Profile
Akash Ranjan is a Computational Biologist, Biophysical Chemist and Molecular Cell Biologist interested in understanding the biology of infectious and non-infectious diseases through interdisciplinary approach. He received his graduate (in Human Biology) and postgraduate degree (in Biotechnology) at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi and a PhD from National Institute of Immunology, Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi. His specific research interests are understanding molecular interactions and interaction-networks associated with the biology of human diseases.
Current Focus Areas
Infectious disease biology-Tuberculosis: Dr. Ranjan’s group has developed a novel strategy to perturb regulatory network in mycobacteria to explore its effect on pathogen biology. Using this approach he has demonstrated novel physiological effect of Rv0494 and Rv0023 in the biology of disease.
Infectious disease biology-Malaria: Dr. Ranjan’s group has identified a novel drug target for malaria and is targeting this protein to develop novel chemotherapeutics intervention strategies.
Non-infectious/genetic/biochemical disease biology: Dr. Ranjan’s group is also interested in investigating molecular interactions and novel function of HYPK and its interacting proteins. At present his group is studying genetic mutations in the interaction partners of HYPK, some of which can cause rare disease.
Computational platform for disease biology: Dr. Ranjan’s group is further interested developing and using computational tools and platform for disease biology. Some of the tools develop by the group in the past are PredictRegulon, iCR, MycoperonDB etc.
Selected Publications
Gupta SK, Angara RK, Yousuf S, Reddy CG, Ranjan A (2020). Ectopic Expression of Rv0023 Mediates Isoniazid/Ethionamide Tolerance via Altering NADH/NAD+ Levels in Mycobacterium smegmatis. Front Microbiol., 11:3.
Angara RK, Yousuf S, Gupta SK, Ranjan A (2018). An IclR like protein from mycobacteria regulates leuCD operon and induces dormancy-like growth arrest in Mycobacterium smegmatis. Tuberculosis, 108:83-92.
Shrikondawar AN, Chennoju K, Ghosh DK, Ranjan A (2024) Identification and characterization of nuclear localization signals in the circumsporozoite protein of Plasmodium falciparum. FEBS letters [In press]
Kumar A, Ghosh DK, Ali J, Ranjan A (2019). Characterization of Lipid Binding Properties of Plasmodium falciparum Acyl-Coenzyme A Binding Proteins and Their Competitive Inhibition by Mefloquine. ACS Chem Biol., 14(5):901-915.
Ghosh DK, Ranjan A (2021). HYPK coordinates degradation of polyneddylated proteins by autophagy. Autophagy. 26:1-22.