KD

Kaustuv Datta

University of Delhi, University of Michigan, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

ORCID iD 0000-0002-6834-2192
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About

The long term goals of my lab are to understand how Saccharomyces cerevisiae and its related pathogenic cousins, such as Candida albicans (human pathogen) and Magnaporthe oryzae (plant pathogen) adapt to changing nutrient sources and the role that mitochondrial proteins play in this adaptation. Mitochondrial biogenesis/functioning require coordinated expression of nuclear and
its own genome, which are tightly regulated with the availability of glucose to the cell. Mitochondrial genome encodes for polypeptides that are components of various subunits of the electron transport chain, rRNA genes as well as a set of tRNA genes. S. cerevisiae is able to utilize both fermentable as well as non-fermentable carbon source. As a part of it life cycle S. cerevisiae when grown on glucose under aerobic conditions generates ATP only through glycolysis without consuming the ethanol generated. Under these conditions ATP generation from mitochondria is negligible. After exhaustion of glucose, under aerobic conditions S. cerevisiae switches its metabolism to utilize ethanol, such that ATP is generated through the F1F0ATPase on the inner membrane of mitochondria. It is well established that proper mitochondrial biogenesis and its optimal functioning are critical to numerous cellular processes including adaptation to nutrient availability and stress. However the mechanism as well as the timing of metabolic switching with respect to availability of carbon source is not well understood, in particular how the mitochondrial ribosomes biogenesis/function is modulated to function optimally. Our lab focuses on understanding how mitochondrial ribosomes are assembled and how their functioning is regulated especially with changing nutrient in the environment. Although bacterial ribosomes are considered ancestors of the mitochondrial ribosomes, there are numerous distinctions. During mitochondrial evolution, the RNA content of the ribosome has reduced to approximately 50% in mammalian mitochondria whereas the protein content has increased, presumably to compensate for the loss of rRNA domains. These mitochondrial specific ribosomal proteins, in addition to their role in maintaining the structural features of the core ribosome, are also required for numerous varied functions such as mitochondrial mRNA recognition, nascent polypeptide insertion into the inner membrane and regulators of mitochondrial translation. Mitochondrial ribosomal proteins and assembly/regulatory factors can be classified in three categories: (i) those that have orthologs in prokaryotes and all eukaryotes sequenced till date (ii) those that have orthologs only in lower and higher eukaryotes and (iii) those that have orthologs in prokaryotes and lower eukaryotes but absent in all other organisms sequenced. We have chosen to study the role of putative ribosome assembly/regulatory factors that fall in the above three categories in S. cerevisiae. We believe that knowledge gained from understanding the optimal regulation of mitochondrial ribosome output by these three separate classes of proteins under different nutrient sources would not only aid us in deciphering pathways that are important for human biology but also aid us in gaining insight into how pathogenic organisms survive in their particular environmental niche.

Employment

  • University of Delhi Assitant professor
    2010 - Present

Education

  • University of Michigan
    1998 - 2005
  • Indian Institute of Technology Bombay Masters
    1995 - 1997

Projects & Funding

Projects & funding information is unavailable.

Publications (13)