Center for Systems Biology and Molecular Medicine

Biography

Dr. Anoop started his research career as a project assistant in Prof. Sudhanshu Vrati lab at NII, N. Delhi. Here he was involved in several vaccine development projects. Dr. Anoop did his Ph.D. under the guidance of Prof. Noboru Mizushima, TMDU, Japan. During his Ph.D., he identified the role of Atg2 in autophagy. He later received the Takeda Foundation fellowship to work with Prof. Hajime Hirase at RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan. Here he got trained in cranial window preparation surgeries and two-photon live imaging of mice. Dr. Anoop also received his 6 years postdoctoral training under Prof. S. Murty Srinivasula at IISER Thiruvananthapuram. With Prof. Murty, he identified the role of endosomes in mitophagy. He has trained more than 30 master students for their one year projects and has mentored 8 PhD scholars while he was working in Prof. Murty lab. Dr. Anoop is currently working as an Assistant Professor at the Center for Systems Biology and Molecular Medicine (CSBMM), Yenepoya Research Center, Yenepoya (Deemed to be University).

Research Interest/Area

My current interest is to identify the role of metabolic pathways in cancer drug resistance.

How energy imbalances, diversions, metabolic pathway alterations and metabolite stagnation reprogram cell signaling and how these processes are related to disease development?

To what extent can a restoration of metabolic pathway homeostasis contribute to disease amelioration?

I use the following molecular biology tools and techniques to understand these processes: Retroviral stable cell line preparation, CRISPR gene editing, site-directed mutagenesis, immunoprecipitations, mass spectrometry, confocal microscopy, super resolution microscopy, multiphoton microscopy and flow cytometry.

Publications

Research papers:11; Review articles: 0; Book Chapters: 1

Ravindran R*, Velikkakath AK*, Narendradev ND, Chandrasekharan A, Santhoshkumar TR, Srinivasula SM. Endosomal-associated RFFL facilitates mitochondrial clearance by enhancing PRKN/parkin recruitment to mitochondria. Autophagy. In Press.

Velikkakath AK, Nishimura T, Oita E, Ishihara N, Mizushima N. Mammalian Atg2 proteins are essential for autophagosome formation and important for regulation of size and distribution of lipid droplets. Molecular biology of the cell. In Press.