Adjunct Professor
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
UC Davis Center for Neuroscience
1544 Newton Ct.
Davis, CA 95616
Office phone:  (530) 757-8974
E-mail:  pvchoudary@ucdavis.edu

Dr. Choudary conducts research in neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience and the VA Northern California Health Care System. The research program has two long term goals, i.e., to aid greater understanding of the interplay between molecular and environmental factors contributing to disease etiology and to develop clinically useful biomarkers and novel drug targets consistently measurable in blood, CSF, or saliva.  Dr. Choudary takes the approach of ‘convergent genomics and proteomics’ to glean mechanistic insights into abnormal gene expression patterns observed in CNS disorders.  Gene expression profiling with oligonucleotide microarrays drives gene discovery, while a combination of real-time quantitative PCR, in situ hybridization, differential display, genotyping, and protein quantification platform based on immunodetection technologies (e.g., nanosensors, immunoblotting, and ELISA) facilitates candidate gene validation. Dr. Choudary’s team is also exploring the application of patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) in conjunction with next generation sequencing technologies to identify temporal perturbations in the expression of candidate genes with functional consequences to specific pathways, such as GABA-glutamate signaling, hypothesized to underlie phenotypic heterogeneity in schizophrenia and mood disorders. In a parallel project, Dr. Choudary and collaborators use these tools to gauge the structural and functional integrity of mitochondria in astrocytes in Parkinson’s disease.

B.S., Life Sciences, Andhra University, 1966
M.S., Life Sciences, Bombay University, 1969
Ph.D., Biochemistry, Indian Institute of Science, 1976

Click here to view Dr. Choudary's academic activities from July 2011 through June 2012.