About
Srujana Yadavalli, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Genetics at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology at Rutgers University. Dr. Yadavalli received her bachelor’s degree from Anna University, Chennai, India; received her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University, Columbus; and completed postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. She joined Rutgers as a research associate and transitioned to a faculty position in 2019. Dr. Yadavalli’s research, funded by the NIH-NIGMS, integrates tools from high throughput sequencing, genetics, biochemistry, microbiology, and proteomics to address fundamental questions in bacterial stress response. Dr. Yadavalli is the recipient of the 2024 FIGS Faculty Mentor Award and the 2024 Young Investigator Award, presented by the Theobald Smith Society, NJ branch of the American Society of Microbiology.
Current Work
Research in the Yadavalli lab is focused on two emerging themes in bacterial gene regulation and stress response: 1) Small regulatory proteins – proteins with less than 50 amino acids that are directly translated from short open reading frames. Growing evidence indicates that small proteins are critical for modulating diverse cellular processes including cell division, signal transduction, transport of biomolecules as well as stress adaptation. My lab studies condition-specific small proteins and their interactions. 2) Epitranscriptomic regulators connect RNA modifications and translation to metabolism and stress response.
