Sanjeev Anant Galande (born 1967) is an Indian cell biologist,

epigeneticist In biology, epigenetics is the study of stable phenotypic changes (known as ''marks'') that do not involve alterations in the DNA sequence. The Greek prefix '' epi-'' ( "over, outside of, around") in ''epigenetics'' implies features that are " ...

, academic, former Chair of Biology and the Dean of Research and Development at the

Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune (IISER Pune) is an autonomous public university established in 2006. It is one of the seven Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research, and was one of the first IISERs to ...

. He heads the Laboratory of Chromatin Biology and Epigenetics (Sanjeev Galande Lab) at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune. He is the founder of the ''Centre of Excellence in Epigenetics'' at IISER Pune and is known for his studies on higher-order

chromatin Chromatin is a complex of DNA and protein found in eukaryotic cells. The primary function is to package long DNA molecules into more compact, denser structures. This prevents the strands from becoming tangled and also plays important roles in r ...

architecture and how it influences spatiotemporal changes in

gene expression Gene expression is the process by which information from a gene is used in the synthesis of a functional gene product that enables it to produce end products, protein or non-coding RNA, and ultimately affect a phenotype, as the final effect. The ...

. He is an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy and the Indian Academy of Sciences and a recipient of the

National Bioscience Award for Career Development The National Bio-science Award for Career Development or N-BIOS Prize is an Indian science award for recognizing excellence and promoting research in bio-sciences disciplines. It was instituted in 1999 by the Department of Biotechnology of the Gov ...

of the

Department of Biotechnology The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) is an Indian government department, under the Ministry of Science and Technology responsible for administrating development and commercialisation in the field of modern biology and biotechnology in India. It ...

. The

Council of Scientific and Industrial Research The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (IAST: ''vaigyanik tathā audyogik anusandhāna pariṣada''), abbreviated as CSIR, was established by the Government of India in September 1942 as an autonomous body that has emerged as the l ...

, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 2010, for his contributions to biological sciences.

Biography

Sanjeev Galande, born on 20 September 1967 in

Pune Pune (; ; also known as Poona, (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million ...

, in the western Indian state of

Maharashtra Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a states and union territories of India, state in the western India, western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. Maharashtra is the List of states and union te ...

, did his master's degree in biochemistry (MSc) at the

Savitribai Phule Pune University Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), formerly the University of Poona, is a collegiate public state university located in the city of Pune, India. It was established in 1949, and is spread over a campus in the neighbourhood of Ganeshk ...

before obtaining his doctoral studies from the Indian Institute of Science in 1996. He moved to the US the same year to join the

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States Department of Energy National Labs, United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, t ...

to complete his post-doctoral studies on the ''role of MAR-binding proteins in

tumorigenesis Carcinogenesis, also called oncogenesis or tumorigenesis, is the formation of a cancer, whereby normal cells are transformed into cancer cells. The process is characterized by changes at the cellular, genetic, and epigenetic levels and abno ...

'' in 2001 and on his return to India, he joined

National Centre for Cell Science The National Centre for Cell Science is a National Level, Biotechnology, Tissue Engineering and Tissue Banking research center located on the campus of University of Pune in Pune, India. The institute formerly known as National Facility for Anima ...

(NCCS) as a senior scientist. He headed the Sanjeev Galande Laboratory at the NCCS till 2010 when he shifted to the

as a professor and established the ''Centre of Excellence in Epigenetics'' (CoEE) there. He heads the ''Laboratory of Chromatin Biology and Epigenetics'' where he hosts a number of researchers who focus their studies on ''evolution of epigenetic mechanisms using multiple model systems''. He also serves as an adjunct faculty at

Legacy

Galande's early researches during his doctoral studies were on MAR-binding proteins and

carcinogenesis Carcinogenesis, also called oncogenesis or tumorigenesis, is the formation of a cancer, whereby normal cells are transformed into cancer cells. The process is characterized by changes at the cellular, genetic, and epigenetic levels and abnor ...

but later he shifted his focus to cell-type specific patterns of

and how

levels influence them which was the theme of his research at NCCS. His team demonstrated how cellular signaling pathways impact the chromatin levels. After his move to IISER, Pune, he started working on

epigenetic regulation In biology, epigenetics is the study of stable phenotypic changes (known as ''marks'') that do not involve alterations in the DNA sequence. The Greek prefix '' epi-'' ( "over, outside of, around") in ''epigenetics'' implies features that are "o ...

on various substrata viz.

yeast Yeasts are eukaryotic, single-celled microorganisms classified as members of the fungus kingdom. The first yeast originated hundreds of millions of years ago, and at least 1,500 species are currently recognized. They are estimated to constitut ...

