Membranes in a cell are primarily made of lipid bilayer. It is believed that the membrane actively controls its curvature and composition to influence cellular processes such as signaling between proteins, sorting of proteins and lipids, adhesion. We have developed mechanics-thermodynamics based models for such curvature sorting of proteins in a biophysical system consisting of a cylindrical membrane tube connected to a giant lipid bilayer vesicle.

In recent years, we have started investigating the interaction of a class of synthetic molecules (of a collaborator) known as Sequence-defined oligomers (SDOs), with the lipid bilayer membrane of cell membrane mimicking giant unilamellar vesicles (GUV). SDOs are the macromolecules in which sequence of these monomers is precisely controlled. Proteins, peptides, and nucleic acids are some of the examples for natural sequence defined molecules. 

This work is in collaboration with Mintu Porel group at IIT Palakkad, a library of SDOs have been synthesized and best candidates for antimicrobial activity are being identified. These SDOs have the significant antimicrobial activity as well as selectivity and have potential to replace the natural peptide based antimicrobial drug. However, their interaction with membrane has not been systematically investigated. A systematic and thorough investigation of the interactions of SDOs and membranes is the main focus.

The flow of granular materials such as sand, snow, and coal is a common occurrence in nature and industries. In nature, they occur as avalanches of granular snow, rock debris slides, and in planetary rings. In industries, they occur in the pharmaceutical, mining and polymer processing areas. Also, in energy production industries we can see the flow of granular media in fluidized beds. Unlike standard fluids or elastic solids, these materials lack a well-understood theoretical foundation. Despite the importance of granular materials, their mechanics are not well understood at present.

We apply the kinetic theory developed for rapid granular flows, extended to include the velocity correlations along with more realistic features such as soft and frictional particles to use the constitutive equations obtained from it for studying the flow behavior of granular particles through various geometries. One of the simplest examples of granular flow is the flow of particles through a planar vertical channel with parallel bumpy walls and axisymmetric vertical pipe. These geometries are analogous and form the basis for those used in different industrial applications such as the transportation of granular materials through vertical pipes in handling and processing bulk powders.

In mechanics, how the adhesion influences the physical behavior of thin structures like vesicles and cells is not explored well. Our main aim here is the modeling of adhesion of soft structures (not just limited to biological membranes) that can deform and rotate by large amounts. Adhesion of thin structures like beams is significant in applications like Micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) devices, in modeling behavior of natural biological adhesives, and in designing bio-inspired structures.

Indentation of non-adhesive beams have been investigated extensively over the years. In contrast, there are fewer studies on the indentation of adhesive elastic beams. Recently, we investigated the indentation of adhesive non-adhesive geometrically exact (GE) beams. Ongoing work in this topic includes the extension to contact/adhesion of geometrically exact shells. Our study will find use in many other areas such as contact of polymers, thin optical fibers, design of novel adhesives.

Small molecule inhibitors derived from natural products represent a rich and diverse pool of bioactive compounds with significant therapeutic potential. Their unique chemical structures and potent biological activities make them valuable candidates for drug discovery and development across various disease area as they interact with specific molecular targets with high affinity and selectivity. It has also been established that semisynthetic compounds with slight alterations to their parent natural products' chemistry have better biological activity and pharmacokinetics with fewer adverse effects. So, our group is interested in developing natural product-based small molecule inhibitors for specific molecular targets for various diseases. 

Natural products, being a bedrock for the discovery of new drugs, our  research group are more inclined to study the pharmaceutical benefits of natural product based polyphenols as well as enhancing its therapeutic effects by synthetically modifying its structure. Single drug and single therapeutic effect and side effects often limits the drug effectiveness in treating multifactorial diseases such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular diseases and so on. Thus, we make use of the advantages of natural products (polyphenols) to get a multimodal drug that can target multiple factors behind the diseases to get most potent therapeutic agents without any cytotoxicity.

Protein acetylation is an essential and common post-translational modification (PTM) that occurs on the ɛ-amine of lysine side chains of various cellular proteins. This modification plays a crucial role in regulating many biological processes, such as genome stability, transcription, protein function, and cellular metabolism, which makes it a promising target for further investigation. The proteins that undergo this modification include chromosomal histone proteins and non-histone proteins. Two classes of enzymes that regulate the process are histone acetyltransferases (HATs), which promote lysine acetylation, and histone deacetylases (HDACs), which promote deacetylation of the protein. Due to their PTM effect, HDACs are associated with various metabolic disorders and diseases such as cancer, neurodegeneration, inflammation, etc. Our research group is interested in regulating the activity of HDAC enzymes by developing isoform-specific HDAC inhibitors, which could be a potent drug for treating cancer, inflammation, neurodegenerative diseases, etc. 

Bacterial infections are increasingly concerning the public, with a large number of people affected each year. The emergence of antimicrobial resistance has exacerbated the issue. There is an urgent need for novel antibacterial agents to combat these deadly bacteria. We are interested in exploring compounds based on natural products, by chemically transforming them to biologically active molecules that are less susceptible to bacterial resistance.

Chemoproteomics is an interdisciplinary field that merges the principles of Chemistry and Proteomics to study the interactions between small molecules, typically drugs or drug candidates, and proteins within living systems. This approach involves the use of chemical probes or small molecule inhibitors to selectively target and label specific proteins or protein families within complex biological samples. By employing techniques such as mass spectrometry and affinity chromatography, Chemoproteomics enables the systematic profiling and identification of protein targets, elucidating their roles in cellular pathways and disease processes. This comprehensive understanding of protein-drug interactions facilitates the rational design and optimization of therapeutics, offering insights into drug mechanism of action, efficacy, and toxicity. Bioorthogonal probes, have been developed based on bioorthogonal reactions which is widely used in chemoproteomics to address a wide range of biological problems such as identification of on- and off-targets, elucidation of protein binding partners, protein-protein interactions, protein post-translational modifications, etc. Our group is also interested in developing bioorthogonal probes for natural compounds to understand their mode of action by utilizing the famous Cu(I) catalyzed alkyne-azide click reactions-based chemoproteomics approach.

Mechanical cues in the cellular micro-environment play pivotal role in several important biological processes. The rigidity of the substrate has been shown to dictate the cellular morphology through the reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton. Substrates with spatially varying rigidity are most often used to investigate the coupling of the substrate rigidity and intracellular mechanosensing machinery. Here, we present a simple yet effective method for producing hydrogel substrates with a tunable rigidity gradient. Using atomic force microscopy and epifluorescence microscopy, we have characterized the substrate in terms of rigidity. Furthermore, we have investigated the cellular response on these substrates with spatially varying rigidity. 

Active particles are capable of taking up energy from the surroundings and perform directed motion. Biological active particle like bacteria and sperms are always seen in confined environments. We study the active Brownian dynamics of such active particle like E Coli bacterium inside soft confinements. Giant unilamellar vesicles are lipid bilayers in an enclosed structure, commonly used to mimic cell membrane are used as the soft confinement for our studies.