CURRICULUM VITAE

Name : R. Sankaranarayanan

Date and Place of Birth : 28^th May 1968, Papanasam Project

Tamil Nadu, INDIA

Sex/Marital status : Male/Married

Nationality : Indian

Address : Office Home

Centre for Cellular and Molecular Type 5 Quarter 6

Biology (CCMB) CCMB Staff Quarters

Uppal Road HMT Nagar

Hyderabad – 500 007 Nacharam

INDIA. Hyderabad - 500007

INDIA.

Telephone : +91 (0)40 2719 (or)2832-2835 +91(0) 40 2717 1504

Fax : +91 (0)40 2716 0252, 2716 0591

E-mail : sankar@ccmb.res.in , sankarfr@yahoo.com

Education:

1990-1996 Ph.D. from Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

1988-1990 M. Sc. in Physics from Madurai Kamaraj University.

1985-1988 B. Sc. in Physics from Madurai Kamaraj University.

Research Experience:

March 2002 – present Senior Scientist and Group Leader at CCMB, Hyderabad.

October 1996 – February 2002 Postdoctoral research with Prof. Dino Moras, Laboratoire de Biologie Structurale, IGBMC, Strasbourg, France.

April 1996 – September 1996 Postdoctoral research with Prof. M. Vijayan, Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

August 1990 – March 1996 Doctoral research with Prof. M. Vijayan, Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Honors and awards:

2009 Received the National Bioscience Award for the year 2008 from the Department of Biotechnology, India.

2008 Received the Endeavour Executive Award from the Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST), Australia.

2007 Editorial board member of the Journal of Structural Biology, an Elsevier publication.

2007 Awarded the Swarnajayanthi Fellowship for the year 2005-06 from the Department of Science and Technology, India.

2004 Elected as a member of Guha Research Conference.

2003 Received an International Senior Research Fellowship (ISRF) award in Biomedical Science for five years from The Wellcome Trust, UK.

1996 ‘Shamrao Kaikini Gold medal and award’ for the best thesis from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

1990 ‘Gold medal’ from Madura College, Madurai for M.Sc. in Physics branch.

Publications:

*Corresponding author(s). If not indicated, the last author is the corresponding author.

Research Articles

Roy, S., Aravind, P., Madhurantakam, C., Ghosh, A. K., Sankaranarayanan, R.* and Das, A. K.* (2009) Crystal structure of a fungal protease inhibitor from Antheraea mylitta. J. Struct. Biol. 166, 79-87.

Arora, P., Goyal, A., Natarajan, V. T., Rajakumara, E., Verma, P., Gupta, R., Yousuf, M., Trivedi, O. A., Mohanty, D., Tyagi, A., Sankaranarayanan, R.* and Gokhale, R. S.* (2009) Mechanistic and functional insights into fatty acid activation in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Nature Chem. Biol. 5, 166-173.

Aravind, P., Suman, S. K., Mishra, A., Sharma, Y.* and Sankaranarayanan, R.* (2009) Three-Dimensional Domain Swapping in Nitrollin, a Single-Domain βγ-Crystallin from Nitrosospira multiformis, Controls Protein Conformation and Stability but Not Dimerization. J. Mol. Biol. 385, 163-177.

Aravind, P., Mishra, A., Suman, S. K., Sharma, Y.* and Sankaranarayanan, R.* (2008) Betagamma-crystallins: A universal calcium-binding superfamily. Protein Science, 17, suppl 1, pg.173.

Ahmad, S., Kamal, M. Z., Sankaranarayanan, R.* and Rao, N. M.* (2008) Thermostable Bacillus subtilis lipases: in vitro evolution and structural insight. J. Mol. Biol. 381, 324-340.

Aravind, P., Wistow, G., Sharma, Y.* and Sankaranarayanan, R.* (2008) Exploring the limits of sequence and structure in a variant betagamma-crystallin domain of the protein absent in melanoma-1 (AIM1). J. Mol. Biol. 381, 509-518.

Goyal, A., Saxena, P., Rahman, A., Singh, P., Kasbekar, D., Gokhale, R. S.* and Sankaranarayanan, R.* (2008) Structural insights into biosynthesis of resorcinolic lipids by a type III polyketide synthase in Neurospora crassa. J. Struct. Biol. 162, 411-421.

