Our understanding of most biological processes comes from ensemble studies of the molecules carried out in a tube or using reporters in cells and organisms. Such mechanistic understanding of biological phenomena is complicated by
the heterogeneity among biomolecules (due to modifications or conformational dynamics) ,
the transient nature of interactions (activating action of molecule maybe limited to a fraction of its lifetime) and
the limits on detection of small number of molecules.
How do events taking place at the level of single molecule translate to biologically significant phenomena?
Our lab leads an interdisciplinary research program that aims to innovate and engineer technologies to help understand this basic question. We primarily focus on long-standing questions in infectious diseases caused by positive strand RNA viruses and pathogenic bacteria using single molecule detection, quantitative genomics and high-resolution imaging.
Such understanding of pathogen biology and host-pathogen interactions will help us design new drugs, vaccines and intervention strategies against several infectious diseases including Dengue.
To learn more, please read our research interests.
Our laboratory is located in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. We are also associated with the Centre for BioSystems Science and Engineering at IISc. Directions to the lab can be found here.
Latest Lab News
Harsh presented his thesis colloquium on 'Integrating Computational Tools and Models to Study RNA Virus Lifecycle Dynamics'. (04/2023)
Suraj presented his thesis colloquium on 'Understanding the interplay between immune response and virus evolution'. (12/2022)
Suraj's work on Dengue virus evolution in India wins the Best Poster award at the Virus Genomics and Evolution meeting at the Wellcome Center, UK! (11/2022)
Debdyuti Nandy joins C-CAMP Bangalore as their new Program Manager for Entrepreneurship (09/2022)
Lots of new science at the Biomembranes22 meeting! Satya and a lot of team members presented their new work. (09/2022)
Ratnasri K wins the Best Poster Award at the Biophysical Society Stockholm thematic meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance 2022 (09/2022)
We are excited to have three new group members: Ameena Mohd. (a BSMS graduate from IISER Kolkata), Sridivya Bhagavatula (a MSc graduate from NIV Pune) and Muhsin Chalil (a BSMS graduate from IISER Trivandrum)! (2022)
Latest Publications and Preprints
Suraj and co-workers show how the dengue virus evolution in India is driven by immune selection pressure and interaction between the serotypes. Now accepted at PLoS Pathogens. Read it on BioRxiv! (09/2022)
Our work on using Suspended Lipid Membrane Systems for probing membrane dynamics is now available on the Membranes journal (11/2022)
Check out our first JOVE article on creating crowded lipid bilayers for single-molecule analysis on biomembranes! (07/2022)
Priyanka's preprint on Quantification of nucleic acids using endpoint measurement (qeRPA) BioRxiv (06/2022) [in press: Anal. Chemistry]
A new DNA dengue vaccine designed and developed!! Check out our joint work published in Molecular Therapy with NCBS and other institutes (01/2022)