Akanksha THAWANI

Transposons have a profound impact on eukaryotic physiology, evolution, and disease. LINE-1 is the most abundant and only active transposon in humans, constituting about 17% of the human genome. During her postdoctoral work, Akanksha Thawani overcame challenges in purification, biochemical reconstitution, and structural characterization of the LINE-1 enzyme, unveiling the transposition mechanism of LINE-1. She used cryo-electron microscopy to visualize the LINE-1 transposition process at atomic resolution.

This work provides insights into the mechanism of transposition in the human genome and has significant implications for gene therapy.

She developed the first biochemical reconstitution of transposition in the human genome and also developed quantitative RNA binding and replication assays, a feat that top-tier labs had not accomplished in the past 20 years.

She discovered the identity of a microtubule nucleator that had been elusive for nearly 30 years. Akanksha focused on an essential biological question, namely how chromosomes are reliably segregated during cell division. An essential step is to form a secure microtubule link between chromosomes and the two cell poles, which subsequently pull each chromosome half to a pole. It has remained a mystery how this microtubule connection is established, specifically, how microtubules from a pole can find a chromosome and capture it.

Akanksha Thawani identified that the protein XMAP215 works synergistically with the known nucleator γ-tubulin, elucidating their molecular cooperative mechanism. She studied single-molecule microscopy techniques to observe microtubule nucleation processes. She also utilized her expertise in computational modeling to write her own software to track microtubules at the single-molecule level.

Currently, Akanksha Thawani is working on harnessing eukaryotic transposons to develop enabling technology for site-specific gene insertion in human cells.