Ramanan Devaraj

1. Mechanistic Study of N-α-acetyltransferase 10 Protein in Preventing Dystocia (Manuscript in preparation, *as first author)

• Mastered in performing mice experiments, cell-based in vitro assays, generation of stable CRISPR KO clones.
• Studied hormonal signaling and uterus contraction-oxytocin/oxytocin receptor (OT/OTR) signaling pathway, actin stress fiber formation, N-α-acetylation status using Western Blotting, ELISA, RT-qPCR, LC-MS, Confocal and live cell imaging.

2. Naa10p Inhibits Beige Adipocyte-Mediated Thermogenesis through N-α-acetylation of Pgc1α. (Lee et al., and Juan, Mol. Cell. 2019, * as co-author)

• Established LC-MS based In vitro acetyltransferase assay (AT assay) to study N-α-acetylation status of PGC1α, PPARγ.

3. Telomerase regulation in Short Telomeres Rapid Elongation

• Established in vitro model system by stably expressing TPP1-OB domain mutants and studied telomerase regulation for rapid telomere elongation in cancer cell lines.
• Mastered in cloning mutant constructs by site-directed mutagenesis, generating stable cell lines, Telomere Restriction Fragment (TRF) analysis to measure telomere length.

Key Responsibilities

• Developed research proposals, identified research objectives and created research plans.
• Collaborated with researchers and scientists to design and execute experiments.
• Developed new protocols and improved existing laboratory processes.
• Participated in lab meetings and project presentations.
• Assisted in manuscript, grant proposal writing.

Genotype-phenotype analysis of Connexin 30, SLC26A4 and mitochondrial genes in Non-syndromic Hearing Loss (NSHL)

• Optimized PCR method with 24 sets of primers to amplify whole mitochondrial genome of NSHL patients.
• Compiled DNA sequencing data and performed mutational analysis Codon-Code Aligner software.
• 50 Non-syndromic Hearing Loss Patient’s whole mitochondrial genome sequences and 9 novel mitochondrial sequences were submitted in GenBank.

Functional Characterization of WhiB5/Rvo22c and WhiB6/Rv3682c Protein of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis H37Rv

• Prepared protein expression constructs and optimized IPTG induced overexpression of recombinant proteins in 5 to 10-liter bacterial culture.
• Acquired hands-on skills in protein expression and purification by AKTA-FPLC followed by SDS-PAGE and WB.

Microbial activity promotes the enrichment of cobalt over nickel on hydrogenetic ferromanganese crusts. (Sujith et al., and Loka Bharathi, Mar. Georesources Geotechnol., 2017, *as co-author)

• Studied bioleaching properties of autochthonous microbial activity on hydrogenetic ferromanganese crusts
• Quantified enrichment of cobalt and nickel using Anodic Stripping Voltammetry (ASV)