Rate My Professor Sureshkumar Balasubramanian

Professor Sureshkumar Balasubramanian is a Professor in the School of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science at Monash University, a position he has held since 2021 after serving as Associate Professor there from 2011 to 2021. He concurrently held the ARC Future Fellowship and Larkins Fellowship at Monash University from 2011 to 2015. Prior roles include Senior Lecturer and ARC Future Fellow at the School of Biological Sciences, University of Queensland in 2011, and Lecturer at the same institution from 2007 to 2010. Balasubramanian completed his postdoctoral training as an EMBO Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tuebingen, Germany, from 2002 to 2007. He obtained his Dr.sc.nat (PhD) in Plant Biology from the University of Zurich in 2002, with a thesis entitled 'Molecular Genetic Analysis of Nozzle, a Gene Involved in Pattern Formation and Growth in Arabidopsis thaliana.' His earlier qualifications are an MSc in Biochemistry from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in 1994 and a BSc in Biochemistry from Bharathiar University in 1992.

As Head of the Phenotypes to Genes and Mechanisms Research Group at Monash University, Balasubramanian's research centers on the molecular basis of thermomorphogenesis—the morphological changes in plants in response to temperature variations—using Arabidopsis thaliana as a model and exploring epigenetic regulation; the mechanisms of epigenetic gene silencing induced by triplet repeat expansions, establishing an Arabidopsis model relevant to human disorders like Friedreich ataxia; and deciphering the splicing code in eukaryotes, including development of tools like SpliSER for quantifying splice-site usage from RNA-seq data. Key publications include the discovery of repeat expansion in Arabidopsis (Sureshkumar et al., Science, 2009), 'RNA-Dependent Epigenetic Silencing Directs Transcriptional Downregulation Caused by Intronic Repeat Expansions' (Eimer et al., Cell, 2018), 'POWERDRESS-mediated histone deacetylation is essential for thermomorphogenesis in Arabidopsis thaliana' (Tasset et al., PLoS Genetics, 2018), 'Nonsense-mediated mRNA decay modulates FLM-dependent thermosensory flowering response in Arabidopsis' (Sureshkumar et al., Nature Plants, 2016), 'Thermomorphogenesis' (Casal and Balasubramanian, Annual Review of Plant Biology, 2019), and 'Quantifying splice-site usage: a simple yet powerful approach to analyze splicing' (Dent et al., NAR Genomics and Bioinformatics, 2021). His interdisciplinary work integrates genetics, biochemistry, evolution, molecular biology, and computational biology, advancing knowledge on phenotypic variation, plant adaptation to climate, and genetic disease mechanisms.