Postdoctoral Fellow
Education:
Ph.D., 2017, CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh, India
Languages Spoken: Hindi
Biography
Neha Malhotra obtained her doctorate from the CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh, India, in 2017. She specializes in molecular biology, microbiology, and biochemistry. Her doctoral research focused on understanding the role of eukaryotic-type Ser/Thr kinases-mediated phosphorylation on mycobacterial cAMP-dependent adenylate cyclase and phosphodiesterase. This work identified the novel post-translational modification for any prokaryotic phosphodiesterase and its effect on regulating its localization to the cell wall and the cAMP-degradation activity as two distinct and mutually exclusive phenomena.
After completing her Ph.D., she joined Dr. Barry for her postdoctoral training in 2018. She is focused on identifying environmental fungi isolated from sphagnum peat bog having specific anti-mycobacterial activity. She has developed a pipeline to elicit the expression of cryptic biosynthetic gene clusters present in the fungi and could identify some unique fungal BGCs responsible for the specific anti-TB activity. Her work can aid in developing anti-TB drugs with novel modes of action. She is also involved in understanding the allosteric regulation of the essential mycobacterial enzymes.