P. N. Rangarajan, born in Bengaluru in the south Indian state of Karnataka, secured a PhD from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in 1989 and did his post doctoral work at Salk Institute for Biological Studies during 1990-92.[2] After serving Howard Hughes Medical Institute as a research associate for a year, he returned to India to join IISc at the department of biochemistry in 1993 where he is a professor. At IISc, he has been carrying out research on how neurotropic viruses induce changes in eukaryoticgene expression in humans.[3] He leads a team of scientists engaged in the studies of Pichia pastoris, a methylotrophicyeast species, with regard to its transcription factors and the regulation of carbon metabolism.[4] He has also done extensive work on vaccine development against infectious diseases such as rabies, hepatitis B and Japanese encephalitis and he and his colleagues were successful in developing a new DNA-based vaccine against rabies.[5] Later, they improved the vaccine performance by combining the DNA-based rabies vaccine with a controlled quantity of inactivated virus prepared through cell culture.[6] The work earned Rangarajan and his colleagues Patent Cooperation Treaty[7] and Indian patents[8] and the vaccine, reportedly cheaper to produce than conventional cell culture rabies vaccines, is being marketed by Indian Immunologicals Limited, under the brand name, Dinarab.[9] His studies have been documented by way of a number of articles[10][note 2] of which many have been listed by online article repositories such as Google Scholar[11] and ResearchGate.[12]
Rangarajan's work has attracted research by other scientists[13] and he has delivered invited speeches or keynote addresses including the lecture on Gene Regulation in Eukaryotes: Diversity in general Transcription factors at IIT Madras[14] and the address on Transcriptional interference in the methylotrophic yeast, Pichia pastoris at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Thiruvananthapuram in October 2012.[15] He was the co-convenor of the lecture workshop on Recent Advances in Biotechnology of Health and Disease (BHD-2011) organized by Madurai Kamaraj University in 2011[16] and has been involved in conducting open courses on Eukaryotic Gene Expression.[17]
Rangarajan is married to Radha and the couple has two children, Karthik and Meghana. The family lives in Rajajinagar in Bengaluru.[18]
Awards and honors
Rangarajan received the National Bioscience Award for Career Development of the Department of Biotechnology in 2001.[19] The National Academy of Sciences, India elected him as a fellow in 2002.[20] The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research awarded him Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards in 2007.[21] The Indian Academy of Sciences elected him as a fellow the same year[22] and he became an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy in 2017.[23][note 3]
Selected bibliography
Saha, Sougata; Ramanathan, Anand; Rangarajan, Pundi N. (2006). "Regulation of Ca2+/calmodulin kinase II inhibitor α (CaMKIINα) in virus-infected mouse brain". Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. 350 (2): 444–449. doi:10.1016/j.bbrc.2006.09.066. PMID 17010311.
Nagendrakumar, S. B.; Madhanmohan, M.; Rangarajan, P. N.; Srinivasan, V. A. (2009). "Genetic analysis of foot-and-mouth disease virus serotype A of Indian origin and detection of positive selection and recombination in leader protease- and capsid-coding regions". Journal of Biosciences. 34 (1): 85–101. doi:10.1007/s12038-009-0011-9. PMC 7090849. PMID 19430121.
Nagaraj, Viswanathan Arun; Prasad, Dasari; Rangarajan, Pundi N.; Padmanaban, Govindarajan (2009). "Mitochondrial localization of functional ferrochelatase from Plasmodium falciparum". Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology. 168 (1): 109–112. doi:10.1016/j.molbiopara.2009.05.008. PMID 19523497.
Nagaraj, Viswanathan Arun; Prasad, Dasari; Arumugam, Rajavel; Rangarajan, Pundi N.; Padmanaban, Govindarajan (2010). "Characterization of coproporphyrinogen III oxidase in Plasmodium falciparum cytosol". Parasitology International. 59 (2): 121–127. doi:10.1016/j.parint.2009.12.001. PMID 20006984.
Vijay Kumar, N.; Rangarajan, P. N. (2011). "Catabolite repression of phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase by a zinc finger protein under biotin- and pyruvate carboxylase-deficient conditions in Pichia pastoris". Microbiology. 157 (12): 3361–3369. doi:10.1099/mic.0.053488-0. PMID 21948049.
^"Faculty Profile". Indian Institute of Science. 2017. Archived from the original on 4 April 2020. Retrieved 1 April 2017.
^"Brief Profile of the Awardee". Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize. 2017.
^Professor Department of Biochemistry. Indian Institute of Science. 2017. Archived from the original on 20 February 2019. Retrieved 1 April 2017.
^D. P. Burma; Maharani Chakravorty (2011). From Physiology and Chemistry to Biochemistry. Pearson Education India. pp. 464–. ISBN 978-81-317-3220-5.
^"DNA vaccines can be produced more rapidly than conventional vaccines". Pharmabiz. 3 January 2008. Archived from the original on 2 April 2017. Retrieved 1 April 2017.
^"PCT/IN2001/000018". World Intellectual Property Organization. 2017.
^"A novel vaccine formulation consisting of dna vaccine inactivated virus". Orbit. 2017.
^"IISc-developed rabies vaccine cleared for sale". The Times of India. 16 May 2004.
^"Browse by Fellow". Indian Academy of Sciences. 2017.
^"On Google Scholar". Google Scholar. 2017.
^"On ResearchGate". 2017.
^"Immune Response to DNA Combined Tissue Culture Inactivated anti-rabies Vaccine (DINARAB)". Indian Journals. 2017.
^"Gene Regulation in Eukaryotes: Diversity in general Transcription factors" (PDF). IIT Madras. 2017. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2 April 2017. Retrieved 1 April 2017.
^"Transcriptional interference in the methylotrophic yeast, Pichia pastoris". IISER, Thiruvananthapuram. 2012. Archived from the original on 2 April 2017. Retrieved 1 April 2017.
^"BHD-2011" (PDF). Indian Academy of Sciences. 2017.
^"Eukaryotic Gene Expression - basics and benefits". Chemistry2011. 2011. Archived from the original on 16 July 2018. Retrieved 1 April 2017.
^"NASI fellows". National Academy of Sciences, India. 2017. Archived from the original on 15 March 2016. Retrieved 21 November 2017.
^"Awardees of National Bioscience Awards for Career Development" (PDF). Department of Biotechnology. 2016. Archived from the original (PDF) on 4 March 2018. Retrieved 6 November 2017.
^"NASI Year Book 2015" (PDF). National Academy of Sciences, India. 2017. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 August 2015. Retrieved 1 April 2017.
^"Medical Sciences". Council of Scientific and Industrial Research. 2017. Archived from the original on 24 February 2013.
^"Fellow profile". Indian Academy of Sciences. 2017.
^"Indian fellow". Indian National Science Academy. 2017.
External links
"Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for 2007 given away". Hindustan Times. 20 December 2008.
"Pundi Narasimhan Rangarajan". List of articles. Loop. 2017.