biology

R. Sowdhamini

R. Sowdhamini 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 R. Sowdhamini rather than just read about it. In short: Ramanathan Sowdhamini (born 24 May 1964) is an Indian computational biologist, bioinformatician. She is a professor at the department of biochemistry, biophysics and bioinformatics of the National Centre for Biological Sciences, a TIFR research facility located in Bengaluru.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Ramanathan Sowdhamini (born 24 May 1964) is an Indian computational biologist, bioinformatician. She is a professor at the department of biochemistry, biophysics and bioinformatics of the National Centre for Biological Sciences, a TIFR research facility located in Bengaluru. Known for computational studies in the field of Protein Science, Sowdhamini is also associated with the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine as a collaborator and is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences as well as the Indian National Science Academy. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded her the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards, for her contributions to biosciences in 2007.

Biography

Born on 24 May 1964 in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Sowdhamini earned a post graduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras in basic chemistry and enrolled at the Indian Institute of Science for her doctoral studies from where she secured a PhD. Subsequently, she did her post-doctoral work in the UK, first at Birkbeck, University of London and later, at the University of Cambridge. On her return to India, she joined the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), a research facility in Bengaluru, jointly funded by the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research and the Department of Atomic Energy as a member of faculty where she serves as a professor at the department of biochemistry, biophysics and bioinformatics. She also serves as a collaborator at the Centre for Cardiovascular Biology and Disease of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (inStem) of the Department of Biotechnology.

Legacy

Sowdhamini's research is in the fields of computational studies of Protein Science as well as genome sequencing and she is reported to have done advanced research in the code development for studying Protein folding and unfolding. She leads a group of scientists engaged in the computational studies of proteins with regard to their random rearrangements during evolution and they have carried out genome surveys of several protein families and superfamilies. Her team was successful in preparing the draft genome of Ocimum tenuiflorum (commonly known as Tulsi), a plant with medicinal properties, for the first time which assisted in identifying the genes responsible for the production of Ursolic acid, a triterpenoid and Eugenol, a phenylpropanoid, compounds responsible for the medicinal properties of the plant. She was the lead developer of 3DSwap, a database of 3D domain-swapped proteins. Besides, along with James Spudich of the Stanford University and Henrik Flyvbjerg of the Technical University of Denmark, she led the project for studying coiled coil interactions in proteins, a collaborative project of the two institutions and the National Centre for Biological Sciences. Her studies have been documented by way of a number of articles and ResearchGate, an online repository of scientific articles has listed 427 of them. She sits in the editorial board of Bioinformation journal and has also mentored many post-graduate, doctoral ad post-doctoral scholars in their research.

Awards and honours The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded Sowdhamini the National Bioscience Award for Career Development, one of the highest Indian science awards in 2007. She was elected as a fellow by the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2010 and she received the Human Frontier Science Program Award the same year. A year later, The Indian National Science Academy elected her as a fellow in 2011. She is also a recipient of the Bharat Jyoti Award of the India International Friendship Society. She is a J. C. Bose National Fellow of the Department of Science and Technology since 2016.

Selected bibliography Madan, Lalima L.; Veeranna, S.; Shameer, Khader; Reddy, Chilamakuri C. S.; Sowdhamini, R.; Gopal, B. (13 September 2011). "Modulation of Catalytic Activity in Multi-Domain Protein Tyrosine Phosphatases". PLOS ONE. 6 (9) e24766. Bibcode:2011PLoSO...624766M. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0024766. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 3172300. PMID 21931847. Syamaladevi, Divya P.; Sowdhamini, R. (26 September 2011). "Evolutionary traces decode molecular mechanism behind fast pace of myosin XI". BMC Structural Biology. 11: 35. doi:10.1186/1472-6807-11-35. ISSN 1472-6807. PMC 3209465. PMID 21942950. Kumar, Jitendra; Choudhary, Bikash C.; Metpally, Raghu; Zheng, Qun; Nonet, Michael L.; Ramanathan, Sowdhamini; Klopfenstein, Dieter R.; Koushika, Sandhya P. (4 November 2010). "The Caenorhabditis elegans Kinesin-3 Motor UNC-104/KIF1A Is Degraded upon Loss of Specific Binding to Cargo". PLOS Genetics. 6 (11) e1001200. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1001200. ISSN 1553-7404. PMC 2973836. PMID 21079789.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with R. Sowdhamini

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what R. Sowdhamini 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 R. Sowdhamini 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 R. Sowdhamini 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 R. Sowdhamini

In research: R. Sowdhamini 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 R. Sowdhamini 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: R. Sowdhamini is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1964 births, 20th-century Indian biologists, Academic staff of the National Centre for Biological Sciences, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for R. Sowdhamini 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 R. Sowdhamini in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what R. Sowdhamini 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 R. Sowdhamini out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is R. Sowdhamini in simple terms?

Why does R. Sowdhamini 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 R. Sowdhamini?

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 R. Sowdhamini.