Professor R Mahalakshmi is originally from Coimbatore, India. She studied Biochemistry at Bharathiar University (BSc, 2000) and Molecular Biophysics at the Indian Institute of Science (PhD, 2006). Her doctoral research focused on designing peptide scaffolds with defined structural geometries of aromatic interactions. Following two short postdoctoral stints in structural biology in San Diego, USA, she returned to India in mid-2009 and established the Molecular Biophysics Unit at IISER Bhopal. She initiated one of the earliest studies in India on the biophysical characterization of β-barrel outer membrane proteins (OMPs) from bacteria and mitochondria.

For her numerous contributions, Professor Mahalakshmi has received the Rashtriya Vigyan Puraskar: Vigyan Yuva – Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, and has been elected Fellow of all three Indian science academies: INSA, IAS, and NASI. She is also a recipient of the Wellcome–DBT Intermediate and Senior Fellowships, the SwarnaJayanti Fellowship, and the S. Ramachandran National Bioscience Award for Career Development, among several other honors and recognitions.

She currently heads the MiND Laboratory at Krea University, where her research focuses on two major areas: (i) the folding, function, energetics, and engineering of mitochondrial and bacterial OMPs; and (ii) the design and development of peptidomimetics as next-generation antibacterials, along with targeted OMP inhibitors for cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.

Mitochondria – the powerhouses of the cell – are vital communication and regulatory entities for cellular health, and their misregulation is associated directly with aging, and consequential diseases including cancer and neurodegeneration. Futuristic medical interventions demand discovering ways to restore healthy cellular function, particularly in brain neurons. At Krea University, the Mitochondrial Networks and Disease (MiND) laboratory will achieve this through the following focused research areas:

1. Mitochondrial membrane proteins, mito-dysregulation in brain aging and neurodegeneration.
2. Membrane protein interactome, molecular failures in neurodegeneration.
3. Pioneering peptidomimetics design and engineering as targeted long-term bio-therapeutics.
4. AI- and experimental membrane protein thermodynamics, interdisciplinary synthetic biology.
5. Membrane proteins as interventions for novel antibacterials for ESKAPEE pathogens (tangential project).

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ormlXywAAAAJ&hl=en

ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1549-7550

Five featured works:

• Ravi, R, Gupta, S#, Kumari, J#, Rawat, A, and Mahalakshmi, R*. Linking multipoint folding and stability with functional regulation in the mitochondrial outer membrane protein Sam50. Nat. Commun. In press (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-70904-3). #Equal contribution.
• Mahalakshmi, R*. Decoding Outer Membrane β-Barrels: From Structural Curiosity to Engineered Nanotherapeutics. Chem. Rev. 2026, 126(8): 4619-4655 (DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemrev.5c00902)
• George, A, Raj, AM, Patil, AG, Kumari, V, and Mahalakshmi, R*. Lipid-regulated assembly mechanisms and functional energetics reveal zonal hotspots of the essential bacterial chaperone. Chem. Sci. 2026, 17:3103-3121 (DOI: 10.1039/D5SC07027A).
• Rosencrans, WM, Khuntia, H, Larimi, MG, Mahalakshmi, R, Yu, T-Y, Bezrukov, SM, and Rostovtseva, TK*. Conformational plasticity of mitochondrial VDAC2 controls the kinetics of its interaction with cytosolic proteins. Sci. Adv. 2025, 11(17):eadv4410 (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adv4410).
• George, A, Ravi, R, Tiwari, PB, Srivastava, SR, Jain, V, and Mahalakshmi, R*. Engineering a Hyperstable Yersinia pestis Outer Membrane Protein Ail Using Thermodynamic Design. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2022, 144(4):1545-1555 (DOI: 10.1021/jacs.1c05964).

Physics for Biologists

Instrumentation in Biology (Ways of Knowing I)

Biomolecular Machines in Health and Disease