Asif Bakshi

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Asif Bakshi is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Center for Genomics and Systems Biology at NYU Abu Dhabi. He did his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Biochemistry from the University of Kashmir, Srinagar. Asif completed his PhD with Dr. Rohit Joshi in Developmental Neurobiology from the Center for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD), Hyderabad, India. His PhD work focused on understanding how Hox genes interact with temporal transcription factors to regulate the region-specific fate of neural stem cells in Drosophila (fruit fly) Central Nervous System.

Research

Drosophila visual system is an excellent model system to understand how limited neural stem cells generate vast diversity of neurons by integrating spatial and temporal cues during the development. How these developmental programs specify the neuronal identity, their morphology, neurotransmission, and circuitry is largely unclear.

In the Desplan lab at NYU Abu Dhabi, Asif will be exploring how spatio-temporal information in neural stem cells translates into neurons with a distinct identity, and functions in the Drosophilaoptic lobe. He will use single cell RNA-Seq, fly genetics, and confocal microscopy to answer these questions.