Durga Thakral – Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans

About Durga Thakral

Dr. Durga Thakral graduated summa cum laude as a Barry M. Goldwater and Arnold and Mabel Beckman Scholar from Yale University with concurrent B.S. and M.S. degrees in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. As an undergraduate in the laboratory of Nobel Laureate Dr. Thomas Steitz, she discovered a novel antibacterial compound and earned the highest departmental prize for her work. Prior to attending Yale University, she was a National Merit Scholar and valedictorian of her high school class.

Dr. Thakral then earned M.D. and Ph.D. degrees in Genetics from the Yale School of Medicine. She was selected for the National Institutes of Health-Oxford Cambridge Scholarship as one of four MD/PhD students in the United States. In her final year of medical school, she worked in the Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Biology at the National Institutes of Health. She completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She is currently a Harvard Medical School Clinical Fellow in Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Endoscopy. She studies the small bowel through computational techniques under the mentorship of Dr. Samantha Morris in Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Thakral has mentored many, peers and faculty alike, in computational methods and taught workshops on bioinformatics techniques. She has also led interactive lectures and workshops for middle school girls to inspire them to pursue careers in quantitative fields. For her dedication to service, she was honored with the Yale Community Service Award.

Education

MS in Biochemistry, Yale University
BS in Molecular biophysics, Yale University
MD, Yale University
PhD in Genetics, Yale University

Professional Fields

Milestones and Recognition

Barry M. Goldwater Foundation Scholar
Arnold & Mabel Beckman Foundation Scholar
Yale University Paul Sigler Memorial Prize for Excellence in Scholarship and Research in Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry
Nkansah MK, Thakral D, Shapiro EM. Magnetic poly(lactide-co-glycolide) and cellulose particles for MRI-based cell tracking. Magn Reson Med. 2011;65(6):1776-85.
Hakim A*, Thakral D*, Zhu DF*, Nguyen JB. Expression, purification, crystallization and preliminary crystallographic studies of Rhagium inquisitor antifreeze protein. Acta Crystallogr Sect F Struct Biol Cryst Commun. 2012;68(Pt 5):547-50. *authors contributed equally
Hakim A, Nguyen JB, Basu K, Zhu DF, Thakral D, Davies PL, Isaacs FJ, Modis Y, Meng W. Crystal structure of an insect antifreeze protein and its implications for ice binding. J Biol Chem. 2013;288(17):12295-304.
Zhao S, Bellone S, Lopez S, Thakral D, et al. Mutational landscape of uterine and ovarian carcinosarcomas implicates histone genes in epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2016;113(43):12238-12243.
Thakral D, Tae HS. Discovery of a Structurally Unique Small Molecule that Inhibits Protein Synthesis. Yale J Biol Med. 2017;90(1):35-43.
Wang J, Perry CJ, Meeth K, Thakral D, et al. UV-induced somatic mutations elicit a functional T cell response in the YUMMER1.7 Mouse Melanoma Model. Pigment Cell Melanoma Res. 2017 (in press)
Perry CJ, Muñoz-Rojas AR, Meeth KM, Kellman LN, Amezquita RA, Thakral D, et al.. Myeloid-targeted immunotherapies act in synergy to induce inflammation and antitumor immunity. J Exp Med. 2018. doi: 10.1084/jem.2017143
Thakral D, Liauw, D. The truth the teeth told: The unusual case of a subphrenic mass. Journal of General Internal Medicine. 2022; 37:S529-530.
Thakral D, Stein DJ, Saltzman JR. Diagnosis of occult and obscure gastrointestinal bleeding. Gastrointestinal Endoscopy Clinics of North America. 2024;34(2):317-329.
Micevic G, Thakral D, McGeary MK, Bosenberg M. PD-L1 methylation regulates PD-L1 expression and is associated with melanoma survival. Pigment Cell Melanoma Res. 2018. doi: 10.1111/pcmr.1274
Rahman N, Myer C, Thakral D, Cai W, Chen A, Obaid R, Garcia-Milian R. Peer Teaching as Bioinformatics Training Strategy: Incentives, Challenges, and Benefits. Med Ref Serv Q. 2022. doi: 10.1080/02763869.2022.2020568
Dura B, Choi JY, Zhang K, Damsky W, Thakral D, Bosenberg M, Craft J, Fan R. scFTD-seq: freeze-thaw lysis based, portable approach toward highly distributed single-cell 3' mRNA profiling. Nucleic Acids Res. 2018. doi: 10.1093/nar/gky1173
Zhang X, Halberstam AA, Zhu W, Leitner BP, Thakral D, Bosenberg MW, Perry RJ. Isotope tracing reveals distinct substrate preference in murine melanoma subtypes with differing anti-tumor immunity. Cancer Metab. 2022;10(1):21.
Zhang S, Cai W, Liu X, Thakral D, et al. KDM5B promotes immune evasion by recruiting SETDB1 to silence retroelements. Nature. 2021. doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-03994-2
Damsky W, Thakral D, McGeary MK, Leventhal J, Galan A, King B. Janus kinase inhibition induces disease remission in cutaneous sarcoidosis and granuloma annulare. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2019. doi: 10.1016/j.jaad.2019.05.098
Mittal A, Wang M, Vidyarthi A, Yanez D, Pizzurro G, Thakral D, Tracy E, Colegio OR. Topical arginase inhibition decreases growth of cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma. Nature Scientific Reports. 2021. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-90200-y
Damsky W, Thakral D, Emeagwali N, Galan A, King B. Tofacitinib Treatment and Molecular Analysis of Cutaneous Sarcoidosis. N Engl J Med. 2018;379(26):2540-2546. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1805958