RESEARCH

RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY (Cryo-EM)

• Structural Virology: Our focus is studying medically relevant bacteriophages' structures and infection mechanisms (Maharana et al. 2025).

COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY (MD Simulation) 

1. NOD-Like Receptor

• Exploring the dynamic properties of NOD-like receptors (NLR) proteins in response to peptidoglycan moieties and adaptor molecules. (Maharana et al. 2015, Maharana et al. 2017a, Maharana et al. 2017b, Maharana et al. 2018, Maharana et al. 2021, Maharana et al. 2026*)

2. ADP-glucose pyrophosphorylase

• Studied the rice AGPase subunit interactions through molecular dynamics to support the development of heat-tolerant rice traits. (Hwang et al. 2019, Maharana et al. 2024)

3. Computer-Aided Drug Design

• Designed and screened novel lead compounds for Mycobacterium tuberculosis proteins using virtual screening and MD simulations (Panda et al. 2025).

• Exploring the structural dynamics of kinase proteins and their interactions with substrates, with the goal of identifying lead compounds that can modulate their activity.

EXPERIMENTAL & COMPUTATIONAL SKILLS

• Molecular Biology – PCR, Molecular Cloning, Site-Directed Mutagenesis, Protein Engineering, Plasmid Construction, Bacterial Cell Culture

• Protein Biochemistry – Recombinant Protein Expression, Affinity/Ion-Exchange/Size-Exclusion Chromatography, SDS–PAGE, GraFix 

• Structural Biology – Cryo-EM, Single-Particle Analysis, 3D Structure Determination, Protein–Ligand & Protein–Protein/DNA/RNA Docking, Molecular Dynamics Simulation

• Bioinformatics & Computational Biology – Sequence Analysis, Multiple Sequence Alignment, Homology Modeling, Protein Structure Prediction, Database Mining, Python (Matplotlib)

• General Research Skills – Data Analysis & Visualization (PyMOL, ChimeraX), Scientific Writing