Biography:

Kanchan Garai is an associate professor at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research at Hyderabad. His research focuses on mechanistic investigation of aggregation and liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) of proteins using various biophysical techniques. His group develops and builds single molecule techniques such as fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS), single molecule Forster Resonance Energy Transfer (smFRET) and superresolution optical microscopy to characterize the growth of the small soluble and large insoluble protein assembles. A notable technique developed by his group is cuvette-FCS. The cuvette-FCS has potential applications of single molecule measurements under extreme conditions such as high pressure and temperature. Studies from his laboratory has contributed to the determination of rate constants of growth of the fibrils and the biomolecular condensates of several intrinsically disordered proteins.

Lecture: "Application of single molecule fluorescence techniques to study protein aggregation"

Aberrant aggregation of proteins is implicated in multiple human diseases. Biophysical characterization of the key microscopic processes such as nucleation, elongation and replication of the fibrils is crucial to understand the progression of the respective disorders. We have developed single molecule techniques such as fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) and total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy (TIRFM) to monitor the growth respectively of the soluble oligomers and the insoluble fibrillar aggregates of the proteins. I will discuss the basic principles, design strategies and applications of these techniques in characterization of protein aggregation. New strategies required to develop a more detailed and complete phase diagram of amyloid aggregation will also be discussed.