Dr. Mithun Radhakrishna

Assistant Professor,

Department of Chemical Engineering

IIT Gandhinagar, Gujarat

E-mail: mithunr[at]iitgn.ac.in

Brief Bio-sketch:

Dr.Mithun Radhakrishna, Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering has research interests in protein-surface interactions, protein aggregation & folding and, charge driven self-assembly. He uses the tools of Statistical Mechanics and Molecular simulations to understand the interactions taking place at the nanoscale. Prof Radhakrishna holds a B.Tech from NIT Tiruchirappalli (2009) and an MS (2010) & PhD(2014) from Columbia University ,USA.

ENHANCED PROTEIN STABILITY ON PATTERNED SURFACES

Protein surface interactions are both of biological and industrial importance and understanding them is crucial for applications like biosensors, bio-fuel cells and enzyme immobilization. Many previous studies have indicated that proteins generally denature upon adsorption onto hydrophobic surfaces. This could be explained because of the rupture of the protein core which is mostly made up of hydrophobic amino acids residues in favor of surface contacts. This posses a major problem for enzyme immobilization applications as the enzyme loses its activity upon immobilization. In the current study we explore the possibility of creating heterogeneous domains (patterns) that complement the exposed hydrophobic domains in the protein to increase the thermal and structural stability of the protein upon adsorption. The protein in the current study is modeled using the Hydrophobic-Polar (HP) Lattice model.. Monte Carlo simulations are carried out on surfaces with varying patterns at different temperatures and surface hydrophobicity. The free energy as a function of surface hydrophobicity and temperature is obtained using the Weighted Histogram Analysis Method