Mr Dwaipayan Adhya

Interests

Autism is a complex neurodevelopmental disorder. Studies have shown that it affects more males than females. Prenatal exposure to sex steroids, especially, testosterone have been shown to be related to development of autism. Epigenetic changes have also been shown to be involved. The focus of my research is to study transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of genes in autism.

I am currently involved in studying sex steroid physiology in the autistic brain in a post-mortem brain study, and in an induced pluripotent stem cell model of autism, collaborating with Dr Jason Carroll and his PhD student Kamila Józwik at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, Cambridge, and with Prof Jack Price and Dr Deepak Srivastava at King's College, London. The focus of my research is to study transcriptional and epigenetic regulation of genes in autism, specifically, to search for mechanisms by which hormones (sex steroids) and related regulatory factors contribute to the autism phenotype.

Example of How Epigenetic Factors Regulate Gene Expression
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Research Focus

Equipment

Cell culture

Enzyme assays

Fluorescence microscopy

Immunohistochemistry

Intracellular recording

Microscopy