Nishita Parnandi Email & Phone Number

United Kingdom

Boston

Ph.D. student in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program

Chennai Area, India

Studied the role of miRNA-7 in breast cancer. - Using bioinformatics, we initially predicted an 8-9 bp region in the 3'​ UTR of VDAC-1, conserved across species, to be a target site for miR-7. A breast carcinoma cell lysate panel was used to analyse the endogenous expression levels of VDAC-1. - Based on these results, we chose two cell lines for further experiments. In these cell lines, we proved that with increasing concentrations of miR-7, there was a decrease in the expression levels of VDAC-1 at the protein level.- Luciferase reporter assays were conducted to prove that the binding of miR-7 to the 3' UTR of VDAC-1 is specific.

Komaba, Tokyo

- Studied cardiac regeneration by analysing expression levels of genes in mice cardiomyocytes stressed under Transverse Aortic Constriction. - Results indicated that cardiomyocyte structural genes, cell cycle regulators and stress response genes are significantly correlated, suggesting their involvement as a network in cardiac regeneration.

Cambridge, United Kingdom

- Examined high confidence mutations in the sequences of H37Rv strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, as documented in CHOPIN, a database consisting of the structural models of the proteome of Mtb. - Using SDM and mCSM algorithms, the mutations were classified into neutral and deleterious on the basis of the difference in free energies of the wild type and mutant proteins.

Bengaluru Area, India

- Designed an algorithm to predict interacting domains in protein-protein interfaces for prediction and modelling of protein-protein complexes.