School of Biotechnology

	Dr.S.THIYAGARAJAN Assistant Professor M.Sc Computational Biology mail : thiyaga.mku@gmail.com	Publications   Previous Experience
Research Interests Ability of pathogenic bacteria in surviving and successfully colonizing a host depends critically on its ability to monitor and adapt to the changes in the environmental conditions. Unfavorable environmental conditions, termed as stress, are of different types viz physical, chemical etc. These include presence of toxic substances, lack of essential substances or both, extreme temperatures, harmful radiations etc. All bacterial systems have evolved their own resistance mechanisms to defend against such environmental stress. Research in my lab is primarily focused on identification of key pathways that support the survival of the infectious agents under environmental stress. We use contemporary techniques like x-ray crystallography, computational biology and standard biochemical techniques to locate stress responsive operons in various species, the way the stress is sensed and regulated. ArsR, an arsenic responsive DNA binding repressor from species living in highly arsenic contaminated zones; Rex, a redox sensing repressor from microbes living in varied aerobic conditions are some of the proteins currently under study.

Selected Publications Kandegedara, A., Thiyagarajan, S., Kondapalli, K.C.,  Stemmler, T.L. and Rosen, B.P. (2009) “Role of bound Zn(II) in the CadC Cd(II)/Pb(II)/Zn(II) responsive repressor” J. Biol. Chem.  284, 14958 – 14965. Ordóñez, E.*, Thiyagarajan, S., Cook, D.J.,  Stemmler, T.L., Gil, J.A.,  Mateos, L.M. and Rosen, B.P.  (2008) “Evolution of metal(loid) binding sites in transcriptional regulators” J Biol. Chem. 283, 25706 – 25714. Bhattacharjee, H., Mukhopadhyay, R., Thiyagarajan, S. and Rosen, B.P. (2008) “Aquaglyceroporins: ancient channels for metalloids” J Biol. 7:33. Bharanidharan, D., Thiyagarajan, S. and Gautham, N. (2007) Hexammine-ruthenium (III) ion interactions with Z-DNA” Acta Crystallogr. F63, 1008 – 1013. Thiyagarajan, S., Rajan, S.S. and Gautham, N. (2006) “Effect of DNA structural flexibility on promoter strength—molecular dynamics studies of E. coli promoter sequences” Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 341, 557 – 566. Thiyagarajan, S. and Gautham, N. (2005) “Sequence dependent structural effects in left handed DNA” Crystallography Reviews 11, 337 – 355. Thiyagarajan, S., Rajan, S.S. and Gautham, N. (2005) “Structure of d(CGCGCA). d(TGCGCG) in two crystal forms: effects of sequence and crystal packing in Z-DNA” Acta Crystallogr. D61, 1125 – 1131. Thiyagarajan, S., Rajan, S.S. and Gautham, N. (2004) “Cobalt hexammine induced tautomeric shift in Z-DNA: the structure of d(CGCGCA). d(TGCGCG) in two crystal forms” Nucleic Acids Res. 32, 5945 – 5953. Thiyagarajan, S., Satheesh Kumar, P., Rajan, S.S. and Gautham, N. (2002) “Structure of d(TGCGCA)2 at 293K: comparison of the effects of sequence and of temperature” Acta Crystallogr. D58, 1381 – 1384. Chandra Mohan, K., Ravikumar, K., Shetty, M.M., Thiyagarajan, S. and Rajan S.S. (2003) “Crystal amd molecular structures of 1,4-dihydro-6-methyl-5-N,N-diethyl carbamoyl-4-phenyl-2(3H)-pyrimidinethione (1) and 1,4-dihydro-6-methyl-5-N-methyl carbamoyl-4-(2’-nitrophenyl)-2(3H)-pyrimidinethione hemihydrate” J Chem Crystallogr. 33, 113 – 121. Thiyagarajan S., Karthe P., Rajan S.S., Gautham N., Kumar A. and Katti S.B. (2001)  “Crystal and Molecular structure of 3' deoxy guanosine N2 isobutryl dehydrate” Crystal Research and Technology , 36 , 485 – 492.           Previous Experience Post Doctoral Research Experience: 2008-2009      Dr Claes von Wachenfeldt’s lab, Department of Cell and Organism Biology, Lund University,  Lund, Sweden. 2006-2008      Dr. Barry Rosen’s lab, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Wayne State University, School of Medicine, Detroit, MI, USA.   Top

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