Biography

Dr. Rajan Sankaranarayanan obtained his M. Sc. in Physics from Madura College, Madurai Kamaraj University in 1990 and Ph. D. from the Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1996. He was a postdoctoral research fellow in the Institut de Genetique et de Biologie Moleculaire et Cellulaire (IGBMC), Strasbourg, France from 1996-2002. He joined the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad as a Scientist in March 2002. He has setup a state-of-the-art macromolecular crystallography laboratory in the institute and is carrying out research in the field of Structural Biology. His research interests are in trying to understand intermolecular recognition mechanisms. One major area of focus in his laboratory is in elucidating how very similar substrates are recognized with a high accuracy in order to achieve a faithful translation of the genetic code. The other areas of research in his laboratory includes understanding the structural basis of functional interplay between polyketide synthases and fatty acid synthases in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.