LABORATORY OF SMALL MOLECULES & MACROMOLECULAR CRYSTALLOGRAPHY

Research

Research focus of our lab is towards structure elucidation of small molecules and macromolecules via X-ray crystallography. To answer challenging questions in structural biology of macromolecules and to understand there molecular mechanism & its functions in living cells.

Major area of research: Structural Biology and Chemical Crystallography

Structural biology:

Structural investigation of chronic disease causing macromolecules as well as understanding their function & mechanism in cells via high resolution X-ray crystallography is the theme of our research. At present the main focus is on ailment causing protein like gamma secretase activating protein (GSAP) a therapeutic target for Alzheimer’s disease and various other proteins in cancer like tetraspanin, IMPDH and TSC (I, II). In addition to X Ray, other biophysical techniques like FPLC, CD, NMR, microscopy and ITC will also be used for binding studies with small molecule drugs and peptides along with investigating different protein crystallization methods to generate high quality single crystals for structural studies.

Chemical crystallography:

Involved in studying the intermolecular weak interactions in small molecule crystals, structural topographies of polymorphism in API’s, in-situ cryo-crystallization of liquids and co-crystallization of API’s with salts, target proteins, peptides.

Our research approach