Meru J. Sadhu, Ph.D.

Stadtman Investigator

Systems Biology and Genome Engineering Section

Head

Systems Biology and Genome Engineering Section

Education

B.S. California Institute of Technology

Ph.D. University of California at Berkeley

Contact Info

BG 49 RM 4A82
49 CONVENT DR
BETHESDA MD 20892

Scientific Summary

NHGRI has a longstanding goal to understand how genetic variation across species affectsbiological processes and phenotypes. Variation in pathogen susceptibility is one of the most important cross-species traits to understand for the purposes of furthering human health, because it is critical for determining which species can harbor diseases that could jump to humans. Genetic variation across potential host species plays an important role in determining a pathogen’s host range, especially variation in host proteins that directly interact with pathogen proteins, such as cell surface receptors and innate immune defense factors. However, most studies characterize these interactions for proteins from only a handful of species. The SBGE section leverages systems biology approaches to understand host range comprehensively, harnessing large-scale DNA synthesis technology and high-throughput yeast screening. Long term, our goal is to leverage this comprehensive view of pathogen host range to further understand how host range evolves over time and across pathogen populations.

Selected Publications

Monge M, Giovanetti SM, Ravishankar A, Sadhu MJ. Highly replicated experiments studying complex genotypes using nested DNA barcodes. G3 (Bethesda). 2025 Sep 3;15(9):jkaf146. doi: 10.1093/g3journal/jkaf146

Chambers MJ, Abdullah M, Sadhu MJ. Ancestral sequence reconstruction analysis indicates the S1/S2 insertion in the SARS-CoV-2 spike gene likely interrupted a codon. Virus Evol. 2026 Mar 16;12(1):veag015. doi: 10.1093/ve/veag015

Iturralde AB, Weller CA, Sadhu MJ. Comprehensive deletion scan of anti-CRISPR AcrIIA4 reveals essential and dispensable domains for Cas9 inhibition. bioRxiv [Preprint]. 2024 Jul 9:2024.07.09.602757. doi: 10.1101/2024.07.09.602757. Update in: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2024 Nov 26;121(48):e2413743121. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2413743121.

Chambers MJ, Scobell SB, Sadhu MJ. Systematic genetic characterization of the human PKR kinase domain highlights its functional malleability to escape a poxvirus substrate mimic. Elife. 2024 Nov 12;13:RP99575. doi: 10.7554/eLife.99575.

Weller CA, Andreev I, Chambers MJ, Park M; NISC Comparative Sequencing Program; Bloom JS, Sadhu MJ. Highly complete long-read genomes reveal pangenomic variation underlying yeast phenotypic diversity. Genome Research. 33(5):729-740. 2023.

Andreev I, Laidlaw KME, Giovanetti SM, Urtecho G, Shriner D, Bloom JS, MacDonald C, Sadhu MJ. Discovery of a rapidly evolving yeast defense factor, KTD1, against the secreted killer toxin K28. PNAS. 120(8):e2217194120. 2023.

Schubert OT, Bloom JS, Sadhu MJ, Kruglyak L. Genome-wide base editor screen identifies regulators of protein abundance in yeast. eLife. 2022 Nov 3;11:e79525. doi: 10.7554/eLife.79525. 2022.

Boocock J, Sadhu MJ, Durvasula A, Bloom JS, Kruglyak L. Ancient balancing selection maintains incompatible versions of the galactose pathway in yeast. Science. 22;371(6527):415-419. 2021.

Bloom JS, Boocock J, Treusch S, Sadhu MJ, Day L, Oates-Barker H, Kruglyak L. Rare variants contribute disproportionately to quantitative trait variation in yeast. eLife. 24;8:e49212. doi: 10.7554/eLife.49212. 2019.

Sadhu MJ, Bloom JS, Day L, Siegel JJ, Kosuri S, Kruglyak L. Highly parallel genome variant engineering with CRISPR-Cas9. Nat Genet. 50(4):510-514. 2018.

Forsberg SK, Bloom JS, Sadhu MJ, Kruglyak L, Carlborg Ö. Accounting for genetic interactions improves modeling of individual quantitative trait phenotypes in yeast. Nat Genet. 49(4):497-503. 2017.

Sadhu MJ, Bloom JS, Day L, Kruglyak L. CRISPR-directed mitotic recombination enables genetic mapping without crosses. Science. 352(6289):1113-6. 2016.

View full publications list

Systems Biology and Genome Engineering Section Staff

Simone Giovanetti

Lab Manager
Systems Biology and Genome Engineering Section

Michael Chambers, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow
Systems Biology and Genome Engineering Section

Mudabir Abdullah, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow
Systems Biology and Genome Engineering Section

Fereshteh Azadeh, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellow
Systems Biology and Genome Engineering Section

Tristan Grieve

Postbaccalaureate Fellow
Systems Biology and Genome Engineering Section

Padraic Gabriel Heneghan, PhD

Postdoctoral Fellow
Systems Biology and Genome Engineering Section

Izabella Mastroianni

Graduate Student
Systems Biology and Genome Engineering Section

Alumni

Dinie Zheng; Postbac (2023-2026); Duke University - Ph. D. Student
Emily Knisely-Durham; Postbac (2024-2026); University of Maryland - Ph. D. Student
Sophie Scobell; Postbac (2022-2024); National Taiwan University - M.S. Student
Annette Iturralde; Postbac (2022-2024); University of Virginia - Ph. D. Student
Cory Weller; Postdoc (2019-2022); NIH Center for Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias – Research Scientist
Apoorva Ravishankar; Postdoc (2020-2022); Amazon – Research Scientist
Molly Monge; Postbac (2021-2023); Weill Cornell, Rockefeller, MSKCC – M.D. Ph.D. Student
Ilya Andreev; Postbac (2019-2021); MIT Biology – Ph.D. Student

Biography

Meru Sadhu is an Earl Stadtman Investigator and head of the Systems Biology and Genome Engineering section at the National Human Genome Research Institute. He obtained his Bachelor's degree from Caltech, and then did his doctoral studies at UC Berkeley with Jasper Rine. For his postdoc, Dr. Sadhu joined Leonid Kruglyak's lab at UCLA, to complement his background in classical genetics with training in quantitative genetics. He developed approaches to apply CRISPR technology to quantitative genetics questions, including using CRISPR to direct recombination, and also to examine in parallel the effects of thousands of specific genetic variants. In 2018 he came to the NIH and formed the Systems Biology and Genome Engineering Section, where he is using high-throughput methods to address important questions in genetics.

Job Openings

Jobs at NHGRI

Postdoctoral Position in Systems Biology and Genome Engineering

Last updated: July 30, 2026