Research Interests

Our group is trying to unravel the molecular mechanisms underlying etiopathology of affective disorders, in particular depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Using relevant rodent models of complex neuropsychiatric disorders, and transgenic, knock out, knock-in, and viral vector-mediated gene targeting approaches, we study how events at the chromatin level affect long lasting neuroglial and behavioral changes. We study how chronic environmental perturbations such as stress and drugs of abuse cause alterations in circuits controlling reward, mood/emotions and cognition, by inducing lasting changes in critical genes via events at the chromatin level i.e. epigenetic mechanisms. Adult neurogenesis gets affected in brain and behaviour disorders and one of the major projects has been to uncover the histone modifications based epigenetic and transcription regulatory mechanisms in the hippocampal dentate gyrus neurogenesis. Our transcriptomic and genome-wide epigenomic investigations have helped us to discover molecular markers and some clues to the etiopathology of brain tumors such as glioblastoma.

Selected Publications

Maitra S, Khandelwal N, Kootar S, Sant P, Pathak SS, Reddy S, Annapoorna P, Murty US, Chakravarty S, Kumar A (2020). Histone lysine demethylase JMJD2D/KDM4D and family members mediate effects of chronic social defeat stress on mouse hippocampal neurogenesis and mood disorders. Brain Sci. 10: 833.

Khandelwal N, Dey SK, Chakravarty S, Kumar A (2019). miR-30 family miRNAs mediate the effect of chronic social defeat stress on hippocampal neurogenesis in mouse depression model. Front Mol Neurosci. 12:188.

Pathak SS, Maitra S, Chakravarty S, Kumar A (2017). Histone lysine demethylases of JMJD2 or KDM4 family are important epigenetic regulators in reward circuitry in the etiopathology of depression. Neuropsychopharmacol 42(4):854-863.

Chakravarty S, Jhelum P, Bhat UA, Rajan WD, Maitra S, Pathak SS, Patel AB, Kumar A (2017). Insights into the epigenetic mechanisms involving histone lysine methylation and demethylation in ischemia induced damage and repair has therapeutic implication. BBA- Molecular Basis of Disease 1863(1):152-164.

Veeraiah P, Noronha JM, Maitra S, Bagga P, Khandelwal N, Chakravarty S, Kumar A*, Patel AB* (2014). Dysfunctional glutamatergic and Gamma-Aminobutyric acidergic activities in prefrontal cortex of mice in social defeat model of depression. Biol Psychiatry 76(3):231-8.