K. V Venkatesh

Biography

B.Tech. I.I.T. Madras, 1989 Ph.D., Purdue University, 1993

Research Interest

Biosystems EngineeringGiven the explosion and availability of biological data, computational analysis in Biological sciences has become a necessity. There is hope that this will increase applications in biotechnology, resulting in a strong need for quantification of biological systems. Biological systems are highly interconnected and hierarchical with unique structures, which are being discovered by molecular biologists. Our group is interested in developing novel computational and theoretical methods to analyze biological structures and interpret the massive volumes of data generated by experiments. We are specifically looking at Genetic switches, Metabolic regulation, and Signal transduction systems. Flux analysis Organisms screened from nature are typically optimized for growth. Quantification of metabolic network of an organism will help to engineer metabolism for a specific end use. Techniques like metabolic flux analysis and elementary mode analysis can be used to optimize production of chemicals at the cellular level. We are using such techniques to optimize diacetyl production from L. casei. We have used flux analysis to illustrate the existence of GABA shunt in A. niger. Currently, we are trying to link flux analysis to microbial growth models. Such models will help in optimizing the performance and operation of bioprocesses. For example, we have attempted to develop optimal feed strategy to operate simultaneous saccharification and fermentation of starch in a fed-batch mode using structured models. Bioreaction EngineeringKinetics for cell growth and product formation is essential for bioprocess quantification and reactor design. We have developed an optimal model to characterize growth kinetics of organisms on multiple substrates. The model can be extended to represent growth on complex media. The model assumes that the cells grow optimally on multiple substrate and have evolved controls to maximize growth Food EngineeringMultiphase transport plays an important role in food processing. In our lab we are interested in two aspects, application of multiphase transport to (i) dehydration of biological material and (ii) Controlled atmosphere and modified atmosphere storage of foods.