Head, Laboratory of Structural Biology
M. Sc. University of Jammu, Jammu
Ph. D. Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

Dr. Prem Kaushal obtained his Ph. D. in macromolecular crystallography and biophysics from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, under the tutelage of Professor M. Vijayan. Then, he joined Professor Chris Dealwis lab at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), Cleveland, OH, USA, and worked on ribonucleotide reductases these convert the ribose sugar to deoxyribose sugar. At the CWRU, Dr. Kaushal got interested in cryo- electron microscopy (cryo- EM) and moved to the Dr. Rajendra Agrawal lab. at Wadsworth Center, Albany, NY. USA. Where he has applied the cutting-edge techniques of the single-particle reconstruction, cryo-EM to illustrate the architecture of ribonucleoprotein complexes; bacterial group II introns and ribosomes. Bacterial group II introns are large catalytic RNAs related to nuclear spliceosomal introns and eukaryotic retrotransposons. The first 3.8 Å resolution cryo-EM structure of Lactococcus lactis group IIA intron, in complex with an intron-encoded protein, LtrA, revealed the functional coordination of the intron RNA with the LtrA protein.

His lab is now applying a multidisciplinary approach of molecular biology, biochemistry, cryo- EM, X-ray crystallography and bioinformatics to understand the molecular mechanism of ribosome biogenesis, and protein synthesis in pathogenic organisms to exploit the unique features of pathogen’s translational machineries to improve the efficacy of known drug molecules and find new drug targets for therapeutics.