Ashutosh Srivastava

Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar · Faculty of Biological Engineering

Proteins in thermophilic organisms remain stable and function optimally at high temperatures. Owing to their important applicability in many industrial processes, such thermostable proteins have been studied extensively, and several structural factors attributed to their enhanced stability. How these factors render the emergent property of thermost...

Protein kinases are responsible for healthy cellular processes and signalling pathways, and their dysfunction is the basis of many pathologies. There are numerous small molecule inhibitors of protein kinases that systemically regulate dysfunctional signalling processes. However, attaining selectivity in kinase inhibition within the complex human ki...

Significance CRY1 and CRY2 regulate circadian rhythms, and their dysfunction has been associated with many diseases. Since they have not only similar but also independent functions, understanding of intrinsic differences between these highly similar proteins is required. Here, we determined CRY1 and CRY2 static and dynamic structures that exhibited...

The circadian clock controls daily rhythms of physiological processes. The presence of the clock mechanism throughout the body is hampering its local regulation by small molecules. A photoresponsive clock modulator would enable precise and reversible regulation of circadian rhythms using light as a bio-orthogonal external stimulus. Here we show, th...

CRY1 and CRY2 proteins are highly conserved components of the circadian clock that controls daily physiological rhythms. Disruption of CRY functions are related to many diseases, including circadian sleep phase disorder. Development of isoform-selective and spatiotemporally controllable tools will facilitate the understanding of shared and distinct...

CRY1 and CRY2 are essential components of the circadian clock controlling daily physiological rhythms. Accumulating evidences indicate distinct roles of these highly homologous proteins, in addition to redundant functions. Therefore, the development of isoform-selective compounds represents an effective approach towards understanding the similariti...

Despite achieving considerable success in reducing the number of fatalities due to AIDS, emergence of resistance against the Reverse Transcriptase (RT) inhibitor drugs remains one of the biggest challenges of the HIV anti-retroviral therapy (ART). Non-Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (NNRTI) form a large class of drugs, and a crucial com...

Mammalian circadian rhythms are generated by a transcription-based feedback loop in which CLOCK:BMAL1 drives transcription of its repressors (PER1/2, CRY1/2), which ultimately interact with CLOCK:BMAL1 to close the feedback loop with ~24-hour periodicity. Here we pinpoint a key difference between CRY1 and CRY2 that underlies their differential stre...

The structural and dynamical characterization of biomolecules holds central importance in the endeavor to understand the molecular mechanisms regulating living systems. However, owing to the inherent heterogeneity of biomolecular interactions within cells, it is often difficult to understand the overall structure and dynamics of biomolecules using...

Circadian rhythms are generated by a transcription-based feedback loop where CLOCK:BMAL1 drive transcription of their repressors (PER1/2, CRY1/2), which bind to CLOCK:BMAL1 to close the feedback loop with ~24-hour periodicity. Here we identify a key biochemical and structural difference between CRY1 and CRY2 that underlies their differential streng...

Cell fate in eukaryotes is controlled by mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) that translate external cues into cellular responses. In plants, two MAPKs—MPK3 and MPK6—regulate diverse processes of development, environmental response and immunity. However, the mechanism that bridges these shared signalling components with a specific target rema...

Cell-fate in eukaryotes is regulated by MAP Kinases (MAPKs) that translate external cues to cellular responses. In plants, two MAPKs, MPK3/6, regulate diverse processes of development, environmental response, and immunity. Yet, the mechanism bridging these shared signaling components with a specific target remains unresolved. Focusing on the develo...

Compounds targeting the circadian clock have been identified as potential treatments for clock-related diseases, including cancer. Our cell-based phenotypic screen revealed uncharacterized clock-modulating compounds. Through affinity-based target deconvolution, we identified GO289, which strongly lengthened circadian period, as a potent and selecti...

Protein structural biology came a long way since the determination of the first three-dimensional structure of myoglobin about six decades ago. Across this period, X-ray crystallography was the most important experimental method for gaining atomic-resolution insight into protein structures. However, as the role of dynamics gained importance in the...

Protein Kinase CK2 is ubiquitously expressed and highly conserved protein kinase that shows constitutive activity. It phosphorylates a diverse set of proteins and plays crucial role in several cellular processes. The catalytic subunit of this enzyme (CK2α) shows remarkable flexibility as evidenced in numerous crystal structures determined till now....

Anthranilate synthase (AS) is the first branch node enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of chorismate to anthranilate in the high energy-consuming tryptophan biosynthetic pathway in Serratia marcescens. AS, with an allosterically-bound inhibitor (tryptophan), shows complete inhibition in its catalytic function, but the inhibitor-bound structure is...

Replication of viral genomes is one of the most important steps in the infection process, as viruses need to replicate inside the host cell in order to make many copies. Therefore, traditionally, this has been an important stage for drug targeting in antiviral therapies. For their replication, viral genes can encode polymerase enzymes like reverse...