Ranita Ghosh Dastidar

Ranita Ghosh Dastidar

Assistant Professor

Department of Biochemistry,

Kasturba Medical College, Manipal, India.

Email: ranita.gd@manipal.edu 

 

 

 

VALIDATE Role:

Network Associate

 

Research Keywords: 

Melioidosis, Immunometabolism, Mitochondrial studies, Energy metabolism
 
 

Biography:

Dr. Ranita Ghosh Dastidar is a passionate researcher, resourceful molecular and cell biologist with graduate, undergraduate and high school teaching/ supervisory experience and thirteen years of international research experience.  She has completed her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas in the specialty of molecular and cell biology and postdoctoral training from the University of California, San Diego. Currently, she is an 

Assistant Professor of Biochemistry in Kasturba Medical College, Manipal at Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India. 

Her current work involves understanding the effect of diabetes mellitus (DM) on immunometabolic response to Burkholderia pseudomallei causing melioidosis in Indian patients. No studies are available that emphasize on the effect of DM on cellular metabolism and altered immune responses in melioidosis. We aim to delineate the metabolome profile and immune response in Indian subjects of diabetic patients suffering from melioidosis.

Her Ph.D. research utilized cellular, biochemical techniques and live cell imaging to work on yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a model. The objective of thesis project was to identify proteins, at a genome-wide scale, that change their subcellular localization in response to hypoxia and further study the dynamics of protein localization to identify proteins that readily and effectively relocalize in response to hypoxia and reoxygenation. Further, worked with five yeast knockout strains that showed significantly enhanced hypoxia tolerance of yeast by the deletion of ribosomal biogenesis genes. Research during her postdoctoral training involved investigating the role of a non-receptor GEF protein, namely GIV in the secretory pathway. It utilized cellular, biochemical techniques and fluorescent imaging to work on mammalian cell lines. The objective of her project has been to study the interaction-mapping of GIV with a GAP protein ArfGAP3. During her post-doctoral period, she has worked and wrote a manuscript on “Implementing active learning by stimulating critical thinking and having targeted research goals in a biology laboratory” as part of pedagogical research.

 

Key Publications:

 

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