Profile

Jan 2024-date Scientist E1, Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology, Thiruvananthapuram, India July 2020- Dec 2023 Scientist E1, Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology, Thiruvananthapuram, India Sept 2016-June 2020 DBT-Ramalingaswamy Faculty, Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology, Thiruvananthapuram, India Oct 2012-Sept 2016 Senior research associate, Chemical Biology with Prof. Hagan Bayley, University of Oxford, UK Jan 2010-Sept 2012 Post-doctoral research associate, Jacobs University Bremen, Germany, collaboration with University of Cambridge

Current Focus Areas

  • The major interest of my laboratory is the engineering of transmembrane pores for applications in biotechnology and medicine. In particular, we focus on synthetic peptides-derived alpha-helical pores and biological transmembrane pores and explore their biophysical and electrical characterization using single-molecule electrical sensing studies.

Selected Publications

  • 1. Satheesan R, Vikraman D, Jayan P, Vijayan V, Chimerel C, Mahendran KR*. Sensing PEGylated Peptide Conformations Using a Protein Nanopore. Nano Letters, 2024. 2. Das, A. D., K, V., & Mahendran, K. R*. Synthetic α-Helical Nanopore Reactor for Chemical Sensing. JACS Au, 2023. 3(9), 2467-2477. 3. Krishnan RS, Jana K, Shaji A, Nair KS, Das AD, Vikraman D, Bajaj H, Kleinekathöfer K, Mahendran KR*. Assembly of Transmembrane Pores from Mirror-Image Peptides. Nature Communications. 2022. 13 (1), 1-13. 4. Vikraman D, Satheesan R, Kumar KS, Mahendran KR*. Nanopore Passport Control for Substrate Specific Translocation. ACS Nano. 2020. 14(2):2285-2295. 5. Krishnan R S, Satheesan R, Puthumadathil N, Kumar KS, Jayasree P, Mahendran KR*. Autonomously Assembled Synthetic Transmembrane Peptide Pore. Journal of the American Chemical Society. 2019. 141(7):2949-2959.

Skills & Proficiency

Membrane proteins nanopores alpha-helical pores biosensors antibiotic resistance porins antimicrobial peptides anticancer peptides membrane dynamics single-molecule molecular transport