2024

Whytamin lab at SABIC 2024

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Aniket delivered a talk on "How vitamin B12 and other cobamide cofactors are made: Mechanistic exploration to understand diversity "

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Ateek, Shweta, and Rajdip presented posters

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2023

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Congratulations Ateek, on an excellent thesis defense, and many thanks to everyone who enabled this!

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Shweta went to the University of Lausanne, Switzerland to work on a collaborative project with Sara Mitri, titled, "Exploring pattern formation in Bacterial biofilms driven by vitamin sharing and exchange". Congratulations!

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BSMS students Utthara, Vikram and Khusi joined the lab for semester projects. Welcome, Utthara, Khushi and Vikram

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Khushi and VikramManab Mandal joined the lab as a summer project student. Welcome!

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Aditya defended his MS thesis titled, ‘Exploring the nucleotide promiscuity of Escherichia coli methionine adenosyltransferase mutants’. Congratulations!

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Rohan defended his MS thesis titled, ‘Structural redesign of riboflavin kinases from bacteria and archaea for altered nucleobase specificity' Congratulations!

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 BSMS student Gayathri Murali joined the lab for a summer project. Welcome, Gayathri!

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BSMS student Shashank Verma joined the lab for a summer project. Welcome, Shashank!

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New paper: 'Ateek, Yashwant, Rohan and Amrita's work ''Efficient Chemical and Enzymatic Synthesis of FAD nucleobase analogues and their analysis as enzyme cofactors'' is published in ChemBioChem! Moreover, it was picked to be featured on ChemBioTalents 2022-23!  Do check the paper here! Congratulations Ateek, Yashwant, Rohan, and Amrita!

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 Ateek gave a successful Pre-synopsis seminar. Congratulations, Ateek!

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 New preprint on bioRxiv! Read about our work on efficient chemical and enzymatic synthesis of FAD nucleobase analogues and their analysis as enzyme cofactors  Congratulations Ateek, Yashwant, Rohan, and Amrita!

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BSMS student Anjali Pattathil joined the lab for a semester project. Welcome, Anjali!

2022

 Congratulations Yamini, on an excellent thesis defense, and many thanks to everyone who enabled this!

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 New review: Yamini's review "Methylations in vitamin B12 biosynthesis and catalysis '' is published in Current Opinion in Structural Biology! Congratulations Yamini and Amrita!

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 Congratulations Rupali, on an excellent thesis defense, and many thanks to everyone who enabled this!

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Aniket’s application for the Prime Minister's Research Fellowship (PMRF) was selected. Congratulations!

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Shweta presented a poster at the Asian Chemical Biology Initiative (ACBI) Meeting 2022 at IISER Pune. Amrita gave a presentation.

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Integrated PhD student Nikita Panchmukhi joined the lab for a Master's thesis project. Welcome, Nikita!

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Integrated PhD student Rajdip Chakraborty joined the lab for a Master's thesis project. Welcome, Rajdip!

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BSMS student Neel Shah joined the lab for a semester project. Welcome, Neel!

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Hazra lab at the Gordon Research Conference 
Yamini delivered a talk and presented a poster 'Eukaryotic Homologs of CobT Activate Lower Ligands of Vitamin B12 and other Cobamides'.
at the Gordon Research Conference on Chemistry and Biology of Tetrapyrroles 2022.

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Integrated PhD student Kushankur Pandit joins the lab for a summer rotation. Welcome!

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Vibhor defended his MS thesis titled, ‘Probing the biological chemistry of exchange and sharing of thiamin and purine biosynthesis pathway intermediates within Escherichia coli synthetic cocultures ’. Congratulations!

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Riya defended her MS thesis titled, ‘A study on the functional and genomic context of CobT in eukaryotes and the molecular factors governing its regioselectivity’. Congratulations!

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Vruta defended her MS thesis titled, ‘Bioengineering SAM synthetase for the production of SAM nucleobase analogs’. Congratulations!

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Rupali gave a successful Pre-synopsis seminar. Congratulations, Rupali!

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New paper: Rupali and Amrita's work "Exchange of Vitamin B1 and Its Biosynthesis Intermediates Shapes the Composition of Synthetic Microbial Cocultures and Reveals Complexities of Nutrient Sharing" is now published in the Journal of Bacteriology. This study was done in collaboration with Ryan Paerl at North Carolina State University

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New book chapter: Yamini, Aniket, and Amrita contributed to the Methods in Enzymology: B12 enzymes (vol 667).  Read their chapter 'Guardian of Cobamide Diversity: Probing the role of CobT in lower ligand activation in the biosynthesis of vitamin B12 and other cobamide cofactors' here.

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Yamini gave a successful Pre-synopsis seminar. Congratulations, Yamini!

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Shweta Nikhar joined our lab for PhD. Welcome, Shweta!

 
2021

BSMS student Aditya Bhattacharyya joined the lab for a semester project. Welcome, Aditya!

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Congratulations Rupali, on being granted the Infosys Foundation Travel award from IISER Pune for the workshop, "Ligand-protein docking, and computer-aided drug design" at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland by the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics. Rupali also gets to visit the Sara Mitri's laboratory at the University of Lausanne to learn about imaging microbial co-cultures, and specifically study spatial patterning within interacting microbes, and starting a collaborative project with the Mitri lab. 
 

