Research Interests:

Ionotropic glutamate receptors (iGluRs) mediate 60% of excitatory neurotransmission in the central nervous system (CNS). They are encoded by 18 genes in vertebrates that assemble as tetrameric cation channels with distinct functional properties into four groups, namely; AMPA (?-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxalolepropionic acid), NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartic acid), Kainate and Delta families. Their dysfunction is linked to a number of neurological disorders such as autism, epilepsy, schizophrenia, psychiatric disorders, and pain. Our group primarily focuses on the kainate and delta receptor families. On the one hand, we intend to elucidate the molecular underpinnings of receptor assembly, gating, and modulation; on the other hand, we are interested in deciphering the architecture of native, heteromeric receptors and their complexes with auxiliary proteins.

We employ a multipronged approach that includes single-particle cryo-electron microscopy, X-ray crystallography, electrophysiology, and a host of biophysical and biochemical techniques to gain insights into how iGluRs work and are modulated by their cognate auxiliary proteins to affect synaptic neurotransmission and plasticity.

Google Scholar Link

Selected Publications

Dhingra S, Chopade PM, Vinnakota R, Kumar J. Functional Implications of the Exon 9 Splice Insert in GluK1 Kainate Receptors. eLife 2023 12: RP89755, https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.89755.1

Kumar J, Popescu GK, Gantz SC. GluD receptors are functional ion channels. Biophys J. 2023 Jun 20;122(12):2383-2395. doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2023.05.012.

Vinnakota R, Dhingra S, Kumari J, Ansari MY, Shukla E, Nerkar MD, Kumar J. Role of Neto1 extracellular domain in modulation of kainate receptors. Int J Biol Macromol. 2021 Oct 8;192:525-536. doi: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2021.10.001.

George B, Assaiya A, Roy RJ, Kembhavi A, Chauhan R, Paul G, Kumar J*, Ninan SP*. CASSPER is a semantic segmentation-based particle picking algorithm for single-particle cryo-electron microscopy. Commun Biol. 2021 Feb 15;4(1):200. doi:/10.1038/s42003-021-01721-1 (*Corressponding authors)

Kumari J, Bendre AD, Bhosale S, Vinnakota R, Burada AP, Tria G, Ravelli R, Peters PJ, Kumar J. Structural dynamics of the GluK3-kainate receptor neurotransmitter binding domains revealed by cryo-EM. Int J Biol Macromol. 2020 Apr 15; 149:1051–8.

Burada AP, Vinnakota R, Kumar J. Cryo-EM structures of the ionotropic glutamate receptor GluD1 reveal a non-swapped architecture. Nat Struct Mol Biol. 2020 Jan;27(1):84-91. doi: 10.1038/s41594-019-0359-y.