WEHI Structural Biology Special Seminar hosted by Dr  Rashmi Agrata

Arun K. Shukla, PhD, FNA, FASc, FNASc, FTWAS

Professor and Sonu Agrawal Memorial Chair

Senior Fellow, Wellcome Trust DBT India Alliance

Department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering

Indian Institute of Technology

India

Structure, function, and regulation of G protein-coupled receptors 

L7W Seminar Room

Join via TEAMS

Including Q&A session

Our research program is focused on understanding the largest class of cell surface proteins in our body which are referred to as G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). These receptors are intricately involved in almost every physiological process and approximately half of the currently prescribed medicines exert their therapeutic effects through these receptors. The overarching theme of our research is to understand the structure, function, and regulation of GPCRs, and leverage this information to design and discover novel therapeutics with minimal side-effects. Our research has elucidated the details of how clinically prescribed drugs for a range of human disorders interact with, and regulate, the function of their cognate receptors in human body. We have also discovered previously unappreciated mechanisms that GPCRs utilize to receive the information outside the cells and relay the message across the cell membrane. More recently, we have identified synthetic antibody fragments that can be utilized to monitor GPCR activation and trafficking, and to rewire GPCR signalling in cellular context. 

Dr. Shukla received his M.Sc. degree in Biotechnology from the Center for Biotechnology at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He then completed his Ph.D. from the Department of Molecular Membrane Biology at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt, Germany under the supervision of Prof. Hartmut Michel (Nobel Laureate, 1988). Dr. Shukla carried out his post-doctoral work with Prof. Robert Lefkowitz Nobel Laureate, 2012) in the Department of Medicine at Duke University in North Carolina, USA in a very close collaboration with Prof. Brian Kobilka (Nobel Laureate, 2012) in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at Stanford University in San Francisco, USA. Dr. Shukla is currently a Professor and Sonu Agrawal Memorial Chair in the Department of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering at IIT Kanpur. Dr. Shukla’s research program is focused on understanding structure, function, and regulation of G Protein-Coupled Receptors (GPCRs), the largest family of cell surface receptors in the human genome and the target of about half of the currently available medicines.

All welcome!