Lab Members
Postdoctoral and Visiting Researchers
Santhosh Gatreddi is a structural biologist who received his PhD in Biotechnology from the University
of Hyderabad. Santhosh carries out biochemical, mechanistic, and structural characterization
of enzymes that use the nickel-pincer nucleotide, and he studies an associated nickel
uptake system. He is jointly mentored by Dr. Hausinger and Professor Jian Hu in BMB.
Swati Gupta is a structural biochemist who trained at the International Center for Genetic Engineering
and Biotechnology, New Delhi, India. Her research focuses on homologues of LarA that
contain both a nickel-pincer nucleotide cofactor and an iron-sulfur cluster. She is
mentored jointly by Drs. Hausinger and Hu (BMB).
Shramana Chatterjee is a structural biochemist who received her PhD from the Crystallography and Molecular
Biology Division of the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in Kolkata, India. She
is co-mentored by Dr. Hausinger and Dr. Hu of BMB. Her initial project focused on
an [FeS]-containing form of the LarE sulfur transferase that participates in the synthesis
of the nickel-pincer nucleotide. Currently she is characterizing bacterial, fungal,
and ancestral sequence reconstruction versions of the ethylene-forming enzyme.
Yali Wang is Biochemical Engineer who received her PhD from Xiamen University, and received
additional training with Prof. David Baker on creating protein shells at the University
of Washington. Her work focuses on engineering bacterial microcompartments to contain
2-aminophenol-1,6-dioxygenase, an Fe(II)-containing enzyme and to characterize the
effects of confinement on enzyme activity. She is a member of the DOE-supported Energy
Frontiers Research Center on campus.
Graduate Students
Aiko Turmo graduated from MSU in Molecular Genetics and Genomics & Microbiology in 2013, then
worked as a laboratory research technician for four years with Prof. Cheryl Kerfeld
in the DOE Plant Research Laboratory. She became a BMB graduate student in 2017 and
her research currently focuses on characterization of LarC, a CTP-dependent cyclometallase
that installs nickel in the nickel-pincer nucleotide cofactor.
Jorge Nevarez is a chemistry student who is studying enzymes that utilize the nickel-pincer nucleotide
complex, but are not related to lactate racemase.
Undergraduate Students
Bryce Delaney, majoring in Microbiology, does general laboratory cleanup and assists Shramana in her studies.
Emma Borden is a Genomics and Molecular Genetics student who assists with general laboratory cleanup and helps Jorge with his experimental studies.