Our lab is located at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) in Bangalore, India. We have a vibrant campus with access to the best infrastructure and the best people.
 
At the molecular virology lab, we are interested in studying the unique ways in which viruses manipulate their host cells to establish infection and cause disease. Mosquito-borne RNA viruses such as Dengue virus, Zika virus, Japanese encephalitis and West Nile virus are a serious health concern in tropical countries like India.  The broad goal of our research is to identify unique host factors that are critical for flaviviral infection across human and mosquito hosts using biochemical, molecular and high throughput proteomics-based approaches.

Since the physiological and immunological processes in humans and mosquitos are fundamentally different, flaviviruses face different selective pressures in the two hosts. While mammalian cells typically show acute cytopathic effects during Dengue virus (DENV) infection, mosquito cells are remarkably resilient and are capable of supporting persistent, non-cytopathic infections. Our work explores the conserved and species-specific mechanisms that regulate DENV infection outcomes across human and mosquito hosts.

 

Our research focuses on identifying unique ways in which RNA viruses manipulate host cellular machineries, using novel mass spectrometry-based methods, molecular and biochemical approaches with the ultimate goal of identifying effective targets for antiviral interventions.