Doctoral thesisThe Mitochondria–Actin–Translation Hub
A physical coupling of OMM-proximal ribosomes, VDAC1-dependent energy supply and actin dynamics at the cell front that allows local translation of protrusion-enabling mRNAs during migration.
Subhajit Dutta
Cell and molecular biologist working where imaging, computation and cancer meet.
I study how cancer cells organise mitochondria, actin and protein synthesis at the leading edge in order to migrate, and how telomere biology shapes the immune microenvironment of tumours. I pair hands-on molecular cell biology and super-resolution microscopy with variational optical flow, deep learning and large-scale public genomic data.
SD
Now
Doctoral researcher, Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Cell Biology, UKE Hamburg
Next
PhD defence, 3 December 2026
Selected work
Three papers that show the range: a co-first-author mechanism paper, a follow-up on telomerase regulation, and a sole-author computational study of cell migration.
Four questions, one cell
My work runs on two tracks that keep meeting: bench and microscope experiments on how a migrating cancer cell coordinates its organelles, and computational analyses of public genomic, imaging and clinical data at pan-cancer scale.
Telomeres and immunityHow telomere length talks to the tumour microenvironment
Non-telomeric TRF2 binding controls IL1R1 and TERT in a telomere-length-sensitive way, linking telomere state to NF-κB signalling and immune infiltration.
Quantitative imagingFrom actin images to nematic fields
TV-L1 optical flow, orientational order and topological defect analysis applied to live-cell and super-resolution data, with deep-learning pipelines for microscopy.
Pan-cancer computationRegulatory, spatial and immune structure in public data
Sole-author analyses integrating TCGA, DepMap, CPTAC, ENCODE and spatial transcriptomics to find structure that single studies miss.
Path
Research positions and degrees, most recent first.
- 2023 – presentDoctoral researcherUniversity Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), University of Hamburg
PhD in cell and molecular biology. Thesis: cytoskeletal dynamics, organelle coordination and local translation in cancer cell migration. Lecturer in UKE degree programmes (2026); supervised MSc and doctoral students in live-cell imaging, image analysis and cloning.
- 2020 – 2023Senior research fellowCSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, New Delhi
Telomere–immune crosstalk in the tumour microenvironment, TRF2-mediated IL1R1 regulation, TERT gene regulation, T cell ageing, machine learning for telomere length prediction from gene expression.
- 2020Junior research fellowIndian Institute of Technology Jodhpur
Single-molecule opto-genomics for immune checkpoint blockade; single-molecule imaging of T-cell receptor serial engagement.
- 2019Visiting researcherUniversity of Helsinki
Lineage-specific transcription factors in liver cancer, trans-differentiation, next-generation sequencing analysis.
- 2018 – 2019Junior research fellowNational Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhubaneswar
Genetic alterations in gall bladder cancer; graph-based network analysis of tumour angiogenesis.
- 2016 – 2018MSc BiotechnologyBanaras Hindu University, Varanasi
First division, CGPA 8.34/10. DBT Merit Scholarship.
- 2013 – 2016BSc (Hons) BotanyUniversity of Burdwan, West Bengal
Gold medalist, ranked first in the department.