My Story
Tolka studied biotechnology at the IIT Madras, India, earning combined BTech and MTech degrees in 2015. He then completed his Ph.D. in biomedical sciences at UT Health/MD Anderson in 2023. Tolka’s Ph.D. was on meiotic DNA repair, where he delineated two key steps of DNA repair that were previously unknown to occur in mammals. He became interested in molecular mechanisms that govern evolution and their applications in aging and disease, and he joined the Zanders lab in 2023 as a postdoctoral researcher.
Tolka is interested in the evolution of genes within the context of their genomes, their contribution to health, and the evolution of gene regulatory networks across evolutionary time. He wants to use high throughput screens to study how fundamental processes like DNA repair and DNA replication may play a role in the evolution of genes and genomes.
When he is not in lab, he dabbles in a bit of music, cooking, baking, biking, hiking, and glass blowing.
Publications
Premkumar T, Paniker L, Kang R, Biot M, Humphrey E, Destain H, Ferranti I, Okulate I, Nguyen H, Kilaru V, Frasca M, Chakraborty P, Cole F. Mol Cell. 2023 Aug 17;83(16):2941-2958.e7. doi: 10.1016/j.molcel.2023.07.022. PMID: 37595556; PMCID: PMC10469168.
Toraason E, Horacek A, Clark C, Glover ML, Adler VL, Premkumar T, Salagean A, Cole F, Libuda DE. Curr Biol. 2021 Apr 12;31(7):1508-1514.e5. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.03.008. Epub 2021 Mar 18. PMID: 33740427; PMCID: PMC8189575.
Bae N, Gao M, Li X, Premkumar T, Sbardella G, Chen J, Bedford MT. J Biol Chem. 2017 Dec 22;292(51):20808-20817. doi: 10.1074/jbc.M117.814913. Epub 2017 Oct 23. PMID: 29061846; PMCID: PMC5743059.
Vélez-Cruz R, Manickavinayaham S, Biswas AK, Clary RW, Premkumar T, Cole F, Johnson DG. Genes Dev. 2016 Nov 15;30(22):2500-2512. doi: 10.1101/gad.288282.116. PMID: 27940962; PMCID: PMC5159665.
