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Hello there! 👋 I am a Bioinformatics PhD candidate in the McCall Lab at Boston University.
I study the molecular mechanisms and morphological signatures of cell death and clearance modalities using Drosophila melanogaster ovaries as a model system. My research focuses on comparatively modeling gene expression and membrane dynamics in phagoptosis (phagocyte-mediated, non-autonomous cell death and clearance) and starvation-induced cell death, with equal emphasis on experimental and computational techniques.
I work at the intersection of genomics and quantitative light microscopy, and use a variety of experimental techniques such as single-cell RNA-seq, mass spectrometry, and live-cell laser confocal imaging, while also developing novel quantitative machine learning-based methods to collectively analyze these data. I also have a strong background in clinical bioinformatics, population genetics, and evolutionary biology.

R E C E N T . N E W S

April 2024

🗞 New publication! Liu G, Bandyadka S, McCall K. Protocol to analyze 3D neurodegenerative vacuoles in Drosophila melanogaster. STAR Protoc. 2024;5: 103017. doi:10.1016/j.xpro.2024.103017 We demonstrate how to efficiently and reproducibly annotate and perform vacuole volumetry on neurodegenerative brains!
March 2024

🗞 New preprint! Bandyadka, S., Lebo, D.P.V., Mondragon, A., Serizier, S.B., Kwan, J., Peterson, J.S., Chasse, A.Y., Jenkins, V., Calikyan, A., Ortega, A., et al. (2024). Multi-modal comparison of molecular programs driving nurse cell death and clearance in Drosophila melanogaster oogenesis. bioRxiv, 2024.03.12.584558. 10.1101/2024.03.12.584558. We compared apoptotic and non-apoptotic germline death in the fly egg chamber across multiple levels of gene regulation and identified serveral new candidates that uniquely affect oogenesis!
August 2023

🗞 New publication! Elguero, J. E., Liu, G., Tiemeyer, K., Bandyadka, S., Gandevia, H., Duro, L., Yan, Z., & McCall, K. (2023). Defective phagocytosis leads to neurodegeneration through systemic increased innate immune signaling. iScience, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2023.108052

🎤 Invited to give a talk at ASCB Cell Bio 2023 - (December 2023). My talk will be part of the special interest subgroup "Cell Death 2.0: Novel and Diverse Killing Modalities Across Systems"
June 2023

Started a summer internship at ArsenalBio
January 2023

🏆 My mentee Simran Kaur (Boston University BME freshman) awarded her first UROP! She will be investigating the role of microtubules in the membrane-trafficking of V-ATPases.
September 2022

👩‍🏫 Teaching assitant for CAS BI 552 : Molecular Biology with Dr. Ed Loechler
June 2022

🎤 Invited to give a talk at the Boston Area Drosophila meeting - "Alternative Splicing Of Vha100-2 Exon 2 Promotes Non-Cell Autonomous Clearance Of Nurse cells In Drosophila melanogaster Oogenesis"

🪑 Chaired the organizing committee for the Boston University Bioinformatics Program Student-Organized Symposium
April 2022

Presented 2 posters at the 63rd Annual Drosophila Research Conference, San Diego

📜 Bandyadka S , Lebo DPV, Fiszbein A, McCall K, “Characterizing the landscape of alternative splicing events regulating the clearance of nurse cells by non-professional phagocytes in Drosophila melanogaster oogenesis”

📜 Chasse A, Wertheimer M, Bandyadka S, McCall K, “The role of professional phagocytes during cell death in the ovary of Drosophila melanogaster”
March 2022

🗞 New publication! - Hong R, Koga Y, Bandyadka S, Leshchyk A, Wang Y, Akavoor V, et al. Comprehensive generation, visualization, and reporting of quality control metrics for single-cell RNA sequencing data. Nat Commun. 2022;13: 1–9. doi:10.1038/s41467-022-29212-9
January 2022

🗞 New publication! - Klanderman BJ, Koch C, Machini K, Parpattedar SS, Bandyadka S, Lin C-F, et al. Automated Pharmacogenomic Reports for Clinical Genome Sequencing. J Mol Diagn. 2022. doi:10.1016/j.jmoldx.2021.12.001
September-October 2021

👩‍💻 Attended the Deep Learning for Microscopy Image Analysis Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole