Basuthkar Jagadeeshwar Rao is currently a Senior professor, chair of Biology and dean faculty at IISER, Tirupati. Prior to this, he was a senior professor at the Department of Biological Sciences at TIFR, Mumbai and the head of Mechanism of Genome Dynamics and Cellular Adaptations Laboratory, TIFR. His areas of specializations are molecular basis of genome dynamics, computational biology of genomes and protein active sites, cellular physiology and metabolism, to which he made fundamental contributions. Apart from his fundamental research in the domain of biology, he is also interested in dissemination of scientific knowledge and outreach activities.
Cell Biology of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii : cellular adaptive responses, metabolic and circadian rhythmicity, metabolic plasticity regulation by in cell NMR.
Collaborations and genome dynamics Lab
. Rao and his collaborators of Genome Dynamics Lab are interested in mapping and understanding the promiscuity scores of protein active sites with the help of computational approaches. They are also dissecting the biochemical mechanism of regulation of homologous recombination by tumour suppressors such as P53 and BRCA2 proteins. Other activities include:
Chromosome territory movements associated with DNA damage response events in mammalian cells; Circadian control of UV-sensitivity in Chlamydomonas reinhardii
Cell biology and metabolism in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii during adaptive stress responses.
The Lab is also involved in collaborative projects with chemists and physicists at TIFR to seek answers, for instance how “soft electrons” intersect and change biomolecules etc., along with many other interdisciplinary research proposals.
Recognition and outreach
He is a Fellow of all three National Academies in India, and is also the Sir JC Bose Fellow of Department of Science & Technology, India. >He is also serving as a chief member and an advisor for various committees and has won many awards and fellowships. He worked as a DST-inspire teacher by articulating the current excitements of basic biology to a large number of undergraduate students across India. He perceives biology as a complex manifestation of physics-chemistry of a dynamically evolving system and emphasize on design principles in Biology. He has given numerous technical as well as public lectures for varied audiences at conferences as well as at research centers.
