Research Areas

• Developmental Biology
• Theoretical Biology
• Evolution
• Cell Signalling
• Pattern Formation
• Population Genetics
• Social Behaviour

Research

Prof. Nanjundiah's interests span developmental biology, theoretical biology and evolution, including cell signalling, pattern formation, population genetics and social behaviour.

He was involved in demonstrating that cyclic AMP is amplified and relayed during communication in the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum.

Together with Sharat Chandra, he suggested that genetic imprinting may have co-evolved with sex-determination and gamete dimorphism.

Using a genetic algorithm model, Behera and Nanjundiah showed that phenotypic plasticity could speed up evolution.

Based on experimental findings, he has also proposed spontaneous self-organisation as a basis for cell aggregation in the Dictyostelid amoebae and multicellularity more generally. This work suggests that kinship may not be essential for the origin of cooperation among cells.

Social Behaviour & Multicellularity

Prof. Nanjundiah continues to explore the evolution of social behaviour in microorganisms.

A recent interest is understanding agency, including how agency may shift from individuals to groups and the extent to which group-level agency can be explained as a consequence of physics and chemistry, without invoking natural selection for its evolution.

Teaching

Selected Publications

1. Cellular slime mold development as a paradigm for the transition from unicellular to multicellular life. Nanjundiah, V.
   In Multicellularity: Origins and Evolution, Eds. KJ Niklas and SA Newman.
   MIT Press, Cambridge, USA, 2016.
2. Obaid Siddiqi and the Growth of Molecular Biology in TIFR. Nanjundiah, V.
   Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Indian National Science Academy, 42: 1–7, 2016.
3. Protists and multiple routes to the evolution of multicellularity. Nanjundiah, V., Ruiz-Trillo I., Kirk D.
   In History of Evolutionary Cell Biology, Eds. B Hall and S Moody.
   CRC Press, Boca Raton, 2017.
4. Haldane’s view of natural selection. Rao V., Nanjundiah V.
   Journal of Genetics, 96: 765–772, 2017.
5. Does resource availability help determine the evolutionary route to multicellularity? Hamant O., Bhat R., Nanjundiah V., Newman S.A.
   Evolution and Development, 21: 115–119, 2019.
6. Many Roads Lead to Rome: Neutral Phenotypes in Microorganisms. Nanjundiah, V.
   Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B, 332(8): 339–348, 2020.
7. Interplay of mesoscale physics and agent-like behaviors in the parallel evolution of aggregative multicellularity. Arias Del Angel, J.A., Nanjundiah, V., Benítez, M. et al.
   EvoDevo, 11:21, 2020.
8. Early thoughts on phenotypic plasticity in development and evolution. Nanjundiah, V.
   In Phenotypic Switching: Implications in Biology and Medicine, Eds. H. Levine, M. K. Jolly, P. Kulkarni and V. Nanjundiah.
   Academic Press, London, 2020.
9. Revisiting N.I. Vavilov’s The Law of Homologous Series in Variation (1922). Nanjundiah, V., Geeta, R. & Suslov, V.V.
   Biology Theory, 17: 253–262, 2022.
10. Why study evolution? Nanjundiah, V.
    Confluence, Indian Academy of Sciences, 2023.
    Read publication ↗
11. Ultradian rhythms: Life’s dance to the music of time. Lloyd, D., Nanjundiah, V., Engelmann, W., Johnsson, A.
    Journal of Biosciences, 48, 2024.
    Read publication ↗
12. Reflections on assortative mating, social stratification and genetics. Mayo, O., Nanjundiah, V.
    Journal of Genetics, 103:15, 2024.
13. Agency in the Evolutionary Transition to Multicellularity. Newman, S.A., Benítez, M., Bhat, R., Glimm, T., Kumar, K.V., Nanjundiah, V., Nicholson, D.J., Sarkar, S.
    Quarterly Review of Biology, 100(2): 83–118, 2025.