Profile
Dr. Atmakuri pursued his post-doctoral research on Type IV and VII secretion systems of bacteria with Prof. Peter Christie (Univ of Texas Medical Centre, Houston) and Prof. Sarah Fortune (Harvard Univ, Boston, USA). His “bacterial pathogenesis” group, at THSTI Faridabad, deeply dwells into host-pathogen interactions of (i) Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causal agent for Tuberculosis and (ii) Acinetobacter baumannii, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Escherichia coli the key causal agents of sepsis in India. His group exploits the salient findings of elaborate host-pathogen interactions efforts to identify potential biomarkers, novel therapeutic targets and potential vaccine candidates. His lab exploits several latest technologies including click chemistry to understand pathogenesis in pre-clinical models. With their established murine model for sepsis, they evaluate potential vaccine candidates and therapeutic targets. His group is involved in clinical collaborative research with several hospitals to better understand neonatal sepsis and identify EARLY diagnostic markers in neonates for reducing sepsis burden.
Current Focus Areas
Tuberculosis: Compress anti-TB therapy through targeting novel Mtb targets; Exploit extracellular vesicles of Mtb for understanding pathogensis. Generation of recombinant vesicles.Sepsis: Early diagnosis of adult and neonatal sepsis; Understanding pathogenesis with murine sepsis models; identify novel therapeutic targets for sepsis and evaluate novel vaccine candidates for sepsis.
Selected Publications
1. Jayaswal P et al., 2023. Design, construction, generation and enrichment of recombinant extracellular vesicles of mycobacteria. J Vis Exp. Dec 8:(202). doi: 10.3791/65138. 2. Ilyas M et al., 2022. Genomic islands and their role in fitness traits of two key-sepsis causing bacterial pathogens. Briefings in Functional Genomics. 1-14 https://doi.org/10.1093/bfgp/elac051Singh N et al., 2022. 3. HupB, a nucleoid-associated protein is critical for survival of Mycobacterium tuberculosis under host-mediated stresses and for enhanced tolerance to key first-line antibiotics. Frontiers in Microbiology. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2022.93797. 4. Das, S. et al, 2022. Development of DNA Aptamers to Visualize Release of Mycobacterial Membrane-Derived Extracellular Vesicles in Infected Macrophages. Pharmaceuticals, 15, 45. https://doi.org/10.3390/ ph15010045; 5. Sharma N et al., 2019. Comparative analysis of homologous aminopeptidase PepN from pathogenic and non-pathogenic mycobacteria reveals divergent traits. PLOS ONE Apr 10;14(4):e0215123. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.02151230