Ganesh Nagaraju received B.Sc (1994) and M.Sc (1996) from University of Mysore, and Ph.D from Dept. of Biochemistry, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 2003. He carried out his doctoral studies on “Homologous recombination in Mycobacteria” under the supervision of Prof. K. Muniyappa. He pursued his postdoctoral studies (2003-2007) in the area of “DNA repair, Genome stability, and Cancer biology” at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre and Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA under Prof. Ralph Scully. In 2007, he joined Dept. of Biochemistry, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore as a faculty and continue to work as Professor.

Academic and Research Achievements: Prof. Ganesh’s research is focused on understanding the role of ATM, ATR protein kinases, homologous recombination (HR) pathway genes, including RAD51 and RAD51 paralogs, and various helicases in DNA repair, replication stress responses, genome maintenance, and tumor suppression. His group at IISc made seminal discoveries and contributed significantly to genome stability, genetic diseases and cancer biology. The mammalian genome encodes five RAD51 paralogs (RAD51B, RAD51C, RAD51D, XRCC2 and XRCC3) whose precise functions in genome maintenance are largely unknown. Germline mutations in RAD51 paralogs cause breast and ovarian cancer, and Fanconi anemia (FA)-like disorder. His group uncovered novel functions of RAD51 paralogs in the FA pathway of DNA inter-strand crosslink repair and as phosphorylation targets of ATM and ATR kinases in regulating replication stress responses, cell cycle checkpoint activation and recombinational DNA repair. FANCJ helicase mutations are known to cause breast and ovarian cancers and FA. His study identified new roles of FANCJ helicase in DNA repair and end resection. His studies provide insights into molecular mechanisms of pathological mutations leading to genetic diseases and cancer. This knowledge can be translated into developing new molecules for targeting the pathology.

Awards and Honours:  Prof. Ganesh is a recipient of several awards and honours including Prof. K.V. Giri memorial award for best Ph.D thesis of the Dept. of Biochemistry, IISc (2003), B.M. Birla Science Prize in Biology (2012), National Bioscience Award for Career Development from DBT(2015), Sir C.V. Raman Young Scientist award from Government of Karnataka (2015), Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Biological Sciences (2018), Fellow of National Academy of Sciences (2018), Fellow of Indian Academy of Sciences (2023), Sreenivasaya Memorial Award from SBC(I) (2020), and Sir J.C. Bose Fellowship (2021).