Padmanabhan Balaram

Padmanabhan Balaram is an Indian biochemist and the director of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, IndiaBalaram received his Bachelors degree in Chemistry from Fergusson College, University of Pune followed by a Masters degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and his PhD degree from Carnegie Mellon University with Aksel A BothnerBy After a postdoctoral stint at Harvard University with Nobel laureate Robert Burns Woodward, he returned to the Indian Institute of Science, where he has been ever since as a faculty member in the Molecular Biophysics Unit During his PhD, Balaram studied the use of negative Nuclear Overhauser effect signals as probes of macromolecular conformations As a postdoc with Woodword, Balaram worked on the synthesis of the antibiotic erythromycinBalarams main area of research has been the investigation of the structure, conformation, and biological activity of designed and natural peptides To do this, he has extensively used techniques such as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy, Infrared spectroscopy, and Circular Dichroism, along with Xray crystallography He has been a major contributor to the evaluation of factors influencing the folding and conformations of designed peptides, and has investigated structural elements playing a key role in the formation of secondary structural motifs such as helices, beta turns, and sheets Along with Isabella Karle, a frequent collaborator, he has also pioneered the use of alphaamino isobutyric acid to induce and retain helicity and constrain peptide conformations Balaram has authored more than 400 research papers, and is a fellow of the Indian National Science AcademyHe was also a colleague of late Prof G N Ramachandran at the Molecular Biophysics Unit of IISc He is presently the director of the Indian Institute of Science and is also the editor of the journal Current Science