Divya’s interest in biology was inspired in high school when she learnt about the mechanisms of inheritance of genetic information discovered by Mendel and how identical twins with similar genetic makeup can still behave differently due to variable epigenetic regulation of the genome. Later learning that DNA can not only copy but also correct itself only piqued her interest further to understand the mechanisms that regulate genomic stability. Her first experience in research was focused on understanding the molecular origins of ovarian cancer development. She has worked on sorting tumor populations based on proliferative capacity as well as ploidy and tried to correlate the biomarkers for ovarian cancer within the various sub-populations of the tumor. Ovarian cancer is associated with a high mortality rate due to belated diagnosis of the disease. This fact motivated her to develop a mechanistic understanding of the early molecular origins of the disease. Since cancer is intimately associated with genetic abnormalities, she wished to understand the origins of such corruptions in the genome. To this end, in her PhD, she used a single-molecule approach called DNA Combing to understand how DNA damage, aneuploidy and cell-fate commitment affected DNA replication kinetics and the subsequent cell divisions. As a postdoc, she aims to further hone her skill in the field of genomic stability and develop detailed understanding of regulation of DNA repair mechanisms and how they are subverted during development of cancer.
