TEESTA NASKAR
Postdoctoral Fellow
My long term research interests involve the development of a comprehensive understanding of how individuals’ genetic makeup manifests phenotypic differences.
After completing bachelors and masters in Microbiology, I started working on genetics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) at Manovikas Kendra, Kolkata, India. While working with autistic patient, I found that like social and communication problem, language and speech production is another vast area to look upon. Not only for ASD but many other psychiatric disorder have a common characteristics of disability in mastering linguistic skill. I became interested to know more about genetic basis of language development, how genetic architecture directs the development of languages or other higher human specific cognitive skill like reading, writing and how and why this skill affected for several disability. This interest motivated me to pursue my doctoral study (PhD) on investigating genetic predisposition to dyslexia at the University of Calcutta and the National Brain Research Centre (NBRC), India. During my PhD, I found an indication of potential role of protocadherin gamma (PCDHG) gene cluster in the evolution of human specific cognitive skill critical to reading, as the discovery of novel association of PCDHG genes with dyslexia came along and I was trawled into the frontiers of genetic research. The amazing fact of human evolution integrates with neural and molecular mechanism, made me astonished and interested to work on deciphering the underlying genetic story in many diseases and disabilities. With this endeavor I have joined Chakravarti lab as part of collaboration between the Centre for Human Genetics and Genomics and the department of Opthalmogy at New York University School of Medicine.
PUBLICATIONS
- Naskar T, Faruq M, Banerjee P, Khan M, Midha R, Kumari R, Devasenapathy S, Prajapati B, Sengupta S, Jain D, Mukerji M, Singh NC, Sinha S. Ancestral Variations of the PCDHG Gene Cluster Predispose to Dyslexia in a Multiplex Family. EBioMedicine. 2018, 28:168-179. doi:10.1016/j.ebiom.2017.12.031
- Subhashree D, Midha R, Naskar T, Mehta A, Prajapati B, Ummekulsum M, Sagar R, Singh NC, Sinha S, A pilot Indian family-based association study between dyslexia and Reelin pathway genes, DCDC2 and ROBO1, identifies modest association with a triallelic unit TAT in the gene RELN, Asian Journal of Psychiatry 2018, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2018.08.020
