smita menon

Received a scholarship to work as Junior Research Fellow on DAE-BRNS project "Structural and Functional relationship of wheat proteins as effected by irradiation with special reference to chapatti making qualities." Project involved the use of U.V spectrophotometer for studying the effect of various denaturing agents on irradiated and non-irradiated wheat proteins.

Dealing in techniques such as isolation of volatile and non-volatile components by simultaneous distillation and extraction, Gas Liquid Chromatogarphy and Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrophotometry (GC-MS)

The current work involves determination of the structure of a two-component regulatory system protein, whose mutation results in severe attenuation of the bacterial virulence. the structure is expected to provide a template to design small molecules as drug targets against TB.

TA - Assisted and instructed undergraduate students in laboratory settings for 3years. Duties included conducting experiments, setting up laboratory, designing in lab quizzes and grading tests. RA - Structure-Function characterization of proteins. Research involved cloning, expression and purification of desired proteins using the E.coli expression system. Further, protein structure was determined using X-ray crystallography technique and subsequent functional analysis of the protein was carried out using several biochemical and biophysical techniques.

Dissertation topic: Characterization of function from structure in fusseloviruses.

Project topic: Extraction of an anti-hepatotoxic principle from Phyllanthus niruri