biology

Lalita Ramakrishnan

Lalita Ramakrishnan is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Lalita Ramakrishnan rather than just read about it. In short: Lalita Ramakrishnan (born 1959) is an Indian-born American microbiologist who is known for her contributions to the understanding of the biological mechanism of tuberculosis. As of 2019 she serves as a professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Cambridge, where she is also a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow and a practicing physician.

Key takeaways

Lalita Ramakrishnan belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Lalita Ramakrishnan to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Lalita Ramakrishnan from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Lalita Ramakrishnan (born 1959) is an Indian-born American microbiologist who is known for her contributions to the understanding of the biological mechanism of tuberculosis. As of 2019 she serves as a professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the University of Cambridge, where she is also a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow and a practicing physician. Her research is conducted at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (MRC LMB), where she serves as the Head of the Molecular Immunity Unit of the Department of Medicine embedded at the MRC LMB. Working with Stanley Falkow at Stanford, she developed the strategy of using Mycobacterium marinum infection as a model for tuberculosis. Her work has appeared in a number of journals, including Science, Nature, and Cell. In 2018 and 2019 Ramakrishnan coauthored two influential papers in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) arguing that the widely accepted estimates of the prevalence of latent tuberculosis—estimates used as a basis for allocation of research funds—are far too high. She is married to Mark Troll, a physical chemist.

Early life and education Ramakrishnan was born in 1959 in Baroda (now Vadodara) and grew up there. Her parents were both scientists as is her brother, Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan. When Ramakrishnan was a child, her mother had three bouts of spinal tuberculosis. As a high school student, Ramakrishnan excelled at math and physics. Ramakrishnan began attending medical school at age 17, which is "not atypical in India, where specialized training begins shortly after high school." In 1983, she graduated with a Bachelor of Medicine degree in Vadodara from Baroda Medical College. After taking an elective course in advanced immunology, Ramakrishnan decided to study immunology. In 1990, she graduated from Tufts University with a PhD in Immunology. She then became the first foreign graduate of the medical residency program at Tufts-New England Medical Center. After completing a fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the University of California at San Francisco hospitals, including San Francisco General Hospital (now Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center), Ramakrishnan completed postdoctoral work in Stanley Falkow's lab at Stanford University, where she developed the strategy of using Mycobacterium marinum infection in zebrafish as a model for tuberculosis.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Lalita Ramakrishnan

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Lalita Ramakrishnan claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Lalita Ramakrishnan before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Lalita Ramakrishnan ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Lalita Ramakrishnan

In research: Lalita Ramakrishnan appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Lalita Ramakrishnan in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Lalita Ramakrishnan is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1959 births, American microbiologists, American people of Indian Tamil descent, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Lalita Ramakrishnan outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Lalita Ramakrishnan in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Lalita Ramakrishnan means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Lalita Ramakrishnan out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Lalita Ramakrishnan in simple terms?

Why does Lalita Ramakrishnan matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Lalita Ramakrishnan?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Lalita Ramakrishnan.