Dr. R. Mahalakshmi Designation:
Associate Professor
Biological Sciences
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal
India
Biography
2014 Sep - Present : Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal, India. 2009 - 2014 : Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal, India. 2008 - 2009 : Postdoctoral Fellow in the Division of Molecular Immunology, La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, La Jolla, CA, U.S.A. 2006 - 2008 : Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Apoptosis and Cell Death Research, Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (previously Burnham Institute for Medical Research), La Jolla, CA, U.S.A. 2003 - 2006 : Ph. D. in Molecular Biophysics from the Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, under the guidance of Prof. P. Balaram.
Research Interest
Cellular life requires chiral biomacromolecules such as proteins to be retained in their native folded state. While evolution has coded specific folding pathways in the protein primary sequence and provided molecular foldases to assist protein folding, an energetically favourable consequence of protein misfolding is aggregation. Protein aggregation is the causative agent for several known neurodegenerative diseases. Membrane proteins are particularly enriched with hydrophobic residues that make them vulnerable to aggregation. Hence, membrane protein biogenesis is a considerably challenging process within the aqueous environment of the cell. Therefore, it is pertinent to deduce the structural, biochemical, and thermodynamic principles that decide the outcome of membrane protein folding versus aggregation, at the molecular level. Simply put, it is important to understand the fundamental mechanism of membrane protein biogenesis.
Publications
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Simona Reina Vanessa Checchetto Rosaria Saletti Ankit Gupta Deepti Chaturvedi Carlo Guardiani Francesca Guarino Mariano Andrea Scorciapino Andrea Magrì Salvatore Foti Matteo Ceccarelli Angela Anna Messina Radhakrishnan Mahalakshmi Ildiko Szabo Vito De Pinto VDAC3 as a sensor of oxidative state of the intermembrane space of mitochondria: the putative role of cysteine residue modifications. Oncotarget 2016 Svetlana Rajkumar Maurya Radhakrishnan Mahalakshmi VDAC-2: Mitochondrial outer membrane regulator masquerading as a channel? FEBS Journal 2016 Muralikrishna Lella Soumya Kamilla Vikas Jain Radhakrishnan Mahalakshmi Molecular Mechanism of Holin Transmembrane Domain I in Pore Formation and Bacterial Cell Death. ACS Chemical Biology 2016
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Svetlana Maurya Radhakrishnan Mahalakshmi Control of human VDAC-2 scaffold dynamics by interfacial tryptophans is position specific. Biochim. Biophys. Acta (Biomembranes) 2016
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Muralikrishna Lella Radhakrishnan Mahalakshmi Engineering a Transmembrane Nanopore Ion Channel from a Membrane Breaker Peptide. The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 2016
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Svetlana Maurya Radhakrishnan Mahalakshmi Mitochondrial VDAC2 and cell homeostasis: highlighting hidden structural features and unique functionalities. Biological Reviews 2017
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Bharat Iyer Punit Zadafiya Pallavi Vetal Radhakrishnan Mahalakshmi Energetics of side chain partitioning of β-signal residues in unassisted folding of a transmembrane β-barrel protein. Journal of Biological Chemistry 2017
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Muralikrishna Lella Radhakrishnan Mahalakshmi Metamorphic Proteins: Emergence of dual protein folds from one primary sequence. Biochemistry 2017
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Bharat Ramasubramanian Iyer Ankit Gupta Radhakrishnan Mahalakshmi Approaches for preparation and biophysical characterization of transmembrane β-barrels Springer Protocols Handbooks 2017
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Muralikrishna Lella Radhakrishnan Mahalakshmi Solvation Driven Conformational Transitions in the Second Transmembrane Domain of Mycobacteriophage Holin. Biopolymers 2017
