iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Very cool! Thanks for putting this together - very helpful in providing a broader context for our work, where we are working to understand the genetic basis for PDE in fungi - a complete loss of one parental nucleus during development before meiosis. elifesciences.org/articles/66234

elifesciences.org

Uniparental nuclear inheritance following bisexual mating in fungi

Discovery of a novel mode of sexual reproduction, termed pseudosexual reproduction, in fungi where both parents are required for mating but only one contributes to the meiotic progeny, similar to hybr...

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Have met a couple of them already and will be getting to know more of them soon! Everyone is happy to help connect with other folks. Also trying to get into their program.

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I will be joining a group of some excellent labs that are very actively working to find new treatment options and have some promising leads in the pipeline.

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Thank you! It's a great place to call home and for science!

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I am immensely grateful to my mentors, supporters, collaborators, family, and friends without whom this would not have been possible. I cannot thank Joseph Heitman, MD, PhD, Kaustuv Sanyal, and Andy Alspaugh for their constant support, guidance, and motivation.

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

The research in my lab will focus on understanding the molecular mechanisms of fungal pathogenesis, with a special emphasis on investigating the cellular and molecular players involved in their growth at human body temperature, allowing them to cause infections.

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I am thrilled to share that I have joined the University of Minnesota Twin Cities as an Assistant Professor as of today. The Yadav Lab will be part of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Minnesota Medical School. #newPI #fungi #InfectiousDiseases www.yadavlab.org

yadavlab.org

Yadav Lab

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Reposted by Vikas Yadav

Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

Extremely excited to present our latest preprint in which we mapped a thermoregulation network that governs virulence in a human fungal pathogen through genetic suppressors, TurboID proximity ligation assay, and functional regulation via domain-truncation alleles. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

A big thanks to your efforts for freezing those isolates and support for the past few months.

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Reposted by Vikas Yadav

Audrey John MD PhD @odomjohnlab.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

The story behind the science…that began like 30 years ago! A reminder to undergrad researchers to keep good notebooks (and freezer logs)! :)

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

Elated to share that this story about an unexpected and important finding is now published @pnas.org www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... These findings have laid a strong foundation for us to now identify proteins critical for cell proliferation at 37°C in a human fungal pathogen.

pnas.org

Calcineurin controls the cytokinesis machinery during thermal stress in Cryptococcus deneoformans | PNAS

Calcineurin is a highly conserved phosphatase that plays a central role in sensing calcium and governing transcriptional, posttranscriptional, and ...

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Reposted by Vikas Yadav

LaBella Lab @lablabella.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social closes out the first session by exploring how Calcineurin drives thermal adaptation in Cryptococcus

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Reposted by Vikas Yadav

bioRxiv Genetics @biorxiv-genetic.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Calcineurin controls the cytokinesis machinery during thermal stress in Cryptococcus deneoformans www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/202…

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Finally, this marks a significant advancement and description of a protein complex that is essential for high-temperature growth in a critical human fungal pathogen.

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Using genetics, we then found that they indeed are interdependent on each other, and alphafold modeling showed a nice complex formation as well.

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

As we looked at these in more depth, things started to become clearer, and we found that they were all involved in cell division. A deep dive into the literature revealed they were all part of a single complex that regulates cytokinesis in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Huge thanks for all this work!

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

I then obtained >50 additional isolates and sequenced all of them. Interestingly enough, We kept on finding dominant amino acid change mutations in three proteins that did not seem related to each other in any way at first glance.

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

This story in some way started >30 years ago when Joe and Audrey Odom, an undergrad at that time in the lab, isolated some mutants that were resistant to calcineurin inhibitors. A dozen of these were frozen and forgotten until about a couple of years ago when I revived and sequenced them.

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

Excited to share my latest paper on the role of calcineurin in cytokinesis in a critical human pathogen. It started with a genetic screen to identify mutants that can provide resistance to calcineurin inhibitors, which took us to a very unexpected place. A short 🧵 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

A postdoc position in fungal pathogenesis and drug resistance mechanisms is available at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in the labs of Bill Steinbach and Praveen Juvvadi. Details here:

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Jessica Brown Lab @brownlabutah.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

The Medical Mycology Trainee Seminar Series is back! Our next seminar is November 14th at 4 pm GMT (5 pm Central Europe Time, 11 am Eastern Standard, 8 am Pacific Standard, 12 am in China). 1/12

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 07/06/2024

A beautiful study that highlights SO MUCH about genome structure evolution with implications on the evolution of pathogenicity. Amazing piece of work led by Marco and Marcia in the Heitman lab in collaboration with Christina Cuomo's team. It comes with the most beautiful figures. t.co/XQj3KLykmv

t.co

Comparative genomics of the closely related fungal genera Cryptococcus and Kwoniella reveals karyotype dynamics and suggests evolutionary mechanisms of pathogenesis

Understanding the different evolution of closely related pathogenic and non-pathogenic fungi can help decipher the mechanisms of pathogenesis. In this study, comparative genomics is used to analyze th...

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 31/01/2024

Our new paper describing an unexpected role of #calcineurin signaling in #RNAi-mediated small RNA production is now out in GENETICS - implying a way to quickly adapt to external conditions by altering gene expression levels. #Fungi #Cryptococcus academic.oup.com/genetics/adv...

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Vikas Yadav @vikasyadavsci.bsky.social · 03/01/2024

Interested in chromosome number or centromere structure evolution? Giant chromosomes and mini-chromosomes? Pathogenicity-specific horizontal gene transfer? Find all these and more in this massive piece of work led by Marco and Marcia (Heitman lab) with Christina Cuomo www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

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