Asish Kumar Mukhopadhyay

Biography

 Dr. Asish K. Mukhopadhyay is working as at National Institute of Cholera and enteric Diseases, Kolkata since March 2003. After finishing the Masters from University of Calcutta, he started research under Dr. G. Balakrish Nair at the division of Microbiology on the epidemiology, evolution and virulence of Vibrio cholerae, for his doctoral thesis. His thesis research focused on population and molecular analyses of Vibrio cholerae, to gain insights into the interplay between environmental and human disease reservoirs, and genetic factors that make certain lineages of this organism highly virulent to humans. This thesis research contributed to around 25 publications in peer-reviewed journals. After completion the Ph.D., Dr. Mukhopadhyay moved to research with Dr. Douglas E. Berg, Professor of Molecular Microbiology and of Genetics, Washington University School of Medicine at Saint Louis, USA and worked for five years as research associate. He was particularly interested on the genetic diversity, population genetics and genome evolution of Helicobacter pylori and also contributed importantly to our elucidation of mechanisms of susceptibility and resistance to metronidazole, a critical component of combination therapies that are used against Helicobacter pylori. His detailed analysis of virulence-associated genes and house-keeping genes that are under selective pressures showed that Indian H. pylori gene pool is distinct from the Hp gene pools of other parts of the world. His additional studies had contributed importantly to our understanding of the global population dynamics of transposable elements of H. pylori and how they may affect the vigor or virulence of pathogens and Hp genome evolution as well. In addition to the contributions to the Hp field, he performed detailed fundamentally important analysis of CTX prophages and pathogenicity islands in a subset of environmental strains of Vibrio cholerae. Dr. Mukhopadhyay also received training under the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) project for 6 months in 2006 at the Department of Bacteriology, Nagasaki University, Japan with Prof. T. Hirayama on different aspects of vacuolating cytotoxin (VacA) of H. pylori. Under his supervision, four research students are working at present and one has already obtained the doctoral degree and he is the author of 72 research papers on several aspects of V. cholerae and H. pylori. Current research interests of Dr. Mukhopadhyay include diversity, evolution and biology of H. pylori and V. cholerae in the context of molecular pathogenesis, strain evolution and prevention measures. Recently, he has been very successful in adapting Indian H. pylori strains to the murine infection model which will provide further insight into the biological activities of H. pylori virulence proteins and their contributions to bacterial fitness and this holds great promise for functional genomic anlyses of infection and disease processes. Another important pathogen of recent interest is Campylobacter, a significant cause of gastric illness world wide, where the research theme is molecular epidemiology including genomic analysis to provide protected public health.

Research Interest

 Genetics, Microbiology