Dr. Anisha Shakya, Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Name:

Dr. Anisha Shakya

Title:

Assistant Professor

Department:

Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Describe your research in about 200 words.

My research program seeks to understand how the multitude of biochemical processes occurring inside a cell are organized in absence of lipid membranes, and how the mis-regulation of such membraneless organization lead to diseases. The concept of membraneless condensate formation is helping us explain how among the billions of cellular proteins/RNA molecules binding partners with a shared function can efficiently colocalize. This concept also presents a potential alternative for combating diseases by designing drugs that target emergent properties of the condensates. This has generated a lot of excitement in disease biology and biomedicine such as neurodegenerative disease and cancer research. To be successful in both understanding disease mechanisms and targeting biological condensates, we need a deeper understanding of condensate properties and function. My lab aims to provide a foundational framework for condensate formation and stability based on protein native structure and nucleic acid structural features, which can be generally applied to understanding partitioning and concentration of proteins and nucleic acids into various condensates in normal or diseased cellular states. To achieve this, we employ a range of interdisciplinary skills such as thermodynamic analysis, database mining and computation, super-resolution and high-throughput imaging, along with in-vitro reconstitution assays and cell biological techniques.

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