Rahul Das

Associate Professor
Dept: Biological Sciences (DBS)
E-mail: rahul.das [at] iiserkol.ac.in
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The main interest of our laboratory is to understand the mechanism of signal transduction across the plasma membrane. Our research is focused on studying the allosteric regulation of two tyrosine kinases, ZAP-70, a membrane-associated protein kinase found in T-Cells, and transmembrane receptors like VEGF receptors, respectively. Kinases are known to function as dynamic signaling switches. However, they are not turned on (active state) and off (inactive state) by one factor. How kinases toggle between inactive conformations to an active conformation has been the subject of many studies. It is believed that an intricate circuitry of intra- and inter-molecular allosteric networks (mainly through non-covalent interactions) present in the regulatory and the catalytic modules control the kinase activity. Our laboratory is particularly interested to understand the role of protein dynamics in modulating extracellular signals transduction across the plasma membrane. We use spectroscopy techniques (like NMR spectroscopy and fluorescence spectroscopy) to study the structure and dynamics of the regulatory module of the membrane-associated kinases. We connect the structural data to the biological function by combining the biochemical analysis and cell-based studies to find out how they work.
- Ph.D. (Structural Biology), (McMaster University, Canada), 2008
- M.Tech. (Biotech and Biochem Engg), (IIT Khargpur), 2000
- Associate Professor, IISER Kolkata (current)
- Assistant Professor, IISER Kolkata (2014 - 2021)
- Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Berkeley (2009 - 2014)
- Research Associate, Wockhardt Research Centre (2000 - 2001)
- Early Career Award from SERB (2016)
- Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship from DBT (2016)
- CIHR Postdoctoral Fellowship from Canadian Institutes of Health Research (2011)
- NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Canada (2009)
- Impact Award from McMaster University, Canada (2007)
- Research Scholarship from McMaster University, Canada (2004)
- Chakraborty, Manas Pratim; Bhattacharyya, Sudipta; Roy, Souryadip; Bhattacharya, Indira; Das, Rahul and Mukherjee, Arindam. 2021."Selective targeting of the inactive state of hematopoietic cell kinase (Hck) with a stable curcumin derivative.." J Biol. Chem., 296, 100449
- Sinha, Sushant K; Das, Shibashis; Konar, Sukanya; Ghorai, Pradip Kr.; Das, Rahul and Datta, Supratim. 2020."Elucidating the regulation of glucose tolerance in a ?-glucosidase from Halothermothrix orenii by active site pocket engineering and computational analysis." International Journal of Biological Macromolecules, 156, 621
- Gangopadhyay, Kaustav; Manna, Bharat; Roy, Swarnendu; Kumari, Sunitha; Debnath, Olivia; Chowdhury, Subhankar; Ghosh, Amit and Das, Rahul. 2020."An allosteric hot spot in the tandem-SH2 domain of ZAP-70 regulates T-cell signaling." Biochemical Journal, 477, 1287–1308
- Sharma, R; Kumar, P; Kaushal, V; Das, R and Navani, N Kumar. 2018."A novel protein tyrosine phosphatase like phytase from Lactobacillus fermentum NKN51: Cloning, characterization and application in mineral release for food technology applications.." Bioresour Technol, 249, 1000-1008
- Endres*, N; Das*, R; Smith, A W; Arkhipov, A; Kovacs, E; Huang, Y; Pelton, J G; Shan, Y; Shaw, D E; Wemmer, D E; Groves, J T and Kuriyan, J. 2013."Conformational coupling across the plasma membrane in activation of the EGF receptor.." Cell, 152, 543 – 556