Krishnaswamy (Vijay) VijayRaghavan is a geneticist and developmental biologist who has deepened our understanding of muscle development through studies performed in the fruit fly, Drosophila. He identified the mechanisms that control the nervous system and muscles during development and investigated how they control movement.
He examined how a set of control genes called the Hox genes oversee the specialisation of muscles and nerves during the development of the Drosophila embryo and adult fly. In particular, Vijay's work has contributed to our knowledge of the molecular and cellular steps in the growth of flight muscle. He is now investigating how neural networks are constructed during development and how this leads to the muscle’s ability to produce coordinated movement, Vijay's efforts have brought international recognition to the National Centre for Biological Sciences in India and to Indian science in general. He also was Secretary of the Indian government's Department of Biotechnology and then served as India's Principal Scientific Adviser from April 2018-April 2022. He is also a Foreign member of the US National Academy of Sciences, of EMBO, the European Molecular Biology Organisation and of the American Philosophical Society.
Subject groups
- Organismal biology, evolution and ecology
Evolution
- Health and human sciences
Molecular medicine
- Other
History of science, Public understanding of science, Science policy
- Biochemistry and molecular cell biology
Biochemistry and molecular biology, Cell biology (incl molecular cell biology)
- Microbiology, immunology and developmental biology
Developmental biology, Genetics (excluding population genetics)
- Anatomy, physiology and neurosciences
Development and control of behaviour, Cellular neuroscience
Awards
Blackett and Jagdish Chandra Bose Memorial Lectures
On 'Genes and behaviour: assembling the components for animal locomotion'.
