Dr. Divya M. S.
Scientist 'C'
Phone :

Academic Qualifications

Ph.D. Biotechnology, Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology, University of Kerala, Kerala, 2014

M.Sc. Microbiology, Department of Biotechnology & Microbiology, School of Life Sciences, Kannur University, Kerala, 2006

B.Sc. Biotechnology, University of Calicut, Kerala, 2004

Professional Record

Scientist C: 2018- till date, Department of Pathology, Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Trivandrum, India

RIKEN-Special Postdoctoral Researcher (SPDR): 2018, Laboratory for Advanced Genomics Circuit, RIKEN Center for Integrative Medicine Science (IMS), Yokohama, Japan

Post-doctoral Researcher: 2015-2018, Cell Conversion Technology Team, RIKEN-Center for Life Science Technologies (CLST), Yokohama, Japan (*RIKEN-CLST merged with RIKEN-Center for Integrative Medicine Science from April 2018)

Post-doctoral Researcher (PBC Postdoctoral Fellowship): 2014-2015, Meshorer Lab, Department of Genetics, The Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

Senior Researcher Fellow: 2013-2014, Neural Stem Cell biology laboratory, Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology, Thiruvananthapuram, India

Fulbright Visiting Research Scholar: 2012-2013, Department of Biology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

Graduate Research Scholar: 2007-2013, Neural Stem Cell biology laboratory, Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology, Thiruvananthapuram, India

Honors

University first rank and Gold medalist, M.Sc. Microbiology (2006), Department of Biotechnology & Microbiology, School of Life Sciences, Kannur University, Kerala, India.

Awards

Dr. M. R. Das Career Award (2014) for noted professional achievements during the graduate research tenure at Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology, Kerala, India.

Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology Merit award (2011) for the best graduate research work presentation, Kerala, India

Area of Interest

Fate-specific differentiation of pluripotent stem cells, Regenerative medicine, Modelling neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders using patient-specific induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and cerebral organoids, Role of long non-coding RNA in pluripotency and lineage specific differentiation

Collaboration

Dr. Dileep KV, Scientist-D, Laboratory for Computational and Structural Biology, Jubilee Mission Medical College & Research Institute, Thrissur.

Dr. Shabeesh Balan, Neuroscience Research Laboratory, IMHANS, Calicut.

Dr. Indulekha C. L. Pillai: School of Biotechnology, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri, Kollam.

Fellowships

RIKEN-Special Postdoctoral Researcher (SPDR) fellowship (2018), Programs for Junior Scientists, RIKEN, Japan

PBC Fellowship for outstanding Post-Doctoral Researchers (2014), The Planning and Budgeting Committee, Council for Higher Education, Israel

Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellowship (2012) for carrying out graduate research in US universities

Indian Council of Medical Research-Junior Research Fellowship (2007), Government of India for pursuing graduate research in National Institutes of India

Membership

Kerala Academy of Sciences (KAS)

The Human Genome Organization (HUGO)

On-going Projects

Characterising neurodevelopmental phenotypes caused by rare loss-of-function (LoF) mutations in Interferon regulatory factor 2 binding protein-like (IRF2BPL) using human induced pluripotent stem cells Funding by SERB-POWER grant

Dynamic modelling of alpha-synucleinopathy pathology using hiPSC-derived cerebral organoids for biomarkers and drug screening application, Funding: Seed grant from Accelerator program for Discovery in Brain disorders using Stem cells (ADBS) program, a collaborative initiative by National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (inStem) and the National Institute for Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) (https://www.ncbs.res.in/adbs/seed-grants).

Training

Samridha V

Sreetha A S

Research

We are interested in (a) elucidating the role of regulatory elements in defining neuronal fate specification, and its dysregulation in neurodevelopmental disorders, (b) modelling late onset neurodegenerative disorders in vitro for elucidating the gene regulatory network involved in the disease onset (c) testing the utility of these regulatory factors as bio-markers for disease pathogenesis/progression, and (d) evaluating the targetability of these factors to modulate or reverse disease pathogenesis/progression.