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Our first Ph.D. defense from the lab! Congratulations Yashwant, on an excellent thesis defense, and many thanks to everyone who enabled this!
 

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Rupali's manuscript is on bioRxiv! Read about our work on building synthetic microbial  co-cultures on the basis of exchange of Vitamin B1 and its biosynthesis intermediate! Congratulations Rupali, Ryan, and Amrita!
 

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New paper: Yashwant's paper is in ChemBioChem! And with a cherry on top - it was picked to be a cover feature! Do check out the article and the cover image! Congratulations Yashwant, Reman, and Amrita!
 

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IISER Pune BSMS students P. Riya and Vibhor Gaikwad join the lab for their MS thesis. Welcome to Vibhor and Riya!
 

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IISER Pune Integrated PhD student Aniket Vartak joined the lab. Welcome, Aniket!
 

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IISER Pune BSMS student S. Rohan joins the lab for a semester project! Welcome, Rohan!
 

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Ateek and Yamini's commentary ''Double agent indole-3-acetic acid (IAA): Mechanistic analysis of indole-3-acetaldehyde dehydrogenase AldA that synthesizes IAA, an auxin that aids bacterial virulence'' based on an article by Zhang et al. is published in  Bioscience Reports! Congratulations Ateek, Yamini, and Amrita!
 

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Yashwant's work on the ''Characterization of a novel mesophilic CTP-dependent riboflavin kinase and rational engineering to create its thermostable homologs'' is now on bioRxiv! Do check it out here! Congratulations Yashwant, Reman and Amrita!
 

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BSMS student Vruta Gupte joined the lab for her MS thesis. Welcome, Vruta!
 

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Yamini started her Newton-Bhabha PhD placement at Prof. Martin Warren’s lab at the University of Kent, Canterbury.


2020

Yashwant gave a successful Pre-synopsis seminar. Congratulations, Yashwant!
 

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Ateek presented a departmental seminar on, 'Halogenases: powerful tools for bioctalysts'. Congratulations, Ateek!
 

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BSMS student Anisha Rai joined the lab. Welcome, Anisha!
 

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The first paper from our lab, ‘CobT and BzaC catalyze the regiospecific activation and methylation of the 5-hydroxybenzimidazole lower ligand in anaerobic cobamide biosynthesis’ is published in JBC as an Editor's pick. Check it out here.  Read the news coverage here. Congratulations to Yamini, Sheryl, Prathamesh, Manjima, and Amrita!

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New paper: Biodegradable Polymer Theranostic Fluorescent Nanoprobe for Direct Visualization and Quantitative Determination of Antimicrobial Activity
Rupali contributed to the latest paper by M. Jayakannan’s lab published in Biomacromolecules. Check it out here. Congratulations, Rupali!
 

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Saswata defended his MS thesis titled, ‘Mechanistic Investigation of Bacterial 3-Mercaptopyruvate Sulfurtransferase (3MST) and Design of Inhibitors’. Congratulations!
 

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Sheryl defended her MS thesis titled, ‘Probing the mechanism and genomic context of CobT, the lower ligand activating enzyme in vitamin B12 biosynthesis’. Congratulations!
 

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Hazra lab at CCCP-2020
Rupali delivered a talk and presented a poster on 'Cross-feeding of vitamin B1 and its biosynthetic intermediates in synthetic Escherichia coli communities'.
Yamini presented a poster titled ‘Probing methylations in the biosynthesis of vitamin B12 to understand the cobamide diversity in microorganisms’
 

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A happy Sunday lunch at the Green signal. Thanks for the treat, Amrita! 
 

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Yamini presented a poster ‘Investigating Nature’s modular toolkit for the biosynthesis of Vitamin B12 and its analogues’ at the inauguration of Cipla Foundation-IISER Pune Centre.
 

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Integrated PhD student Chinmaya Jena joined the lab for a rotation. Welcome, Chinmaya!
 

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Yamini’s application for Newton-Bhabha PhD placement 2019-20 got selected. Congratulations!

 
2019

We reviewed the international edition of Biochemistry by Donald Voet and Judith Voet.
 

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Hazra lab at BioConclave 2019
Sheryl presented a poster on ‘A tale of two isomers: exploring the attachment of the lower ligands of cobamides’ at Bioconclave 2019. 
Amrita gave a lighting presentation.
Rupali and Yamini were a part of the team organising the BioConclave 2019.
 

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BSMS student Janhavi Borkar joined for a semester project. Welcome, Janhavi!
 

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Hazra lab at Chemsymphoria 2019
Ateek presented a poster titled ‘’ at the Chemsymphoria 2019.
 

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Mrutyunjay Nair was awarded the Best Thesis in Chemistry prize for his MS thesis. Congratulations, Mrutyunjay!
 

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Welcome, summer students- Vyankatesh Zambare, Shravani Rawool, and Diksha Kansara
 

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Dr Reman Singh joined the lab as a research associate. Welcome, Reman!
 

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BSMS student Mrutyunjay Nair defended his MS thesis ‘Mechanistic Investigation of Unnatural Substrates for Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen sulfide in Bacteria’. Congratulations, Mrutyunjay!
 

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Rupali and Yamini volunteered to be a part of PhD mentors team for iGEM team 2019. Good luck!