Our lab at MBU has an interest to carry out structural studies on membrane proteins, both to understand their mechanism and study their pharmacology. 
   The membrane bilayer segregates the extracellular from the intracellular constituents. However, this protective layer has to be overcome for nutrients, ions, drugs and a range of metabolites and metabolic end products to traverse, for cells to survive and respond to environmental cues. Membrane proteins such as transporters and channels carry out this indispensable role of providing selective permeability for ions, nutrients, metabolites and a host of other molecular species that otherwise lack a conduit into or out of cells. 
   The lab aims to study integral membrane transporters that play vital roles in neurotransmitter uptake and drug efflux using a multi-disciplinary approach involving X-ray crystallography and other biochemical and biophysical methods.

Lab news.
(2026)
-Smruti Nayak leaves the laboratory after a very successful stint for a postdoctoral position at Yale University.
(2025)
-Aravind is elected as a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore.
-Aravind would be the Revati and Satya Nadham Atluri Chair for the years 2025-2027.
-A manuscript on YcgO-PtsN interaction and regulation done in collaboration with Sardesai lab at CDFD is published in the  J. Biol. Chem.

(2024)
-Aravind is awarded the Sun Pharma Research Award in Pharmaceutical sciences for the year 2024.
-India Alliance covers our research in this news piece on their webpage.
- Aravind is selected for the Vigyan Yuva-Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar award for Biological Sciences and received it from the President of India on 22nd August, 2024.
- Aravind is selected for the IISc research award 2024.
-Arunabh completes his defence and joins the Zimmer Lab at the University of Virginia as a postdoc...all the best!
- After an arduous and successful stint in the lab, Nazia leaves for her postdoc in University of Goettingen...all the best!
- Nazia's manuscript on Pannexins gets published in Nature Communications....Congratulations!!
- Arunabh successfully defends his thesis and leaves for his postdoc fellowship in University of Virginia...aplab members wish him the very best!

(2023)
- Aravind is elected as a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, Prayagraj.
- Aravind is elected as member Guha Research Conference. 
- Congratulations to Arnab Ghosh on getting selected to the PMRF fellowship.  
- Congratulations to Puja, Shahbaz, Pragya, Arunabh and coauthors for their latest article on QacA structure and function, published in EMBO J.
- Congrtaulations to Smruti, Deepthi, Archishman, Arunabh and co authors for their article on GAT1, published in NSMB.
- Nazia completes her thesis defense and graduates successfully. Congratulations!!
- Aravind begins his term as a DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance Senior Fellow from February 2023.

(2022)
- Nandika gets selected to the PMRF fellowship. Hearty Congratulations!
- A warm farewell to Deepthi who left the lab in July 2022 to take up a post-doctoral position at UT-Austin
-Congratulations to Deepthi and Smruti for their article published in EMBO J.
- Deepthi Joseph successfully defended her thesis (June 15th). Congratulations!!
-A news and views article authored by Aravind on the cryoEM structure of NorA is now online on Nat. Chem. Biol. 
-Deepthi, Arunabh and Ananth attend and present posters at the Gordon Research Conference on Ligand Recognition and Molecular Gating in March, 2022.
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(2021)
-Congratulations to Deepthi and Arunabh for their poster and oral presentation prizes at NSC48, IIT-Rourkee, November-2021.

-  A tribute to the 2021 Nobel laureates, written by Ananth and Aravind is published as a news article in Current Science.

-A warm farewell to Puja, Shabareesh and Aditya who left the lab in October, 2021 after very productive stints.

-Congratulations to Arunabh Athreya for being selected as the recipient of the Dr. R.K. Maller Memorial medal for academic performance. 

- Congratulations to Swati Dubey (Sardesai lab, CDFD) and Puja Majumder for their manuscript on LysO function and topological analyses, accepted in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

-Congratulations to Ananth Burada for being selected to the India Alliance Early Career Fellowship.
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- Congratulations to Sushant, Arunabh, Ashu, Rahul and Raja for their latest manuscript published in Communications Biology.(Research highlights: IISc; India Alliance)
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- Congratulations to Shabareesh, Aditya and Deepthi for their latest publication in Nature Communications. (Research highlight-IISc)(IA highlight)

- The lab has a new twitter handle from Feb 2021 @PenmatsaLab 

- Hearty congratulations to Puja Majumder for her successful thesis defense.

(2020)
-Aravind is selected to the EMBO Global Investigator network from India, this year.
 
-A perspective on the mechanism of Remdesivir's inhibition of SARS-CoV2 replication, authored by Sushant, is published on COVIDgyan website.

-Our work on the effect of n to pi* interactions on protein stability, done in collaboration with Jayanta Chatterjee's lab, is published in the journal Chemical Science.

-Puja and Sushant are selected for poster presentations at the Gordon Research Conference on Ligand Recognition and Molecular Gating that was to be held in March, 2020.

-Sushant Kumar's abstract gets selected for an oral presentation at the Gordon Research Seminar on Ligand recognition and Molecular Gating.
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(2019)
-Our manuscript on isolation and structure of a metal ion-bound single-domain antibody that targets a superbug efflux pump gets accepted in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
(Highlighted on IISc website; Research highlight on India Alliance website)
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- Puja wins a poster prize at the EMBO workshop on "Tools for structural biology of membrane proteins", in Hamburg, Germany. Congratulations!!

-An invited review on structure and gating dynamics of Na+/Cl- coupled neurotransmitter transporters authored by us is accepted in Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences.

-PRV Shabareesh wins a poster prize at the national seminar on crystallography (NSC)-47.Congratulations!!

-View a link to our research highlight on the India Alliance website.

-Our manuscript on the protonation driven, promiscuous substrate recognition in a multi-drug efflux transporter is accepted in the Journal of Molecular Biology. 

(2018)
Puja, Shashank and Nazia get an appreciation certificate for their poster at the annual Indian Biophysical Society meeting. Congratulations!!

​A review on transporters from our lab is published in the Journal of the Indian Institute of Science.