Krishna Kurthkoti is an Associate Professor at the School of Biosciences. He has taught courses on Microbiology and Genetic engineering at the School of Biosciences since 2024. He completed his Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Science and did his postdoctoral research work at Sanford Burnham Medical Research Institute, San Diego and at Rutgers University. He worked as a faculty fellow at Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology, Thiruvananthapuram between 2017-2023.

He has published widely cited work on mycobacterial DNA repair, role of small RNAs in RNA interference and innate immunity of Drosophila and on bacterial iron homeostasis and has a book chapter on mycobacterial biofilms.

At the School of Biosciences, Krishna currently teaches Molecular biology and Genetic engineering and is the co-ordinator for PhD and PG program of the school. In 2016, he received the Ramalingaswami Re-entry fellowship awarded by Department of Biotechnology and received the Core research grant from Science and Engineering Research board in 2019.

• Ph.D. Department of Microbiology and Cell Biology, 2010, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
• MSc, Microbiology, 2003, Bangalore University

1. ​​P. Kumar, K. Krishna, R. Srinivasan, P. Ajitkumar, and U. Varshney, “Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Escherichia coli nucleoside diphosphate kinases lack multifunctional activities to process uracil containing DNA,” Dna Repair, vol. 3, no. 11, pp. 1483–1492, Nov. 2004, doi: 10.1016/j.dnarep.2004.06.007.
2. ​K. Kurthkoti, P. Kumar, R. Jain, and U. Varshney, “Important role of the nucleotide excision repair pathway in Mycobacterium smegmatis in conferring protection against commonly encountered DNA-damaging agents.,” Microbiol Read Engl, vol. 154, no. Pt 9, pp. 2776–85, Sep. 2008, doi: 10.1099/mic.0.2008/019638-0.
3. ​K. Kurthkoti et al., “A distinct physiological role of MutY in mutation prevention in mycobacteria,” Microbiology, vol. 156, no. Pt 1, pp. 88–98, Jan. 2010, doi: 10.1099/mic.0.033621-0.
4. ​V. S. Malshetty, R. Jain, T. Srinath, K. Kurthkoti, and U. Varshney, “Synergistic effects of UdgB and Ung in mutation prevention and protection against commonly encountered DNA damaging agents in Mycobacterium smegmatis,” Microbiology+, vol. 156, no. 3, pp. 940–949, Mar. 2010, doi: 10.1099/mic.0.034363-0.
5. ​V. Malshetty et al., “Novel insertion and deletion mutants of RpoB that render Mycobacterium smegmatis RNA polymerase resistant to rifampicin-mediated inhibition of transcription,” Microbiology+, vol. 156, no. 5, pp. 1565–1573, May 2010, doi: 10.1099/mic.0.036970-0.
6. ​K. Kurthkoti and U. Varshney, “Detrimental Effects of Hypoxia-Specific Expression of Uracil DNA Glycosylase (Ung) in Mycobacterium smegmatis▿,” J Bacteriol, vol. 192, no. 24, pp. 6439–6446, 2010, doi: 10.1128/jb.00679-10.
7. ​K. Kurthkoti and U. Varshney, “Base excision and nucleotide excision repair pathways in mycobacteria.,” Tuberc Edinb Scotl, vol. 91, no. 6, pp. 533–43, Nov. 2011, doi: 10.1016/j.tube.2011.06.005.
8. ​K. Kurthkoti and U. Varshney, “Distinct mechanisms of DNA repair in mycobacteria and their implications in attenuation of the pathogen growth,” Mech Ageing Dev, vol. 133, no. 4, pp. 138–146, Apr. 2012, doi: 10.1016/j.mad.2011.09.003.
9. ​K. Rex, K. Kurthkoti, and U. Varshney, “Hypersensitivity of hypoxia grown Mycobacterium smegmatis to DNA damaging agents: implications of the DNA repair deficiencies in attenuation of mycobacteria.,” Mechanisms of ageing and development, vol. 134, no. 10, pp. 516–522, Oct. 2013, doi: 10.1016/j.mad.2013.08.006.
10. ​A.Parikh et al., “Development of a New Generation of Vectors for Gene Expression, Gene Replacement, and Protein-Protein Interaction Studies in Mycobacteria,” Appl Environ Microb, vol. 79, no. 5, pp. 1718–1729, Mar. 2013, doi: 10.1128/aem.03695-12.
11. ​X.-P. Xiong et al., “Core small nuclear ribonucleoprotein particle splicing factor SmD1 modulates RNA interference in Drosophila,” Proc National Acad Sci, vol. 110, no. 41, pp. 16520–16525, 2013, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1315803110.
12. ​X.-P. Xiong, G. Vogler, K. Kurthkoti, A. Samsonova, and R. Zhou, “SmD1 Modulates the miRNA Pathway Independently of Its Pre-mRNA Splicing Function,” Plos Genet, vol. 11, no. 8, p. e1005475, Aug. 2015, doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1005475.
13. ​K. Kurthkoti et al., “The mycobacterial iron-dependent regulator IdeR induces ferritin (bfrB ) by alleviating Lsr2 repression,” Mol Microbiol, vol. 98, no. 5, pp. 864–877, Dec. 2015, doi: 10.1111/mmi.13166.
14. ​X.-P. Xiong et al., “miR-34 Modulates Innate Immunity and Ecdysone Signaling in Drosophila,” Plos Pathog, vol. 12, no. 11, p. e1006034, 2016, doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1006034.
15. ​K. Kurthkoti et al., “The Capacity of Mycobacterium tuberculosis To Survive Iron Starvation Might Enable It To Persist in Iron-Deprived Microenvironments of Human Granulomas,” Mbio, vol. 8, no. 4, pp. e01092-17, Aug. 2017, doi: 10.1128/mbio.01092-17.
16. ​K. Kurthkoti, P. Kumar, P. B. Sang, and U. Varshney, “Base excision repair pathways of bacteria: new promise for an old problem,” Future Med Chem, vol. 0, no. 0, 2020, doi: 10.4155/fmc-2019-0267.
17. ​S. Salini et al., “The Error-Prone Polymerase DnaE2 Mediates the Evolution of Antibiotic Resistance in Persister Mycobacterial Cells,” Antimicrob Agents Ch, vol. 66, no. 3, pp. e01773-21, 2022, doi: 10.1128/aac.01773-21.
18. ​S. Salini et al., “Overexpression of a membrane transport system MSMEG_1381 and MSMEG_1382 confers multidrug resistance in Mycobacterium smegmatis,” Microb. Pathog., vol. 185, p. 106384, 2023, doi: 10.1016/j.micpath.2023.106384.
19. ​R. S. P. Rao et al., “Prevalence and heterogeneity of antibiotic resistance genes in Orientia tsutsugamushi and other rickettsial genomes,” Microb Pathogenesis, vol. 174, p. 105953, 2023, doi: 10.1016/j.micpath.2022.105953.
20. ​J Gopi Reji et al., “Rv1255c, a dormancy-related transcriptional regulator of TetR family in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, enhances isoniazid tolerance in Mycobacterium smegmatis”, The Journal of Antibiotics vol. 76 (12), p.720-727, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41429-023-00661-8​

