Sankar Adhya (born 4 October 1937) is a molecular biologist and geneticist at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He is best known for his work on bacterial transcription and the biology of bacteriophage lambda. He has made important contributions regarding the physical basis of transcriptional regulation in bacteria, the lysis/lysogeny switch in lambda phage, the organization of the bacterial nucleoid, and phage therapy.

Life

Adhya was born in Kolkata, India and studied chemistry at the University of Calcutta as an undergraduate. He later obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Calcutta in biochemistry and a second Ph.D. in genetics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Following postdoctoral training at Stanford University, the Bose Institute, and the University of Rochester, he joined the NCI's newly formed Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in 1971. He has remained at the NIH since 1971 and is presently Head of the LMB's Developmental Genetics section.

Awards and honors

Selected publications

  • Adhya, S; Gottesman, M (1978). "Control of transcription termination". Annual Review of Biochemistry. 47 (1): 967–996. doi:. PMID .
  • Irani, M; Orosz, L; Adhya, S (1983). "A control element within a structural gene: the gal operon of Escherichia coli". Cell. 32 (3): 783–788. doi:. PMID . S2CID .
  • Adhya, S (1989). "Multipartite genetic control elements: communication by DNA loop". Annual Review of Genetics. 23 (1): 227–250. doi:. PMID .
  • Merril, C; Biswas, B; Carlton, R; Jensen, N; Creed, G; Zullo, S; Adhya, S (1996). . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 93 (8): 3188–3192. Bibcode:. doi:. PMC . PMID .
  • Merril, C; Scholl, D; Adhya, S (2003). . Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. 2 (6): 489–497. doi:. PMID . S2CID .
  • Oppenheim, A; Kobiler, O; Stavans, J; Court, D; Adhya, S (2005). "Switches in bacteriophage lambda development". Annual Review of Genetics. 39 (1): 409–429. doi:. PMID .