Satapathy, A. K., Pavankumar, T. L., Bhattacharjya, S., Sankaranarayanan, R. and Ray, M. K. (2008) ATPase activity of RecD is essential for growth of the Antarctic Pseudomonas syringae Lz4W at low temperature FEBS J. 27, 1835-1851.

Rajakumara, E., Acharya, P., Ahmad, S., Sankaranarayanan, R.* and Rao, N. M.* (2008) Structural basis for the remarkable stability of Bacillus subtilis lipase at low pH. Biochim. Biophys. Acta 1784, 302-311.

Aparna, G., Chatterjee, A., Jha, G., Sonti, R. V. and Sankaranarayanan, R. (2007) Crystallization and preliminary crystallographic studies of LipA, a secretory lipase/esterase from Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae. Acta Cryst. F63, 708-710.

Rao, M. R., Kumari, G., Balasundaram, D., Sankaranarayanan, R. and Mahalingam, S. (2006) A Novel Lysine-rich Domain and GTP Binding Motifs Regulate the Nucleolar Retention of Human Guanine Nucleotide Binding Protein, GNL3L. J. Mol. Biol. 364, 637-654.

Hussain, T., Kruparani, S. P., Pal, B., Dock-Bregeon, A-C., Dwivedi, S., Shekar, M. R., Sureshbabu, K. and Sankaranarayanan, R. (2006) Posttransfer editing mechanism of a D-aminoacyl-tRNA deacylase-like domain in threonyl-tRNA synthetase from archaea. EMBO J. 25, 4152-4162.

Roy, S., Aravind, P., Madhurantakam, C., Ghosh, A. K., Sankaranarayanan, R.* and Das, A. K.* (2006) Crystallization and preliminary X-ray diffraction analysis of a protease inhibitor from the haemolymph of the Indian tsar silkwork Antheraea mylitta. Acta Cryst. F62, 669-671.

Goyal, A., Yousuf, M., Rajakumara, E., Arora, P., Gokhale, R. S. and Sankaranarayanan, R. (2006) Crystallization and preliminary X-ray crystallographic studies of the N-terminal domain of FadD28, a fatty acyl AMP ligase from Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Acta Cryst. F62, 350-352.

Aravind, P., Rajini, B., Sharma, Y. and Sankaranarayanan, R. (2006) Crystallization and preliminary X-ray crystallographic investigations on a bg-Crystallin domain of Absent In Melanoma 1 (AIM1), a protein from Homo sapiens. Acta Cryst. F62, 282-284.

Sachdev, M., Sankaranarayanan, R., Reddanna, P., Thangaraj, K. and Singh, L. (2005) Major histocompatibility complex class I polymorphism in Asiatic lions. Tissue Antigens 66, 9-18.

Dwivedi, S., Kruparani, S. P. and Sankaranarayanan, R. (2005) A D-amino acid editing module coupled to the translational apparatus in archaea. Nature Struct. Mol. Biol. 12, 556-557.

Madhurantakam, C., Rajakumara, E., Mazumdar, P. A., Saha, B., Mitra, D., Wiker, H. G., Sankaranarayanan, R.* and Das, A. K.* (2005) Crystal structure of low molecular weight protein tyrosine phosphatase (MPtpA) from Mycobacterium tuberculosis at 1.9 Å resolution. J. Bacteriol. 187, 2175-2181.

Dwivedi, S., Kruparani, S. P. and Sankaranarayanan, R. (2004) Cloning, expression, purification, crystallization and preliminary X-ray crystallographic investigations on a unique editing domain from Archaebacteria. Acta Cryst. D60, 1662-1664.

Acharya, P., Rajakumara, E., Sankaranarayanan, R.* and Rao, N. M.* (2004) Structural basis for selection and enhanced thermostability of laboratory evolved Bacillus subtilis lipase. J. Mol. Biol. 341, 1271-1281.

Sankaranarayanan, R.*, Saxena, P., Marathe, U., Gokhale, R. S.*, Shanmugam, V. M. and Rukmini, R. (2004) A novel tunnel in mycobacterial type III polyketide synthase reveals the structural basis for generating diverse metabolites. Nature Struct. Mol. Biol. 11, 894-900.

