar
  2. Dr. Steven M. Pogwizd
  3. Dr. Silvio H. Litovsky
  4. Dr. James K. Kirklin
  5. Dr. David Crossman
  6. Dr. Sethu Palaniappan

External

  1. Dr. Pei Pei Ping (UCLA)
  2. Dr. Dean P. Jones (Emory University)
  3. Dr. Federica del Monte (MUSC)
  4. Dr. Dale E. Abel (Iowa)
  5. Dr. Joel D. Trinity (U of Utah)
  6. Dr. Albert Park (U of Utah)

International Collaborators

  1. Sri Ramachandra Medical University Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India / Departments of Pathology (Dr. Sandya Sundaram) and Cardiology (Dr. TR Muralidharan and Dr. Vinod Kumar)
  2. ERA Medical University Lucknow, UP, India / Departments of Cardiology (Dr. MD Wani), Biochemistry (Dr. Rizvi and Dr. Reza), and Personalized Medicine (Dr. Farzana)
  3. PSG-Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India / Department of Cardiology (Dr. Sudha Ramalingam)