chemistry

Shankar Balasubramanian

Shankar Balasubramanian is a chemistry 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 Shankar Balasubramanian rather than just read about it. In short: Sir Shankar Balasubramanian (born 30 September 1966) is an Indian-born British chemist and Herchel Smith Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, Senior Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He is recognised for his contributions in the field of nucleic acids.

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Sir Shankar Balasubramanian (born 30 September 1966) is an Indian-born British chemist and Herchel Smith Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, Senior Group Leader at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He is recognised for his contributions in the field of nucleic acids. He is scientific founder of Solexa and biomodal (formally Cambridge Epigenetix).

Education Born in Madras (now Chennai) India in 1966, Shankar Balasubramanian moved to the UK with his parents in 1967. He grew up in a rural area just outside Runcorn, Cheshire, and attended Daresbury Primary School, then Appleton Hall High School (which has since amalgamated to form Bridgewater High School). He went on to study the Natural Sciences Tripos at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he did his undergraduate degree from 1985 to 1988 and continued with a PhD for research on the reaction mechanism of the enzyme chorismate synthase supervised by Chris Abell (1988–1991).

Career and research Following his PhD, Balasubramanian travelled to the United States as a SERC/NATO Research Fellow and worked in the group of Stephen J. Benkovic at Pennsylvania State University (1991–1993). He began his independent academic career in 1994 at the University of Cambridge and has remained there ever since, first as College Lecturer, then University Lecturer (1998), University Reader in Chemical Biology (2003) and Professor of Chemical Biology (2007). He was most recently appointed Herchel Smith Professor of Medicinal Chemistry in 2008. He currently directs research laboratories in the Department of Chemistry and also the Cancer Research UK (CRUK) Cambridge Institute at the Cambridge Biomedical Campus. His former doctoral students include Julian Huppert.

Balasubramanian works in the field of nucleic acids. His citation on election to the Royal Society reads: Shankar Balasubramanian is an internationally recognised leader in the field of nucleic acids who is distinguished for pioneering contributions to chemistry and its application to the biological and medical sciences. He is a principal inventor of the leading next generation sequencing methodology, Solexa sequencing, that has made routine, accurate, low-cost sequencing of human genomes a reality and has revolutionised biology. He has made seminal contributions to the identification, elucidation and manipulation of non-coding genetic elements, particularly four-stranded structures called G-quadruplexes. His work on the intervention of nucleic acid function using small molecules has revealed a number of molecular mechanisms that can be exploited, e.g. to modulate the biology of cancer. More recently Balasubramanian has been inventing and applying new chemical methods to study epigenetic changes to DNA bases including single base resolution sequencing of 5-formylcytosine, 5-hydroxymethylcytosine and 5-methylcytosine.

Honours and awards Honours and awards include:

1998 Glaxo Wellcome Award for Innovative Organic Chemistry 2002 Corday–Morgan Medal and Prize of the Royal Society of Chemistry 2009 Royal Society Mullard Award 2010 BBSRC Innovator of the Year 2010 BBSRC Commercial Innovator of the Year 2011 Elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) 2012 Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) 2012 Elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) 2013 Tetrahedron Prize 2014 Biochemical Society Heatley Medal and Prize 2015 Chemical Research Society of India Medal 2017 Appointed Knight Bachelor in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to science and medicine. 2018 Royal Medal 2020 Millennium Technology Prize 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences 2023 Elected international member of the National Academy of Sciences 2024 Canada Gairdner International Award 2024 Novo Nordisk Foundation Prize for Biomedicine 2025 Royal Society of Chemistry Khorana Prize 2026 Princess of Asturias Award

References

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Shankar Balasubramanian

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Shankar Balasubramanian claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, 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 Shankar Balasubramanian 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 Shankar Balasubramanian 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 Shankar Balasubramanian

In research: Shankar Balasubramanian appears in chemistry 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 Shankar Balasubramanian 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: Shankar Balasubramanian is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1966 births, 21st-century British biochemists, Alumni of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Shankar Balasubramanian 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.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Shankar Balasubramanian” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Shankar Balasubramanian in 20 minutes

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

Frequently asked questions

What is Shankar Balasubramanian in simple terms?

Why does Shankar Balasubramanian matter?

Because it connects several chemistry 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 Shankar Balasubramanian?

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 Shankar Balasubramanian.