Vijay Subramanian

I am Vijay Subramanian. I am pursuing a final-year BS-MS Dual Degree from IISER Pune. I joined Anand Srivastava's Lab in May 2023. 

As a Master's thesis student, I'm intrigued by the world of proteins, particularly the metamorphic proteins class. It is commonly thought that each globular protein has a single 3D structure (or fold) that fosters its function. In contrast, recent studies have identified several fold-switching proteins whose secondary structures can be remodelled under native conditions or in response to cellular stimuli. An interesting class of protein sequences, which are called Metamorphic proteins or fold-switcher proteins, are those proteins that have more than one stable three-dimensional structure. These proteins can inter-convert between their two stable folds, which allow them to carry out two different functions.

Currently, my focus is on developing a classifier capable of predicting the metamorphic behaviour of proteins based solely on their amino acid sequences. This ambitious project is a bit challenging but it allows me to integrate statistical learning techniques and bioinformatics to hopefully enhance our current understanding of metamorphic proteins. I aim to make a meaningful contribution to the field of science.