Universität zu Köln 

I finished my bachelor degree, B.Tech in Biotechnology, from Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel University of Agriculture and Technology, Meerut, India, in 2008. I graduated with an M.Tech degree from National Institute of Technology Surathkal, Karnataka, India in 2010. I went to Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine, Jammu, India so as to earn my Master’s thesis.

I worked on below listed projects during my lab rotation period at University of Cologne:

• Lab of Prof. Marc Bramkamp, Institute of Biochemistry, Department of Chemistry, University of Cologne: “Dynamics of MinJ protein in dividing Bacillus cells”
• Lab of Prof. Guenter Schwarz, Institute of Biochemistry, Department of chemistry, University of Cologne: “Investigation of Molybdenum transporters in mammalian cells”
• Lab of Dr. Gerri t Praefke, Institute of Genetics, University of Cologne:  “Improving the yield of recombinant human GBP1 from S. cerevisiae”

Since April 2012, I have been working in Prof. Guenter Schwarz’s lab as a PhD student on the following project:

Molybdenum cofactor (MoCo) deficiency leads to a combined deficiency of the molybdoenzymes sulphite oxidase, xanthine dehydrogenase and aldehyde oxidase. Effective therapy is not available for this rare disease, which results in neonatal seizures and other neurological symptoms identical to those of sulphite oxidase deficiency. It is an autosomal recessive trait and leads to early childhood death with severe form of neurodegeneration. Many biochemicals or metabolites involved in sulfur amino acid metabolism are deregulated in MoCD patients. Some of these metabolites share structural analogy with glutamate, an excitatory neurotransmitter, and can trigger excitatory neuronal degeneration through the activation of glutamate receptor subtypes. The objective of my research is to delineate the role of these deregulated S-amino acid metabolites and underlying mechanism in neurodegeneration in MoCD mice models.