UCLA Neuroscience Program Ph.D. Admissions Neuroscience Faculty UCLA and Beyond  



Suraj Bhat
Molecular Genetics of the Development of the Vertebrate Visual System

Email Address:  bhat@jsei.ucla.edu

Work Address:
100-Stein Plaza, JSEI
100-Stein Plaza, JSEI
Phone Numbers:
310 794 2144 Phone Numbers:
310 -825- 9544 Laboratory
310-825-9543 Office

Selected Publications:

Bhat, SP Transparency and non-refractive functions of crystallins--a proposal.. Experimental eye research. . 2004; 79(6): 809-16.
Bhat SP, Rayner SA, Chau S and Ariyasu RG: Pax-6 in post-hatch chick retina during and recovery from Form-Deprivation Myopia. Dev. Neurosci. 2004; 26: 328 - 335.
Somasundaram T and Bhat SP: Developmentally Dictated Expression of Heat Shock Factors and Specific Interaction of the AlphaB-crystallin Heat Shock Promoter with HSF4. The Journal of biological chemistry. 2004; 279: 44497-44503 .
Gangalum RK, Schibler MJ, Bhat SP. Small heat shock protein alphaB-crystallin is part of cell cycle-dependent Golgi reorganization.. The Journal of biological chemistry. . 2004; 279(42): 43374-7.
Somasundaram T and Bhat SP: Canonical heat shock element in the aB-crystallin gene shows tissue-specific and developmentally controlled interactions with heat shock factor.. J. Biol. Chem. 2000; 275: 17154-17159.
Bhat, SP, Hale, IL, Matsumoto B and Elghanayan D. Ectopic Expression of aB-crystallin in Chinese Hamster Ovary cells suggests a nuclear role for this protein.. Eur. J. Cell. Biol. 1999; 78: 143-150.
Bhat, SP Rayner, SA Huang, CM Ariyasu, RG Quantitative estimation of RNA transcripts suggests persistence of Pax-6 expression in the postembryonic chick retina.. Developmental neuroscience. . 1999; 21(2): 140-6.
Research Interest:

The Vision Molecular Biology Laboratory studies regulation of specific gene expression during differentiation and development of the vertebrate eye. Our focus is on the development of the lens and the retina. This involves isolation and characterization of genes and gene products, identification of the attendant regulatory elements and study of the regulatory controls in both in vivo and in vitro systems with manipulated gene sequences. Two areas of research currently under investigation are: 1). Molecular basis of the differential expression of the gene for the chaperone-like protein aB-crystallin, that shows elevated levels in Alzheimer’s disease. At the present time we are studying the developmental and tissue-specific control of the heat shock promoter of the aB-crystallin gene and the biological function of its gene product. These studies encompass characterization of the transcriptional machinery (specific transcription factors/regulatory sequences) in the differentiating lens fiber cells, brain and cardiac tissues. 2). Molecular biological investigations into understanding the growth of the eye globe, its local control and its relationship to neurogenesis in the inner retina. These studies involve isolation and characterization of the developmentally regulated genes in the developing vertebrate retina.