Denethi Wijegunawardana

Denethi is a PhD student affiliated with the Department of Neuroscience and Genetics. She earned her bachelor's degree from The Ohio State University in 2019.

She then joined Dr. Pallavi Gopal's lab at Yale where her research uncovered complex interactions between TDP-43 and Ataxin-2, RNA-binding proteins implicated in ALS. She found that Ataxin-2 polyQ expansions aberrantly sequester TDP-43, disrupt dynamic properties, perturb transport of TDP-43 ribonucleoprotein (RNP) condensates along axons and increase the propensity for pathologic transformation within RNA-protein assemblies. She discovered that translation was suppressed in neurons expressing polyQ expansions providing mechanistic insights into the distal axonopathy associated with neurodegeneration leading to the conclusion that Ataxin-2 polyQ expansions have detrimental effects on stability, localization, and translation of transcripts critical for axonal and cytoskeletal integrity.

Currently, as a graduate student in Dr. Junjie Guo's lab, she is developing organoid and stem cell models of neurodegeneration. She aims to identify RNA risk factors that may unify age-related neurodegenerative diseases. Working with Suzhou Yang, they discovered the mechanism by which an intronic nucleotide repeat expansion (NRE) in the C9ORF72 gene may encode toxic dipeptide repeat proteins in ALS and frontotemporal dementia (FTD).

Outside of the lab, Denethi is an avid table tennis player, skier, salsa dancer and painter. She also enjoys mentoring undergraduate and postgraduate students.