Krishnaswamy 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 examines how a set of control genes called the Hox genes oversee the specialisation of muscles and nerves during the development of an embryo. In particular, Krishnaswamy’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.

Krishnaswamy’s contributions have brought international recognition to the National Centre for Biological Sciences in India and he is now Secretary of the Indian government’s Department of Biotechnology. He is also a Foreign Associate of both the US National Academy of Sciences and EMBO, the European Molecular Biology Organization.