Dr. Puja Yadav (Sharma) did her Ph. D. in Infectious Diseases from Jamia Milia Islamia and Jawaharlal Nehru. She has worked as a postdoc with Dr. Richard Malley, Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston. During her postdoctoral training she worked on study of pathogenesis of streptococcus pneumonia. She then joined the lab of Dr. Nayun Kim at University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, and begun research into understanding the mechanism of DNA secondary structure mediated regulation of genome instability and how transcription influence formation of these structures using the Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model system. Puja Yadav currently working as Assistant professor, department of Microbiology, Central University of Haryana, Mahendragarh, Haryana, India. The primary areas of research in the laboratory are to explore the the following areas: 1. G4 DNA: A Novel Therapeutic Target in Microbes Guanine-rich nucleic acid sequences or G4 DNA are capable of folding into an intramolecular fourstranded structure called a G-quadruplex. There are approximately 37,000 G4 motifs identified in the human genome and some of them have been implicated in recombination events that lead to cancer. Since G4 DNA is an important element in microbial diseases, the long-term goal of our lab to understand the G4 DNA mediated genomic instability in pathogenic bacteria that may lead to disease progression.