N. Gautham

Namasivayam Gautham (born 1955) is a retired Professor Emeritus at the Centre of Advance Study in Crystallography and Biophysics, University of Madras.[3] He is known for his work on DNA Crystallography, protein structure prediction and molecular docking.[4]

Namasivayam Gautham
Born
Namasivayam Gautham

(1955-07-09) 9 July 1955
NationalityIndian
Alma mater
Known forStudies on DNA Crystallography and the application of Mutually Orthogonal Latin squares technique to Protein structure prediction and molecular docking
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsUniversity of Madras
Doctoral advisorMysore A. Viswamitra
Doctoral students

Education

In 1975, Gautham obtained his BSc degree in Physics from the Madras Christian College, University of Madras.[5] Later, in 1979 he completed his Master of Science degree in Physics from Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. He was awarded a PhD in 1983 for research on the Structural biology of isopropylidene nucleoside derivatives under the supervision of Mysore A. Viswamitra.[6]

Career and research

Gautham worked as a Research associate at the Indian Institute of Science. Following his postdoctoral research, he was appointed as a Lecturer at the University of Madras in 1985. He was promoted to a full Professor in 1997. He continued to work at the University of Madras until his retirement in 2016.

Gautham used DNA Crystallography to study the impact of metal ions on the transition of right-handed B-DNA to left-handed Z-DNA.[7] as well as the self assembly of DNA decameric sequences into a four-way Holliday junction[8] In the area of structural bioinformatics, Gautham developed a novel Ab initio computational method using Mutually Orthogonal Latin squares (MOLS) - a technique employed in the area of experimental design - to efficiently sample the conformational space of polypeptides and proteins in order to identify global minimum energy conformations.[9] Later, his laboratory applied the MOLS technique to the problem of molecular docking[10][11] and produced an open source software package called MOLS.[12]

Gautham has written two textbooks in the field of Biophysics[13] and Bioinformatics.[14] He holds two patents for the development of computational methods for building optimal models of 3-dimensional molecular structures particularly related the peptides and proteins.[15][16]

Gautham's research has been funded by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), the Department of Biotechnology and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.

Awards and honours

Gautham was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India (FNASc), India in 2007.[17] He was awarded the BOYSCAST Fellowship from DST, India in 1990. He received the Martin Foster Gold Medal in 1983 for Best Thesis in the Division of Physics and Mathematics by the Indian Institute of Science.

See also

References
  1. "News Letter – Madras Christian College Physics Alumni Society". Retrieved 19 May 2020.
  2. PhD Thesis record guided by Prof. N. Gautham
  3. "Faculty page".
  4. "Publications on ResearchGate". ResearchGate. 8 May 2020.
  5. "News Letter – Madras Christian College Physics Alumni Society". Retrieved 19 May 2020.
  6. Viswamitra MA, Gautham N (1984). "Structures of isopropylidene nucleoside derivatives: implications for ribose ring flexibilty under external cyclic constraints". Journal of Chemical Sciences. 93: 261–269. doi:10.1007/BF02840518 (inactive 10 January 2021).CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of January 2021 (link)
  7. Thiyagarajan S, Rajan SS, Gautham N (2004). "Cobalt hexammine induced tautomeric shift in Z-DNA: the structure of d(CGCGCA)*d(TGCGCG) in two crystal forms". Nucleic Acids Research. 32 (19): 5945–53. doi:10.1093/nar/gkh919. PMC 528804. PMID 15534365.
  8. Venkadesh S, Mandal PK, Gautham N (April 2011). "The sequence d(CGGCGGCCGC) self-assembles into a two dimensional rhombic DNA lattice". Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. 407 (3): 548–51. doi:10.1016/j.bbrc.2011.03.056. PMID 21419105.
  9. Vengadesan K, Gautham N (May 2003). "Enhanced sampling of the molecular potential energy surface using mutually orthogonal latin squares: application to peptide structures". Biophysical Journal. 84 (5): 2897–906. Bibcode:2003BpJ....84.2897V. doi:10.1016/S0006-3495(03)70017-4. PMC 1302853. PMID 12719222.
  10. Arun Prasad P, Gautham N (November 2008). "A new peptide docking strategy using a mean field technique with mutually orthogonal Latin square sampling". Journal of Computer-Aided Molecular Design. 22 (11): 815–29. Bibcode:2008JCAMD..22..815A. doi:10.1007/s10822-008-9216-5. PMID 18465087.
  11. Viji SN, Prasad PA, Gautham N (December 2009). "Protein-ligand docking using mutually orthogonal Latin squares (MOLSDOCK)". Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling. 49 (12): 2687–94. doi:10.1021/ci900332a. PMID 19968302.
  12. Sam Paul D, Gautham N (September 2018). "Protein-small molecule docking with receptor flexibility in iMOLSDOCK". Journal of Computer-Aided Molecular Design. 32 (9): 889–900. arXiv:2010.05475. Bibcode:2018JCAMD..32..889S. doi:10.1007/s10822-018-0152-8. PMID 30128925. S2CID 52051606.
  13. Pattabhi V, Gautham N (30 January 2009). Biophysics (2 ed.). Alpha Science International Ltd. p. 260. ISBN 978-1842655177.
  14. Gautham N (3 January 2006). Bioinformatics: Databases and Algorithms. Alpha Science International Ltd. p. 260. ISBN 1842653008.
  15. "Method and system to build optimal models of 3-dimensional molecular structures". United States Patent and Trademark Office.
  16. "Method for building optimal models of 3-dimensional molecular structures". IP Australia.
  17. "Record of Fellows". India: The National Academy of Sciences.
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