Rukmini, R., Shanmugam, V. M., Saxena, P., Gokhale, R. S. and Sankaranarayanan, R. (2004) Crystallization and preliminary X-ray crystallographic investigations of an unusual type III polyketide synthase PKS18 from Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Acta Cryst. D60, 749-751.

Rajakumara, E., Acharya, P., Ahmad, S., Shanmugam, V. M., Rao, N. M.* and Sankaranarayanan, R.* (2004) Crystallization and preliminary X-ray crystallographic investigations on several thermostable forms of a Bacillus subtilis lipase. Acta Cryst. D60, 160-162.

Chatterjee, S., Sankaranarayanan, R. and Sonti, R. V. (2003) PhyA, a secreted protein of Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae, is required for optimum virulence and growth on phytic acid as a sole phosphate source. Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions 16, 973-982.

Torres-Larios, A., Sankaranarayanan, R., Rees, B., Dock-Bregeon, A-C. and Moras, D. (2003) Conformational movements and cooperativity upon amino acid, ATP and tRNA binding in threonyl-tRNA synthetase. J. Mol. Biol. 331, 201-211.

Caillet, J., Nogueira, T., Masquida, B., Winter, F., Graffe, M., Dock-Bregeon, A-C., Torres-Larios, A., Sankaranarayanan, R., Westhof, E., Ehresmann, B., Ehresmann, C., Romby, P. and Springer, M. (2003) The modular structure of Escherichia coli threonyl-tRNA synthetase as both an enzyme and a regulator of gene expression. Mol. Microbiol. 47, 961-974.

Torres-Larios, A., Dock-Bregeon, A-C., Romby, P., Rees. B., Sankaranarayanan, R., Caillet, J., Springer, M., Ehresmann, C., Ehresmann, B. and Moras, D. (2002) Structural basis of translational control by Escherichia coli threonyl tRNA synthetase. Nature Struct. Biol. 9, 343-347.

Sankaranarayanan, R. and Moras, D. (2001) Solution to the double discrimination problem by the class II threonyl-tRNA synthetase. Med Chem Res. 10, 516-523.

Dock-Bregeon, A-C., Sankaranarayanan, R., Romby, P., Caillet, J., Springer, M., Rees, B., Francklyn, C. S., Ehresmann, C. and Moras, D. (2000) Transfer RNA-mediated editing in threonyl-tRNA synthetase: The class II solution to the double discrimination problem. Cell 103, 877-884.

Sankaranarayanan, R., Dock-Bregeon, A-C., Rees, B., Bovee, M., Caillet, J., Romby, P., Francklyn, C. S. and Moras, D. (2000) Zinc ion mediated amino acid discrimination by threonyl-tRNA synthetase. Nature Struct. Biol. 7, 461-465.

Sankaranarayanan, R., Dock-Bregeon, A-C., Rees, B., Bovee, M., Caillet, J., Romby, P., Francklyn, C. S. and Moras, D. (2000) Zinc ion mediated amino acid recognition by threonyl-tRNA synthetase. Acta Cryst. A56, S-93.

Arnez, J. G., Sankaranarayanan, R., Dock-Bregeon, A-C., Francklyn, C. S. and Moras, D. (2000) Aminoacylation at the atomic level in class IIa aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases. J. Biomol. Struct. Dyn. 1, 23-27.

Sankaranarayanan, R., Dock-Bregeon, A-C., Romby. P., Caillet, J., Springer, M., Rees, B., Ehresmann, C., Ehresmann, B. and Moras, D. (1999) The structure of threonyl-tRNA synthetase-tRNA^Thr complex enlightens its repressor activity and reveals an essential zinc ion in the active site. Cell 97, 371-381.

Prabu, M.M., Sankaranarayanan, R., Puri, K.D., Sharma, V., Surolia, A., Vijayan, M. and Suguna, K. (1998) Carbohydrate specificity and quaternary association in basic winged bean lectin: X-ray analysis of the lectin at 2.5 Å resolution. J. Mol. Biol. 276, 787-796.