Team

Geethu S Nair- Project Fellow

Presentations

Functional characterization of long non-coding RNAs in iPSCs using CRISPRi based genetic perturbation studies, Divya M.S, Yip, C, W., Shibayama, Y., Luginbuhl, J., Kouno, T., Hon, C, C., Agarwal, S., De Hoon, M., Carninci, P., Shin, J. W, Human Genome Organization-22th Human Genome Meeting, Yokohama, Japan, Mar 12-15, 2018.

Elucidating the role of lncRNAs in pluripotency maintenance and differentiation in human iPSCs, Divya M.S, Luginbuhl, J, Ramilowski, J, Kouno, T, Shin, J. W; International Symposium Pluripotency from basic science to therapeutic application, The International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) and Center for iPS Cell Research and Application (CiRA), Kyoto March 22-24, 2016.

RGC differentiation from ES cells: Influence of FGF2 and Notch Signaling???, Divya, M. S, Rasheed, V.A, Hattar, S, James. J; ARVO 2013 Annual Meeting, Seattle, Washington, May 05 - 09, 2013

Human Umbilical Cord Blood Derived Mesenchymal Stem Cells with Inherent Neurogenic Potential, Divya M. S, Roshin, E. G, Elizabeth K E and James, J; 19th Biennial Meeting of the International Society of Developmental Neuroscience (ISDN), TIFR, Mumbai, January 11-14, 2012.

Isolation, characterization and neural differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells from umbilical cord blood, M.S Divya, T.S Divya, E.G Roshin, C.L Indulekha, K.E Elizabeth, T.R Santhosh Kumar, J, James; 7th International stem cell school in regenerative medicine, Institute of Experimental Medicine, Academy of Science of the Czech Republic, November 2-4, 2009.

Development of a cell therapy strategy to treat glaucoma using retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) generated from Embryonic Stem (ES) cells. Divya M.S, Divya T.S, Sanalkumar R.S, Indulekha C.L, Francis, J, Vidyanand S, VinodKumar G.S, James, J; Poster presented: The young investigators??? meeting, Estuary Island, Kerala, India, Feb 24-29 2009.

Invited talks

Stem cells for disease modeling and regenerative applications organised by the Department of Biochemistry at Sree Sankara College, Kalady on January 20th 2023.

CRISPR genome editing and it?s applications in the Department of Multi-Disciplinary Research Unit (MRU), at Medical College, Thiruvananthapuram on June 22nd 2022

Engineering Stem cells for regenerative applications in the Department of Biotechnology, St. Mary?s College, Thrissur on February 8th 2022.

Overseas opportunities in higher studies for Life sciences? in the Department of Zoology, SN College, Kollam on 5th March 2021

Application of CRISPR genome editing technology in disease modeling in 7th CEIB Day program at Inter University Centre for Evolutionary and Integrative Biology, University of Kerala, 30th October 2020.

Modelling neurological disorders in pluripotent stem cells by perturbing gene regulatory networks'', Keynote speaker, 5th Dr. K. Surekha memorial Oration, Department of Biotechnology & Microbiology, School of Life Sciences, Kannur University, Kerala, 13th August 2020

Making neurons and brain in a dish??? in the National Science Day Program, at Department of Biotechnology, Government College Kariavattom, University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, 28th February 2020.

Functional genomics approach to decipher the role of regulatory RNA in cells at Three-day National Seminar on Conspectus of Genes, Genetics and Genomics, P.G Department of Biotechnology and Department of Botany, Govt. Arts college, University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, 27th November 2019.

No. of Publications

16

Select Publications

Luginbuhl J, Kouno T, Nakano R, Chater TE, Divya, M. S., Kishima M, Roudnicky F, Carninci P, Plessy C, Shin JW (2021), Decoding Neuronal Diversification by Multiplexed Single-cell RNA-Seq, Stem Cell Reports,10.1016/j.stemcr.2021.02.006.

