Priyadarshan Kinatukara is an Assistant Professor in the School of Biosciences. He holds a master’s in biotechnology from Madurai Kamaraj University and a PhD in structural biology from CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, where he also conducted his post-doctoral research. Following a brief stint at CSIR-Institute for Microbial Technology, he joined Chanakya University in 2024. He has received the prestigious Ben Barres Spotlight Award in 2021.

Priyadarshan is interested in understanding mechanisms maintaining lipid diversity, particularly chirality, at various scales – organismal, cellular, genomic, and molecular using structural, biochemical and bioinformatic approaches. His long-term goal is to explore how lipid diversity can influence gut microbial populations and provide insights into lifestyle-related disorders.

Research Interests

We are a lipid biology laboratory interested in understanding how diversity of lipids influences cellular physiology. A key area of research is to understand the mechanisms regulating the flux of metabolites in modulating head group diversity of membranous and non-membranous lipids using chemogenetic, structural and biochemical tools in a simple model organism such as E.coli.

Publications

1. Emergence of DIP2-mediated regulation of PKC signalling axis in Eukaryotes. Sakshi Shambhavi, Sudipta Mondal, Arnab Chakraborty, Bapin K. Panda, Nikita Shukla, Santhosh Kumar, Suhail Madhar Hanif, Priyadarshan Kinatukara, Biswajit Pal, Siddhesh S Kamat and Rajan Sankaranarayanan. (Manuscript Submitted)

2. The mechanism of the DRB7.2:DRB4 mediated endogenous inverted-repeat dsRNA sequestering in plants. Sneha Paturi, Priti Chanda Behera, Debadutta Patra, Priyadarshan Kinatukara and Mandar Deshmukh. (Manuscript Submitted)

3. A universal pocket in Fatty acyl-AMP ligases ensures redirection of fatty acid pool away from Coenzyme A-based activation. Gajanan Shrikant Patil*, Priyadarshan Kinatukara*, Sudipta Mondal, Sakshi Shambhavi, Ketan D Patel, Surabhi Pramanik, Noopur Dubey, Subhash Narasimhan, Murali Krishna Madduri, Biswajit Pal, Rajesh S Gokhale and Rajan Sankaranarayanan.
   eLife 2021; 10:e70067. (doi: 10.7554/eLife.70067). (*contributed equally)

4. Peri-natal growth retardation rate and fat mass accumulation in mice lacking Dip2A is dependent on the dietary composition. Priyadarshan Kinatukara, Purnima Sailasree Subramaniyan, Gajanan S. Patil, Sakshi Shambhavi, Shubham Singh, Amol Mhetre, Murali Krishna Madduri, Avinash Soundararajan, Ketan D. Patel, P. Chandra Shekar, Siddhesh S. Kamat, Satish Kumar and Rajan Sankaranarayanan.
   Transgenic Res. 2020;29(5-6):553–562. (doi: 10.1007/s11248-020-00219-6)

5. Fatty Acyl-AMP Ligases as Mechanistic Variants of ANL Superfamily and Molecular Determinants Dictating Substrate Specificities. Priyadarshan Kinatukara and Rajan Sankaranarayanan.
   J. Indian Inst. Sci. 2018;98(3):261–272. (doi: 10.1007/s41745-018-0084-2)

6. Mechanistic insights into substrate specificity of mycobacterial type-III PKS. Rukmini Raju, Priyadarshan Kinatukara, Raghvendra Singh, Rajesh S. Gokhale and Rajan Sankaranarayanan.
   Acta Crystallogr. A 2017;73(a2):C247. (doi: 10.1107/S2053273317093263)

7. Lipid metabolism enzymes ECH and R-domains maintain mycobacterial lipid diversity. Priyadarshan Kinatukara, Gajanan S. Patil, Rajesh S. Gokhale and Rajan Sankaranarayanan.
   Acta Crystallogr. A 2017; 73(a2):C254. (doi: 10.1107/S2053273317093196)

8. Structural insights into the regulation of NADPH binding to reductase domains of nonribosomal peptide synthetases: A concerted loop movement model. Priyadarshan Kinatukara, Ketan D. Patel, Asfarul S. Haque, Raghavendra Singh, Rajesh S. Gokhale and Rajan Sankaranarayanan.
   J. Struct. Biol. 2016;194(3):368–374. (doi: 10.1016/j.jsb.2016.03.014)

9. Unsaturated Lipid Assimilation by Mycobacteria Requires Auxiliary cis-trans Enoyl CoA Isomerase. Sonali Srivastava, Sarika Chaudhary, Lipi Thukral, Ce Shi, Rinkoo D. Gupta, Radhika Gupta, Priyadarshan Kinatukara, Archana Vats, Asfarul S Haque, Rajan Sankaranarayanan, Vivek T. Natarajan, Rakesh Sharma, Courtney C. Aldrich and Rajesh S. Gokhale.
   Chem. Biol. 2015;22(12):1577–1587. (doi: 10.1016/j.chembiol.2015.10.009)

10. Structural Remodeling Creates Diversity in Lipid Repertoire of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.  Priyadarshan Kinatukara, Asfarul S. Haque, Raju Rukmini and Rajan Sankaranarayanan.
11. J. Indian Inst. Sci. 2014;94(1):139–148. (A SPECIAL ISSUE ON “CRYSTALS AND CRYSTALLOGRAPHY: FROM KOH-I-NOOR TO IYCR2014”)