Sandeep Kaur Ravala

Sandeep Kaur Ravala
Purdue University, USA

Biography

Sandeep received her Bachelors and Masters degrees in Science at the department of Biotechnology from Panjab University. After completion of her Masters and successfully clearing the UGC-NET examination, she enrolled into JNU-Imtech PhD programme at CSIR-Imtech under Dr. Pradip Kumar Chakraborti. Her doctoral research focused on the understanding of activation mechanism of an essential transmembrane Serine/Threonine kinase, PknA from Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This study highlighted role of a novel phosphorylation event at Threonine 180 in a conserved GT motif, to be instrumental in relieving the autoinhibited kinase to its active conformation. Her interest in understanding the regulatory mechanisms involved in signal transduction using both biochemistry and structural biology paved the way to her current lab for postdoctoral training. The long term aim of her research career is to utilize structural and biochemical tools to understand the working of proteins in complexes and its application for rational designing of drugs so as to contribute to the fight against the diseases inflicting mankind.