Ramakrishnan Nagaraj

Ramakrishnan Nagaraj (born 1953) is an Indian biochemist, molecular biologist and the leader of a team of scientists working in the field of peptide biochemistry at Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB). He is known for his studies on hemolytic and antibacterial properties in synthetic analogs of bacterial toxins. He is a J. C. Bose National fellow of the Department of Science and Technology at CCMB and an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India and the Indian National Science Academy. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1994, for his contributions to biological sciences.

Born on 10 February 1953, Ramakrishnan Nagaraj graduated in science from the University of Mumbai and completed his master's degree at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai before doing his doctoral research at the Indian Institute of Science under the guidance of Padmanabhan Balaram, a noted biochemist and Padma Bhushan laureate. He joined the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in 1980 as a scientist where he heads a team of scientists and pursues his researches on structure-function correlations in peptide antibiotics. He has done considerable work on signal peptides and peptide antibiotics and their structure-function relationships. He is known to have suggested a protocol by which hemolytic and antibacterial properties of the synthetic analogs of bacterial toxins could be separated, an invention which is reported to be of assistance in designing antibiotic peptides. His researches have been documented in several articles; PubMed, an online repository of medical articles, has listed 273 of them.

The Indian National Science Academy awarded Nagaraj the Young Scientists Medal in 1981 and he held the Young Associateship of the Indian Academy of Sciences from 1985 to 1988. He received the Young Scientist Award of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in 1988; CSIR would honor him again in 1994 with the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1994. A Homi Bhabha Fellow of 1991, he is also a recipient of the 1995 P. B. Rama Rao Award of the Society for Biological Chemists, India and an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (1998), Indian Academy of Sciences (1992) and the National Academy of Sciences, India.

• Sitaram, N.; Nagaraj, R. (1999). "Interaction of antimicrobial peptides with biological and model membranes: structural and charge requirements for activity". Biochim Biophys Acta. 1462 (2): 29–54. PMID 10590301. 
• Mandal, M., Jagannadham, M. V., and Nagaraj, R. (2002). "Antibacterial activities and conformations of bovine beta-defensin BNBD-12 and analogs:structural and disulfide bridge requirements for activity". Peptides. 23: 413–418. doi:10.1016/s0196-9781(01)00628-3. PMID 11835989.  CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
• Pallavi, B.; Nagaraj, R. (2003). "Palmitoylated peptides from the cysteine- rich domain of SNAP-23 cause membrane fusion depending on peptide length, position of cysteines, and extent of palmitoylation". Biochim Biophys Acta. 278 (15): 12737–44. doi:10.1074/jbc.M208598200. 
• Sowmya, B. L., Jagannadham, M. V., and Nagaraj, R. (2006). "Interaction of synthetic peptides corresponding to the scaffolding domain of Caveolin-3 with model membranes". Biopolymers. 84 (6): 615–24. doi:10.1002/bip.20595.  CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)
• Chaudhary, N., Singh, S., and Nagaraj, R. (2008). "Organic solvent mediated self-association of an amyloid forming peptide from beta(2)-microglobulin: An atomic force microscopy study". Biopolymers. 90 (2): 783–791.  CS1 maint: Multiple names: authors list (link)