Ayush Aggarwal

Postdoctoral Researcher
UCSF

Postdoctoral researcher in the field of cancer neuroscience working with Dr David R. Raleigh at UCSF, using big data to identify drivers of meningioma intra-tumor heterogeneity. Learn more.

My PhD at CSIR-IGIB, Delhi, India, focused on skin pigmentation and melanocyte biology, combining computational and experimental approaches to understand melanocyte cell state/lineage transitions. Learn more.

Skilled in computational as well as experimental biology techniques.

Want to see how your favourite gene behaves across multiple melanocyte developmental and functional states? Check out MelDat, a Shiny web application I developed to quickly explore melanocyte related (bulk and single-cell) datasets. You can even visualize your own RNA-seq or microarray datasets and create publication quality figures.

Publications

Aggarwal, A., Youngblood, M., Picart, T., Najem, H., Oten, S., Cady, M., Magill, S., Horbinski, C., Chandler, J., Heimberger, A., Mirchia, K., Hervey-Jumper, S., & Raleigh, D. (2026). Meningioma cell reprogramming and microenvironment interactions underlie brain invasion. Neuro-Oncology, 28(4), 926–938. https://doi.org/10.1093/neuonc/noaf292

Aggarwal, A., Nasreen, A., Sharma, B., Sahoo, S., Aswin, K., Faruq, M., Pandey, R., Jolly, M., Singh, A., Gokhale, R., & Natarajan, V. (2024). Distinct melanocyte subpopulations defined by stochastic expression of proliferation or maturation programs enable a rapid and sustainable pigmentation response. PLOS Biology, 22(8), e3002776. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002776

Subramaniam, Y., Sharma, B., Aswin, K., Nasreen, A., Karmakar, A., Aggarwal, A., Bhatt, M., Ayyappa Raja, D., Gupta, I., Ghazi, M., Sivasubbu, S., & Natarajan, V. (2026). Migration and establishment of progenitor pool of melanocytes is governed by SEMA3E-PLXND1 signaling. Journal of Cell Science. https://doi.org/10.1242/jcs.264893

Braman, B., Aggarwal, A., Nguyen, M., Mirchia, K., Chen, W., & Raleigh, D. (2026). Risk stratification for meningiomas with discordant molecular classification. Acta Neuropathologica, 151(1), 70. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00401-026-03038-x

Sharma, B., Aswin, K., Jain, T., Nasreen, A., Aggarwal, A., Subramaniam, Y., Rengaraju, J., Agrawal, S., Bhatt, M., Paul, B., Chandrasekaran, K., Yadav, A., Soni, J., Ujjainiya, R., Akhter, Q., Pandey, R., Suresh, S., Sampathkumar, S.-G., & Natarajan, V. (2025). Mgat4b-mediated selective n-glycosylation regulates melanocyte development and melanoma progression. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 122(22), e2423831122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2423831122

Sultan, F., Basu, R., Murthy, D., Kochar, M., Attri, K., Aggarwal, A., Kumari, P., Dnyane, P., Tanwar, J., Motiani, R., Singh, A., Gadgil, C., Bhavesh, N., Singh, P., Natarajan, V., & Gokhale, R. (2022). Temporal analysis of melanogenesis identifies fatty acid metabolism as key skin pigment regulator. PLOS Biology, 20(5), e3001634. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001634

Sharma, B., Subramaniam, Y., Ayyappa Raja, D., Aggarwal, A., Sivasubbu, S., & Natarajan, V. (2022). Reverse genetic approach to identify regulators of pigmentation using zebrafish. Journal of Visualized Experiments, (181). https://doi.org/10.3791/62955

Dhawan, U., Bhattacharya, P., Narayanan, S., Manickam, V., Aggarwal, A., & Subramanian, M. (2021). Hypercholesterolemia impairs clearance of neutrophil extracellular traps and promotes inflammation and atherosclerotic plaque progression. Arteriosclerosis Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, 41(10), 2598–2615. https://doi.org/10.1161/atvbaha.120.316389

Oh, S., Abdelnabi, J., Al-Dulaimi, R., Aggarwal, A., Ramos, M., Davis, S., Riester, M., & Waldron, L. (2020). HGNChelper: Identification and correction of invalid gene symbols for human and mouse. F1000Research, 9, 1493. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.28033.1

Raja, D., Subramaniam, Y., Aggarwal, A., Gotherwal, V., Babu, A., Tanwar, J., Motiani, R., Sivasubbu, S., Gokhale, R., & Natarajan, V. (2020). Histone variant dictates fate biasing of neural crest cells to melanocyte lineage. Development, 147(5), dev182576. https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.182576

Grover, R., Burse, S., Shankrit, S., Aggarwal, A., Kirty, K., Narta, K., Srivastav, R., Ray, A., Malik, G., Vats, A., Motiani, R., Thukral, L., Roy, S., Bhattacharya, S., Sharma, R., Natarajan, K., Mukerji, M., Pandey, R., Gokhale, R., & Natarajan, V. (2019). Myg1 exonuclease couples the nuclear and mitochondrial translational programs through RNA processing. Nucleic Acids Research, 47(11), 5852–5866. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkz371

Contact

The Raleigh Laboratory
UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, 1450 3rd Street, Mission Bay, San Francisco 94158