Cohen-Carmon, D., Sorek, M., Lerner, V., Divya, M. S., Nissim-Rafinia, M., Yarom, Y., and Meshorer, E. (2020), Progerin-induced transcriptional changes in Huntingtons Disease human pluripotent stem cell-derived neurons, Molecular Neurobiology, 57:1768 1777

Divya, M. S., Abdul, R.V., Schmidt, T., Soundararajan, L., Hattar, S. and James, J., (2017). Intraocular injection of ES cell-derived neural progenitors improves visual function in retinal ganglion cell-depleted mouse models. Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience. 11:295

Reviewer

Frontiers in Genetics

PLOS One

Publications

Article

1
Yip,C.W, Hon, C C, Y Kayoko, Divya M. S, J A. Ramilowski, Y Shibayama, S Agrawal, AV. Prabhu, C Parr, J Severin, Y J Lan, J Dostie, A Petri H N-Sueki, M Tagami, M Itoh, Fernando LR, T Kouno, JC Chang, J Luginbuhl, M Kato, M Murata, W H Yip, X Shu, I Abugessaisa, A Hasegawa, H Suzuki, S Kauppinen, K Yagi, Y Okazaki, T Kasukawa, M de Hoon, P Carninci, Antisense oligonucleotide-mediated perturbation of long non-coding RNA reveals functional features in stem cells and across cell types,, Cell Reports, 2022, 41, 111893, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2022.111893
2
Yip, C.W., Divya, M. S., Prabhu A.V., Shin JW, Functional annotation of lncRNA in high-throughput screening, Essays in Biochemistry, 2021, https://doi.org/10.1042/EBC20200061, https://doi.org/10.1042/EBC20200061
3
Luginbhl J, Kouno T, Nakano R, Chater TE, Divya, M. S., Kishima M, Roudnicky F, Carninci P, Plessy C, Shin JW, Decoding Neuronal Diversification by Multiplexed Single-cell RNA-Seq, Stem Cell Reports, 2021, 16: 4, 810-824, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stemcr.2021.02.006
4
Dileep, K. V., Sakai, N., Ihara, K., Kato-Murayama, M., Nakata, A., Ito, A., Divya, M. S., Shin, J. W., Yoshida, M., Shirouzu, M. & Zhang, K. Y. J, Piperidine-4-carboxamide as a new scaffold for designing secretory glutaminyl cyclase inhibitors, International Journal of Biological Macromolecules, 2021, 170, 415-423, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0141813020352910#!
5
, Functional annotation of human long noncoding RNAs via molecular phenotyping., Genome Research, 2020, 30: 1060-1072
6
Dorit C C, Matan S, Vitaly L, M S. Divya, Malka NR, Yosef Y & Eran M, Progerin-Induced Transcriptional Changes in Huntington???s Disease Human Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Neurons, Molecular Neurobiology, 2020, 57, 1768???1777, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12035-019-01839-8
7
Schlesinger, S., Kaffe, B., Melcer, S., Aguilera, J. D., Divya, M. S., Kaplan, T. and Meshorer, E., A hyperdynamic H3.3 nucleosome marks promoter regions in pluripotent embryonic stem cells, Nucleic Acids Research, 2017, 45:12181-12194, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29036702
8
Divya, M. S., Abdul, R.V., Schmidt, T., Soundararajan, L., Hattar, S. and James, J., Intraocular injection of ES cell-derived neural progenitors improves visual function in retinal ganglion cell-depleted mouse models, Frontiers in Cellular Neuroscience, 2017, 1, 11:295, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28979193/
9
Luginbuhl, J., Divya, M. S., Shin, J. W., The Essentiality of Non-Coding RNAs in Cell Reprogramming, Non-coding RNA Research, 2017, 2, 74-82, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6096403/
10
Divya, T.S., Lalitha, S., Parvathy, S., Subashini, C., Sanalkumar, R., Dhanesh, S.B., Rasheed, V.A., Divya, M.S., Tole, S., and James, J., Regulation of Tlx3 by Pax6 is required for the restricted expression of Chrn?3 in Cerebellar Granule Neuron progenitors during development, Scientific Reports, 2016, 6: 30337, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27452274/