B.Sc., Biology. Ferguson College. Pune, India

M.Sc., Plant Biotechnology. Savitribai Phule Pune University. Pune, India

Ph.D., Reproductive Biology & Genomics. Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology. Tübingen, Germany

I am a zoologist and molecular biologist by basic training. I finished my Master’s at the University of Pune in India and during these years I realized that I loved everything about germ cells and early embryonic development.

So for my doctoral studies I moved to Prof. Ralf J. Sommer’s department at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tubingen, Germany. Here, under the guidance of Dr. Adrian Streit, I had the chance of working on many aspects related to the germ line and early development of worms belonging to the nematode genus Strongyloides.

As a postdoc in the Extavour lab, I am looking forward to working on oskar, the coolest insect gene ever. I am interested in looking at the evolutionary origin of oskar and if its function has changed over evolutionary time in insects.

1. Kulkarni A., Dyka A., Nemetschke L., Grant WN and Streit A. (2013) Parastrongyloides trichosuri suggests that XX/X0 sex determination is ancestral in Strongyloididae. Parasitology 140(14):1822-30

2. Kulkarni A., Holz A., Roedelsperger C., Harbecke D. and Streit A. (2015) Differential chromatin amplification and chromosome complements in the germ line of Strongyloididae (Nematoda). Chromosoma July 24, pp 1-12 * Cover Article *

3. Kulkarni A., Lightfoot J.W. and Streit A. (2015) Germline organization in Strongyloides nematodes reveals alternative differentiation and regulation mechanisms. Chromosoma 125(4): 725-45

4. Hunt V., Tsai I. J., Coghlan A., Reid A. J., Holroyd N., Foth B., Tracey A., Cotton J. A., Stanley E., Beasley H., Bennett H., Brooks K., Harsha B., Kajitani R., Kulkarni A., Harbecke D., Nagayasu E., Nichol S., Ogura Y., Quail M., Randle N., Ribeiro D., Sanchez-Flores A., Hayashi T., Itoh T., Denver D., Grant W.N., Lok J.B., Murayama H., Wastling J., Streit A., Kikuchi T., Viney M., Berriman M. (2016) The genomic basis of parasitism in the Strongyloides clade of nematodes. Nature Genetics48(3): 299-307

5. Kulkarni, A. and Extavour, C.G. (2017) Convergent evolution of germ granule nucleators: a hypothesis. Stem Cell Research (in press) PDF of uncorrected proof