Our Laboratory is interested in understanding how organisms sense their environment. We study the effect of sensing at behavioural, physiological, cellular and molecular levels. We primarily use 2 model organisms- a eukaryote and a prokaryote. Caenorhabditis elegans hermaphrodite, a nematode, is a eutelic organism endowed with a nervous system of 302 neurons in a soma of 959 cells. We leverage genetic tractability of worms to understand neuronal regulation of longevity and innate immunity. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a Gram-negative bacterium endowed with a large repertoire of sensor kinases, the first component of a two component system (TCS). We study the effect of TCS on social behaviours of the bacterium such as swarming, biofilm formation, and its interaction with neighbouring microbes.

Major findings:

(a) 1-undecene volatile produced by P. aeruginosa is a flight of fight signal for C. elegans.

(b) Olfactory GPCR, STR-2, regulates life span of C. elegans via coordinating synthesis of monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs) in the soma.

(c) ErdR response regulator of P. aeruginosa is necessary for ethanol induced swarming in P. aeruginosa.

Details of current project at personal website of Varsha Singh: https://sites.google.com/view/varshalab/home?authuser=0