Bacterial Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering;
DST-INSPIRE Faculty, IMS, BHU, Varanasi (Apr. 2014 -Sep. 2016).
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Noble Research Center, OSU, Stillwater, OK (2013- Mar. 2014).
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Texas A&M Health Science Center, Texas (May 2010 - 2012).
CSIR-Nehru Post-Doctoral Fellow, CSIR-IMTECH, Chandigarh (Jan. 2010 - Apr. 2010).
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Emergence of drug resistant pathogens have complicated the therapeutic scenario which demands the development of novel, effective and affordable, therapeutic agents. Limitations and complications of chemical synthesis approaches for inhibitory compounds, and their side effects have shifted the recent interest in mining the immense chemical diversity of natural products for their therapeutic potential. This approach has provided several valuable therapeutic compounds. Since these secondary compounds are naturally produced in small quantities, purification from biological material suffers from low yields, impurities and consumption of large amounts of natural resources. Furthermore, because of the complexity of these molecules, their chemical synthesis is inherently difficult and in most of the cases economically not viable. For these reasons, the engineering of metabolic pathways to produce large quantities of natural compounds in a suitable biological host presents an attractive alternative to afford the supply of these compounds in a cost effective manner. Since several terpene derivatives (such as Artemisinin and Paclitaxel) have been proved as valuable therapeutic agents, and since supply of these compounds are still in demand, we are working to develop bacterial platform strains for biotechnological production of mono-, sesqui- and diterpene derevatives. For this, we are using synthetic biology approach to engineer the metabolic pathways of a non-photosynthetic carotenoid producing bacteria which can provide a system with high flux but dispensable carotenoid pathway that can be exploited for synthesis of Artemisinin or Paclitaxel precursors.
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