Ongoing Research
- Structural and mechanistic studies on proteins that form the Staphylococcus aureus degradosome complex
- Staphylococcal RNase J paralogues require a metal co-factor for catalysis. A. RNase J1 has two metal ions at the active site. These bound metal ions could be modelled in the (2mFo-DFc) experimental electron density map at 5 σ level. Only one metal ion could be modelled at the active site of RNase J2. Modelling of these metal ions in the experimental electron density maps was guided by anomalous difference density calculations. B. The X-ray fluorescence scan of a RNase J1 crystal and C. A RNase J2 crystal confirms the presence of Mn2+ as the bound metal cofactor.
- Understanding the expression profile in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The human pathogen, M. tuberculosis has only one ribosomal ENA operon making an efficient transcription mechanism a necessity. Multiple transcription initiation factors (s factors) govern the expression profile . An on-going research theme is to understand sequence-structure-functional correlation in these transcription initiation factors. An illustrative example is that of M. tuberculosis σA
- Synthetic Microbiology-Design and alterations in a microbial chassis for the production of diverse chemicals.