Suresh, S., Rani, P. G., Pratap, J. V., Sankaranarayanan, R., Surolia, A. and Vijayan M. (1997) Homology between jacalin and artocarpin from jackfruit (Artocarpus integrifolia) seeds. Partial sequence and preliminary crystallographic studies of artocarpin. Acta Cryst. D53, 469-471.

Sankaranarayanan, R., Sekar, K., Banerjee, R., Sharma, V., Surolia, A. and Vijayan, M. (1996) A novel mode of carbohydrate recognition in jacalin, a Moraceae plant lectin with a b-prism fold. Nature Struct. Biol. 3, 596-603.

Vijayan, M.*, Sekar, K., Banerjee, R., Mahanta, S.K., Surolia, A. and Sankaranarayanan, R. (1996) A three-fold symmetric b-prism fold without internal sequence homology in the structure of the two-chain lectin, Jacalin. Acta Cryst. A52, C-147.

Sankaranarayanan, R., Puri, K. D., Ganesh, V., Banerjee, R., Surolia, A. and Vijayan, M. (1993) Crystallization and preliminary X-ray studies of the basic lectin from winged bean (Psophocarpus tetragonolobus). J. Mol. Biol. 229, 558-560.

Reviews, News and Views articles and book sections:

Gokhale, R. S., Sankaranarayanan, R. and Mohanty, D. (2007) Versatility of polyketide synthases in generating metabolic diversity. Current Opin. Struct. Biol. 17, 736-743.

Sankaranarayanan, R. (2006) A type III PKS makes the DIFference. Nature Chem. Biol. 2, 451-452 (Invited NEWS and VIEWS article).

Sankaranarayanan, R. and Moras, D. (2001) The fidelity of the translation of the genetic code. Acta Biochimica Polonica 48, 323-335.

Sankaranarayanan, R. and Moras, D. (1999) Modular organization of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases. Perspectives in structural biology Ed. Vijayan, M., Yathindra, N. and Kolaskar, A. S. Universities Press (India) Limited, pp 128-138.

Patent:

G. Aparna, R. V. Sonti and R. Sankaranarayanan (2009) A novel plant cell wall degrading enzyme identified using the crystal structure and applications of the enzyme, thereof. (Patent Filed).

Presentations:

Presented an invited talk entitled ‘Evolution of virulence properties using old folds in pathogenic bacteria’ at the International conference on Microbial Biotechnology (MICROCON-2009) held at Panjab University Chandigarh from 3^rd to 4^th March, 2009.

Invited session chair on ‘Protein-Nucleic acid interactions’ at the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) congress and general assembly held at Osaka, Japan from 23^rd to 31^st of August 2008.

Presented an invited lecture entitled ‘Structure-function analysis of enzymes involved in the complex lipid cell wall synthesis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis’ at the joint 4^th AOHUPO (Asia Oceania Human Proteome Organization) and 2^nd PRICPS (Pacific Rim International Conference on Protein Science) held at Cairns Convention Centre, Australia from 22^nd to 26^th June, 2008.

Presented an invited lecture entitled ‘Rational design for enantioselectivity: A lesson from nature’ at the 6^th Temasek Life Sciences symposium on Biotechnology: Innovative applications from basic research held at Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, Singapore from 24-25^th January, 2008.

Presented a plenary lecture entitled ‘Structural basis for proofreading during translation of the genetic code’ in the 76^th SBC (Society of Biological Chemists, India) meeting held at Sri Venkateshwara University, Tirupati from 25^th-27^th November, 2007.

Presented an invited talk entitled ‘Inverting enantioselectivity in modules responsible for enforcing a high fidelity during translation’ at the EMBL, Hamburg, Germany on 14^th September, 2007.

Invited popular lecture on ‘Physics of Living Matter’ on the Indian Academy of Sciences sponsored lecture programme from 19^th to 20^th July 2007 organized by Aurora Degree and PG College, Hyderabad to Graduate and Post graduate students.

Invited as a session chair and to present a talk on ‘Macromolecular Machines’ at the Indo-American Frontiers of Science Symposium at University of California, Irvine from 18^th to 20^th January, 2007.

Presented an invited talk entitled ‘Faithful translation of the genetic code’ in the 75^th SBC (Society of Biological Chemists, India) meeting held at JNU, New Delhi from 8^th to 11^th December, 2006.

