Research Groups

Mammalian Biology: Recombinant Gene Products

Research Scientist

Research Interests and Description
Group Members
Group Leader

Anand Ranganathan

International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology
Aruna Asaf Ali Marg
110 067 New Delhi, India

Education

Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, UK, MA (honorary), 1998
Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, UK, PhD (Biochemistry), 1997
Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, UK, BA (Tripos), Natural Sciences, Chemistry, 1994
St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, India, BSc (Hons) Chemistry, 1992

Career History

Since 1999, Research Scientist, Recombinant Gene Products Group, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi, India
1998-1999, Post-doctoral fellow, Department of Biochemistry, University of Cambridge, UK

Teaching Activity

Tutoring activities in the ICGEB PhD Fellowship programme.

Scientific Activity

Research interests include Mycobacterium tuberculosis and novel methods for directed evolution of proteins.
Current emphasis has been towards the “laboratory evolution” of proteins, in particular the invention of a simple molecular approach for generating a multitude of structurally diverse proteins that contained large regions of previously unknown sequences, by randomly combining a set of fourteen DNA-hexamer duplexes, each corresponding to judiciously chosen amino acid pairs. The method can effectively be used in searching for novel structural as well as functional proteins. Efforts are now focusing on utilising this novel approach towards protein evolution in fields that are as diverse as de novo protein design, synthesis of peptidomimetics based on the selection of de novo protein target inhibitors, with a special emphasis on using the technique in order to generate inhibitors for protein targets in pathogenic organisms, especially Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Selected publications

Rao, A., Ram, G., Saini, A.K., Vohra, R., Kumar, K., Singh, Y., Ranganathan, A. 2007. Synthesis and selection of de novo proteins that bind and impede cellular functions of an essential mycobacterial protein. Appl. Environ. Microbiol. 73, 1320-31

Rao, A., Chopra, S., Ram, G., Gupta, A., Ranganathan, A. 2005. Application of the "codon-shuffling" method. Synthesis and selection of de novo proteins as antibacterials. J. Biol. Chem. 280, 23605-23614

Chopra, S., Ranganathan, A. 2003. Protein evolution by "codon shuffling": a novel method for generating highly variant mutant libraries by assembly of hexamer DNA duplexes. Chem. Biol. 10, 917-26.