Popular Writings

• www.expresspharma.in/suramin-reduces-drug-resistance-in-mycobacteria-says-study/
• https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/suramin-reduces-drug-resistance-in-mycobacteria-says-study/articleshow/89870123.cms

Project 1:

• Title: Characterization of iron starvation induced dormancy in mycobacteria and its application
• in drug discovery
• Duration: 6 years (2017-2023)
• Granting Agency: Department of Biotechnology
• PIs/Co PIs: Krishna Kurthkoti
• Short Description: To investigate the impact of iron starvation on Mycobacterial physiology and determine pathways that promote growth arrest and exit from dormancy
• Status: Completed
• Grant Amount: 1.2 Crore

Project 2:

• Title: Deciphering the role of mycobacterial error-prone polymerase DnaE2 in antibiotic persistence and conferring adaptation to stress during biofilm formation.
• Duration: 3 years (2019-2022)
• Granting Agency: Science and Engineering Research Board
• PIs/Co PIs: Krishna Kurthkoti (PI)/ Ajay Kumar (Co PI)
• Short Description: The project was aimed at understanding the molecular mechanisms that contribute to bacterial heterogeneity in biofilm and role of error-prone polymerases in mycobacterial biofilm
• Status: Completed
• Grant Amount: 39.5 lakhs

• Summer research fellowship (2003) Indian Academy of Sciences
• Junior research fellowship (2003) Council of Scientific and Industrial Research
• Senior research fellowship (2005) CSIR
• Ramalingaswami Re-entry fellowship (2016) Department of Biotechnology

• https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=7DdrXTQAAAAJ&hl=en&authuser=1
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishna-kurthkoti-a30b3b1b/