Research Journey

I am inspired and intrigued by the nuances and puzzles of nature. I chose a path which gives me the wonderful opportunity to know the natural world, explore it and stay fascinated and charged. I have always been intrigued by the “Origins” problem and with time I developed hypnotic fascination towards “Origins of Life” enigma. This primarily forms the basis of my interest towards Evolution – the magical tour into the complexities of life forms and its enhancement as we move up the hierarchy.

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It was my interest in molecular evolution which introduced me to the hidden and enigmatic worlds of proteins. Proteins are biological workhorses encoded by the one-dimensional code-script, DNA. Protein molecules must adopt a defined shape to be biologically relevant and perform its function. But the journey from a linear chain of amino-acid assemblies (polymers) to a compact 3D structure has remained one of the hardest problems in biophysics and biology in general. And this is what we know as the “Protein Folding Problem”. This understanding stands important as a failure to attend proper shape can make proteins non-functional with deadly consequences like neurodegenerative diseases and Cancer.

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I was deeply intrigued by the Protein Folding Problem and explored it from an evolutionary perspective in my doctoral studies with Prof. Krishnananda Chattopadhyay at CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Biology. My journey to Harvard University was to intensify this evolutionary quest and better understand its implications on some of the hard-pressed biomedical problems like “Emergence of drug resistance”. My Post-Doctoral research with Prof. Eugene. I. Shakhnovich got me introduced to the expanding domains of “Systems Biology” which enabled me to take a more a holistic look at the biological problems.

Please visit “Research Snippets” to navigate through my research interests in more details