Sai

Madireddi

My innate fascination towards the question of “How life works - its complex yet beautiful phenomenon” led me to complete a Ph.D. from Prof. S. Rajagopal’s Lab at the University of Hyderabad in India. My doctoral work was mainly focused on the effect of elevated temperature on the thylakoid membrane complexes in C. reinhardtii. Under an Indo-Japan collaboration project, I worked with Prof. Y. Takahashi at the Okayama University in Japan to generate an FNR overexpression mutant with the idea that engineering the Photosystem I acceptor side can minimize excitation pressure under high light. After the Ph.D., I continued to work in the Department of Plant sciences, University of Hyderabad, as Research Associate with Prof. S. Rajagopal under UGC-ISF project in collaboration with Prof. Nathan Nelson (Tel Aviv University, Israel). My postdoctoral work consisted of two projects: to understand the structural dynamics of photosynthetic complexes of Pisum sativum under varying temperature stress; understanding the role of non-high-light induced LHCSR3 expression; and function under nutrient starvation. With this training and exposure, I developed skills working with photosynthetic membranes, such as isolation of photosynthetic complexes using sucrose density gradients and BN-PAGE (in Chlamydomonas), as well as biophysical and fluorescence techniques like Chl a fluorescence measurements.

Here at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Adrien Burlacot’s lab, I will continue to investigate the relationship between different photosynthetic mechanisms and regulatory pathways that can lead to a better understanding of this beautiful phenomenon called life."