Molecular Basis of Genome Dynamics

Biochemistry, Biophysics, Molecular Biology

We try to understand how functions emanate from various protein machines that are involved in diverse genome repair processes. These protein machines are typically made up of several distinct proteins, acting in concert, generally through various changing oligomeric states. The goal is to understand the functional specificity associated with such protein states in relation to changes they induce in DNA, the target of repair. We look at them from various systems from E. coli to human use multiple approaches for discerning the take-homes that are general. In addition, we also study a unicellular plant organism, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, to understand how a whole organism responds to genotoxic stresses and bring about cellular adaptive changes.

Publications

1. Noothi SK, Rao BJ (2009) MutS and UvrD proteins stimulate exonuclease action: insights on exonuclease mediated strand repairs. Biochemistry 48: 7787
2. Krishnan NM, Rao BJ (2009) A comparative approach to elucidate chloroplast genome replication. BMC Genomics 10: 237
3. Krishnan NM, Seligmann H, Rao BJ (2008) Relationship between mRNA secondary structure and sequence variability in chloroplast genes: possiblelife history implications. BMC Genomics 9: 48
4. Nag N, Rao BJ, Krishnamoorthy G (2007) Altered dynamics of DNA bases adjacent to a mismatch: A cue for mismatch recognition by MutS. Journalof Molecular Biology 374: 39
5. Suseendranathan K, Sengupta K, Rikhy R, D'Souza JS, Kokkanti M, Kulkarni MG, Kamdar R, Changede R, Sinha R, Subramanian L, Singh K, Rodrigues V, Rao BJ (2007) Expression pattern of Drosophila translin and behavioral analyses of the mutant. European Journal of Cell Biology 86: 173
6. Moharikar S, D'Souza JS, Kulkarni AB, Rao BJ (2006) Detection of a UV-C induced apoptosis-like cell death process in the unicellular chlorophyteChlamydomonas reinhardtii. Journal of Phycology 42: 423