Invited talk entitled ‘Inverting enantioselectivity in modules responsible for enforcing a high fidelity during translation of the genetic code ‘ at the RNA group, Ohio State University, Columbus, USA on the 10^th October, 2006.

Presented an invited talk entitled ‘A single residue enantioselectivity switch in a domain enforcing homochirality during translation of the genetic code’ in the International Symposium on Recent Trends in Macromolecular Structure and Function (ISRTMSF) held at Guindy Campus, University of Madras, Chennai from 18^th to 20^th January, 2006.

Invited as a Session Chair and also to present a talk in the ‘21^st International tRNA meeting’ held between 2-7, December 2005 at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Presented an invited talk entitled ‘Structure-function studies on enzymes involved in the complex lipid cell wall biosynthesis of Mycobacterium tuberculosis’ in the Symposium on ‘Tuberculosis Research – An Indian perspective’ organized by Astra Zeneca at Bangalore on the 20^th October, 2005.

Presented an invited talk entitled ‘A novel substrate binding tunnel reveals the structural basis for generating diverse metabolites by a type III polyketide synthase from Mycobacterium tuberculosis’ at IGBMC, Strasbourg, France on 22^nd September, 2004.

Presented an invited talk entitled ‘A novel tunnel in mycobacterial PKS18 reveals the structural basis for generating diverse metabolites’ in the International Conference on ‘Structural Biology at Crossroads: From Biological molecules to Biological Systems’ held at EMBL, Hamburg, Germany from 15^th to 18^th of September, 2004.

Presented an invited talk entitled ‘Exploring the Structural basis of enhanced thermostability in Bacillus subtilis lipase’ in the International Symposium on Recent Trends in Macromolecular Structure and Function (ISRTMSF) held at Guindy Campus, University of Madras, Chennai from 19^th to 23^rd January, 2004.

Presented an invited talk entitled ‘Structural basis of how threonyl-tRNA synthetase acts as a translational repressor and solves a crucial double discrimination problem for a faithful translation of the genetic code’ in the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB), Singapore on the 7^th July, 2003.

Presented an invited talk entitled ‘How Threonyl-tRNA Synthetase Solves a Crucial Double Discrimination Problem to Ensure a High Fidelity During Translation of The Genetic Code?’ in the School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore on the 5^th July, 2003.

Presented a talk entitled ‘Unexpected conformational movements upon substrate binding by the class II threonyl-tRNA synthetase’ in the 4th tRNA Synthetase meeting on "tRNA Synthetases in Biology, Medicine, and Evolution" held at the Asilomar Conference Center, Monterey, California, U. S. A. Janunary 13^th -18^th, 2002.

Presented a talk entitled ‘Solution to the double discrimination problem by the class II threonyl-tRNA synthetase’ in the international symposium on Current Trends in Drug Discovery Research (CTDDR-2001) organized by the Central Drug Research Institute, Lucknow, India, 11^th – 15^th February, 2001.

Presented a talk entitled ‘The fidelity in the translation of the genetic code’ in a meeting on the Molecular architecture of evolution organized by the Polish Academy of Sciences in The Institute of Bio-organic chemistry, Poznan, Poland, 29^th – 31^st October, 2000.

Presented a talk entitled ‘Zinc ion mediated amino acid recognition by threonyl-tRNA synthetase’ in European Crystallographic Meeting (ECM-19), Nancy, France, 25^th – 31^st August, 2000.

Presented a talk entitled ‘Crystal structure of threonyl-tRNA synthetase-tRNA^Thr complex from E. coli’ in the Fifth IUPAC international symposium on Bio-organic chemistry ISBOC-5 held at National chemical laboratory, Pune, 30^th Jan – 4^th Feb, 2000.

Presented a talk entitled ‘Structure of E. Coli Threonyl-tRNA synthetase’ in the 12^th Regio meeting on X-ray crystallography of Biomacromolecules, Strasbourg, France 30^th Sept – 2^nd October, 1998.

Presented a talk entitled ‘Structural studies on Lectins’ in the Asian Regional Seminar on Crystallography in Molecular Biology, University of Madras, Madras, 9^th –14^th December, 1993.