This thesis describes biophysical, kinetic, structural, and sequence conservation analysis of the glycolytic enzyme triosephosphate isomerase (TIM). TIM catalyses the diffusion limited isomerization of D-glyceraldehyde-3-phospahte ...

Effective vaccines exist for a number of viral diseases. However, despite much effort, there is no successful vaccine against the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV-1). The envelope glycoprotein (Env) of HIV-1 gp120, the ...

In the pursuit to understand information processing in the brain, a general question that is often posed is: What is the neuron encoding? This is addressed by assessing feature selectivity in sensory neurons, which informs ...

Conditional gene expression and conditional mutants provide a means to modulate the expression of specific genes and to control the activity of their protein products in vivo, so as to be able to study their effects on the ...

TREK-1 is a two-pore domain potassium channel that contributes to maintenance of the resting membrane potential of a cell. TREK-1 is involved in several physiological and pathophysiological conditions like nociception, ...

X-ray crystallography is a powerful tool to obtain atomic resolution details on the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules. Crystallographic techniques find wide applications in understanding macromolecular ...

Rifampicin is a non-competitive inhibitor of bacterial RNA polymerase (RNAP). The knowledge about the mechanism of action of this drug has emanated from the genetic and the biochemical studies carried out on Escherichia ...

Maintenance of the genomic integrity of the cell is crucial for the survival and successful propagation of an organism. However, this integrity is under continuous threat from DNA-damaging agents. In addition, errors in ...

Structural biology deals with determining the structure of biological macromolecules especially proteins, DNA, RNA. The conformational changes in the structure of a macromolecule helps to decipher its function. This ...

Genomic integrity is a fundamental requisite for survival and proliferation of all organisms. The genetic material is continuously threatened by a multitude of extrinsic and intrinsic factors. Consequently, the presence ...