To arrive at a decision, organisms must measure multiple environmental signals and interpret them appropriately. The questions the Ramanathan lab is interested in include how cells and organisms interpret their environment, how this interpretation depends on prior experiences, as well as the spatial, temporal modulation and the statistics of environmental cues. We want to achieve a quantitative understanding of the underlying signaling and transcriptional circuits that lead to discrete decisions.

Since our goal is to uncover general design principles of the circuits that underlie decision making, our lab works on several model systems. We work on circuits that make developmental decisions in mouse and human stem cells and behavioral decisions in the worm C. elegans. We are also developing several new optical and micro-fluidic techniques to interrogate the dynamics of signaling and transcriptional networks in single cells.