Dr. Jeet Kalia

Associate Professor

Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Bhopal

Working Period: November 2020 - December 2020

Synthesis of Double-Knot Toxins (DkTx) and sub-variants for TRPV1 Activation

I joined Dr. Kalia's lab as a Junior Research Fellow for a project funded by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India. The main focus of my work was to synthesize the Double Knot Toxins using several analytical tools and examine their effect on the activation of the TRPV1 ion channel in the oocyte of Xenopus laevis.

Source: Sarkar et al., 2018, ACS Chem. Biol.

Experimental Examinations

We synthesised the Double Knot Toxins and its different variants in order to identify the importance of the toxin in activating the ion channels. We created recombinant strains expressing the said proteins and its different variants.

Double knot toxin has two lobes which are connected by a peptide linkage. To create the different variants, we synthesised and purified the different variants such as G3-DkTx, SgTx-SgTx, and DkTx-G3 to identify the importance of the toxin in ion channel activation.

Source: Double Knot Toxin (DkTx PDB ID: 5IRX)