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Vishal Saxena

Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Professor-in-charge, Institute Knowledge Analysis Cell, BITS Pilani

Molecular Parasitology
Department of Biological Sciences, Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani- 333031, Rajasthan. India.

Research

 

Major Thrust Area of Research

  • Molecular Parasitology with special emphasis to Molecular Biology of Infectious Diseases
  • Apicoplast of Plasmodium sp.


I'm currently working on the apicoplast of Plasmodium vivax. We are the first group to report complete sequences of some major coding regions from P. vivax apicoplast Genome where we have characterized the differences between the major coding regions of apicoplast genome of P. vivax in comparison with that from P. falciparum and other Plasmodium species.

My group is also looking into various nuclear encoded proteins that are hypothesized to be targeted to the apicoplast and may be invovled in the various metabolic pathways believed to be functional within the organelle.

 

Other Areas of Research Interests

  • Malaria Parasite Biology and Immunology, Host – Parasite Interaction studies, Cancer Cell and Molecular biology, Cancer Gene Transcriptional and Translational Regulation, Drug target identification and designing.

 

Projects Completed

  • University Grants Commission, Govt. of India funded major project "Characterization of Isoprenoid biosynthetic pathway enzymes from Plasmodium vivax" (2013-2016)
  • DST Fast Track project (2010-2013): Cloning and Characterization of the major regions of the plastid DNA from Plasmodium vivax