Caenorhabditis elegans ''Caenorhabditis elegans'' () is a free-living transparent nematode about 1 mm in length that lives in temperate soil environments. It is the type species of its genus. The name is a blend of the Greek ''caeno-'' (recent), ''rhabditis'' (ro ...

(round worm),

Drosophila ''Drosophila'' () is a genus of flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or (less frequently) pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many species ...

(fruit flies),

Zebrafish The zebrafish (''Danio rerio'') is a freshwater fish belonging to the minnow family ( Cyprinidae) of the order Cypriniformes. Native to South Asia, it is a popular aquarium fish, frequently sold under the trade name zebra danio (and thus often ...

and humans, using them as biological model systems. His team investigate biological processes such as

transcription Transcription refers to the process of converting sounds (voice, music etc.) into letters or musical notes, or producing a copy of something in another medium, including: Genetics * Transcription (biology), the copying of DNA into RNA, the fir ...

gene regulation Regulation of gene expression, or gene regulation, includes a wide range of mechanisms that are used by cells to increase or decrease the production of specific gene products (protein or RNA). Sophisticated programs of gene expression are wide ...

cell proliferation Cell proliferation is the process by which ''a cell grows and divides to produce two daughter cells''. Cell proliferation leads to an exponential increase in cell number and is therefore a rapid mechanism of tissue growth. Cell proliferation re ...

, self-renewal and regeneration and their interrelations for which they employ genetic, biochemical, molecular and computational approaches. His studies are reported to have assisted in widening our understanding of the development and differentiation of

T cell A T cell is a type of lymphocyte. T cells are one of the important white blood cells of the immune system and play a central role in the adaptive immune response. T cells can be distinguished from other lymphocytes by the presence of a T-cell r ...

s and the impact of

Wnt signaling pathway The Wnt signaling pathways are a group of signal transduction pathways which begin with proteins that pass signals into a cell through cell surface receptors. The name Wnt is a portmanteau created from the names Wingless and Int-1. Wnt signaling p ...

s in the process. He is involved in three running projects; ''Intergenerational programming of diabesity in offspring of women with Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (InDiaGDM)'', ''Role of chromatin organizer SATB1 in T cell development and differentiation'' and ''The role of Chromatin reorganisers in X inactivation''. Galande has detailed his research in a number of articles and

ResearchGate ResearchGate is a European commercial social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators. According to a 2014 study by ''Nature'' and a 2016 article in ''Times Higher Education'' ...

, an online article repository has listed 87 of them. He has mentored several scholars at his laboratories in NCCS and IISER and coordinated the ''National Research Scholars Meet in Life Sciences'' in 2005. He has also established a number of multidisciplinary academic programs at IISER which covers such topics as biochemistry,

molecular biology Molecular biology is the branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecular basis of biological activity in and between cells, including biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactions. The study of chemical and physi ...

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combi ...

, cell biology,

proteomics Proteomics is the large-scale study of proteins. Proteins are vital parts of living organisms, with many functions such as the formation of structural fibers of muscle tissue, enzymatic digestion of food, or synthesis and replication of DNA. In ...

, and

genomics Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...

and has participated in several seminars on these topics.

Awards and honors

Galande's contributions to the biological sciences earned him the

of the

(DBT) in 2006. The same year, DBT selected him for the ''Swarnajayanthi Fellowship'' for life sciences. In 2010, he was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, by the

and the

Wellcome Trust The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of one of the predecessors of Glaxo ...

chose him for the Senior Research Fellowships in Basic Biomedical Science. He received the 2014 G. D. Birla Award for Scientific Research of the

K. K. Birla Foundation The K.K. Birla Foundation was established in 1991 by Krishna Kumar Birla in Delhi. Its mission is to promote literature (especially Hindi literature) and the arts, as well as education and social work. It regularly gets mentioned in the media for ...

in 2015. He is an elected fellow of two major Indian science academies, Indian Academy of Sciences (2010) and Indian National Science Academy (2012).

Selected bibliography

* * * * * * *

Notes

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Galande, Sanjeev Recipients of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in Biological Science N-BIOS Prize recipients 1967 births Scientists from Pune Living people Epigeneticists Indian cell biologists 20th-century Indian biologists Savitribai Phule Pune University alumni Academic staff of Savitribai Phule Pune University Indian Institute of Science alumni Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory people Fellows of the Indian Academy of Sciences Fellows of the Indian National Science Academy Academic staff of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune