Vidyashree Shivakumaraswamy

I am fascinated by how plants, unlike animals, defend themselves without specialised immune cells and how these immune responses function as a coordinated system across different cell populations. My research focuses on how plant cells dynamically regulate gene expression during plant-pathogen interactions, with a particular emphasis on enhancers- key cis-regulatory elements shaping cell-state specific transcription. I employ csRNA-seq (Duttke et al., 2019) to investigate cell-state specific enhancers by capturing and mapping eRNAs (enhancer RNA) transcribed by active enhancers at multiple timepoints during plant immune responses. I aim to functionally validate these enhancers using high throughput massively parallel report assays (Liu et al., 2020) and the advanced 3D plant tissue imaging technique- PHYTOMap, developed by my host group leader Tatsuya Nobori (Nobori et al., 2023). By integrating this active enhancer dataset with multi-omics data (Nobori et al., 2025), I aim to identify spatially resolved, cell-state-specific regulatory elements that drive plant immune responses. Furthermore, I aim to develop and train a machine learning based model to predict novel cell-state specific enhancers which will be validated using optimised high-throughput reporter assays and the PHYTOMap technique. These findings will refine our understanding of cis-regulatory modules and the core-regulatory networks shaping plant immune cell-state diversity. My scientific vision is to provide a cellular- resolution into understanding of plant immunity, contributing to innovative strategies for engineering disease-resistant and resilient crops in the face of climate change.

Vidyashree Shivakumaraswamy

Bio

Job history

Predoctoral Intern

Doctoral Candidate

MSc Student

MSc Agriculture Sciences

Junior Scientist

Bachelor of Biotechnology Engineering