S. Balaji (aka Balaji Santhanam), Ph. D.                                                   

Computational Biology Branch                                                                   Phone: 301-496-6041

National Center for Biotechnology Information                                               Fax: 301-480-4637

National Library of Medicine                                                                        Email: sbalaji@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

National Institutes of Health                                   Web:http://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/CBBresearch/Fellows/Balaji                                                  

8600 Rockville Pike                                                                                      

Building 38A, Room 8N811L

Bethesda, MD 20894

U.S.A.

Education and Research experience

2004-present    Post-doctoral Fellow at NCBI, NLM, National Institutes of Health, USA

                         Dr. L. Aravind Group, Computational Biology Branch

 

2003-2004           Research associate, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

                         Sponsored under a grant from The Wellcome Trust, UK

 

1998-2004        Ph. D. (Computational Biology), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

                         Dr. N. Srinivasan’s group, Molecular Biophysics Unit

 

1996-1998        M. Sc. in Physics, SSSIHL, Prashanti Nilayam, Andhra Pradesh, India

                         Specialization in experimental Non-linear Optics

 

1993-1996        B. Sc. (Honours) in Physics, SSSIHL, Prashanti Nilayam, Andhra Pradesh, India    

                

 

Publications

 

Book Chapters

1.      General trends in the evolution of prokaryotic transcriptional regulatory networks - M. Madan Babu, S. Balaji and L. Aravind in Genome Dynamics (Ed: Volff Jean-Nicolas), Karger Publishers.

 

Journals       1 indicates joint first author & * indicates corresponding author

    2007

2.      S. Balaji*, Iyer, L.M., Madan Babu, M*, and Aravind, L.  Comparison of transcriptional networks from genetic and in vivo binding data: What do they reveal? Trends in Genetics (in press).

 

3.      S. Balaji1*, M. Madan Babu1* and Aravind, L.  Interplay between network structures, regulatory modes and sensing mechanisms of transcription factors in the transcriptional regulatory network of E. coli, J Mol Biol 372:1108-22.

 

4.      S. Balaji and Aravind, L.  The RAGNYA fold: a novel fold with multiple topological variants found in functionally diverse nucleic acid, nucleotide and peptide-binding proteins, Nucleic Acids Res. 35: 5658-71.

 

5.      Burroughs, M., S. Balaji, Iyer, L.M. and Aravind, L.   Small but versatile: the extraordinary functional and structural diversity of the b-grasp fold, Biology Direct 2(1):18.

 

6.      S. Balaji* and Aravind, L. The two faces of short-range evolutionary dynamics of regulatory modes in bacterial transcriptional regulatory networks, Bioessays 29(7):625-9.

 

7.      Anantharaman, V, Iyer, L.M., S. Balaji and Aravind, L. Comparative analysis of the extracellular proteins of apicomplexa. International Review of Cytology 262:1-74.

 

8.      Burroughs, M., S. Balaji, Iyer, L.M. and Aravind, L.  A novel superfamily with the b-grasp fold involved in binding diverse soluble ligands, Biology Direct 2(4)

    2006

9.      Madan Babu, M., Iyer, L.M., S. Balaji and Aravind, L.   The natural history of the WRKY-GCM1 zinc fingers and the relationship between transcription factors and transposons, Nucleic Acids Res. 34(22):6505-20.

 

10.    Madan Babu M, S. Balaji, Iyer, L.M. and Aravind, L.   Estimating the Prevalence and Regulatory Potential the Telomere Looping Effect in Yeast, Cell Cycle 20(5).

 

11.    S. Balaji1*, Madan Babu, M.1*, Iyer, L.M., Luscombe, N.M., and Aravind, L.   Comprehensive analysis of combinatorial regulation using the transcriptional regulatory network of yeast. J Mol Biol. 360(1):213-27.

 

12.    S. Balaji, Iyer, L.M., Aravind, L. and Madan Babu, M.   Uncovering distributed robustness in protein regulatory networks, J Mol Biol. 360(1):204-12.

 

13.    Anantharaman V, S. Balaji and Aravind L.   The signaling helix: a common functional theme in diverse signaling proteins. Biology Direct. 1(1):25.

 

14.    S. Balaji and N. Srinivasan   Comparison of sequence-based and structure-based phylogenetic trees of homologous proteins: Inferences on protein evolution, Journal of Biosciences 32:83-96.

 

15.    Iyer, L.M., S. Balaji, Koonin E.V. and Aravind, L.   Evolutionary genomics of nucleo-cytoplasmic large DNA viruses, Virus Res 117(1):156-84.

    2005

16.    S. Balaji, Madan Babu, M., Iyer, L.M., Aravind, L.   Discovery of the principal specific transcription factors of Apicomplexa and their implication for the evolution of the AP2-integrase DNA binding domains, Nucleic Acids Res., 33(13):3994-4006.

 

17.    Aravind, L., Anantharaman, V., S. Balaji,, Madan Babu, M., Iyer, L.M.  . The many faces of Helix-Turn-Helix domain: transcription regulation and beyond, FEMS Microbiology Reviews, 29(2):231-62.

    2004

18.     Pandit SB, S. Balaji, Srinivasan N. Structural and functional characterization of gene products encoded in the human genome by homology detection. IUBMB Life.  56(6):317-31.

 

19.    Pandit SB, Bhadra R, Gowri VS, S. Balaji, Anand B and Srinivasan N. SUPFAM: a database of sequence superfamilies of protein domains. BMC Bioinformatics.  15(5):28.

    2003

20.    S. Balaji, Aruna and N. Srinivasan Tolerance to the substitution of buried non-polar residues by charged residues in the homologous protein structures. Proteins: Structure, Function and Genetics. 53, 783-791.

 

21.     S. Sopory, S. Balaji, N. Srinivasan and S. S. Visweswariah Modeling and mutational analysis of the GAF domain of the cGMP-binding, cGMP-specific phosphodiesterase, PDE5. FEBS Letters. 539, 161-166.

 

22.    V. S. Gowri, S. B. Pandit, P. S. Karthik, N. Srinivasan and S. Balaji  Integration of related sequences with protein three-dimensional structural families in an updated version of PALI database. Nucleic Acids Res. 31, 486-488.

    2001

23.    S. Balaji and N. Srinivasan Use of a database of structural alignments and phylogenetic trees in investigating the relationship between sequence and structural variability among homologous proteins. PEDS. 14, 219-226.

 

24.    S. Sujatha, S. Balaji and N. Srinivasan PALI - Web-interfaced access to a database of alignments and phylogeny of homologous protein structures. Bioinformatics, 17, 375-376.

 

25.    S. Balaji, Sujatha, S. Sai Chetan Kumar and N. Srinivasan PALI - A database of Phylogeny and ALIgnment of homologous protein structures. Nucleic Acids Res. 29, 61-65.

 

 

 Online Publications

1.      V.S. Gowri, S. Balaji, O. Krishnadev, S.B. Pandit and N. Srinivasan   (release 2.3) PALI Nucleic Acids Res. http://www3.oup.co.uk/nar/database/summary/274.

 

2.      O. Krishnadev, V.S. Gowri, S. Balaji, N. Srinivasan and S.B. Pandit   (release 1.5) SUPFAM Nucleic Acids Res. http://www3.oup.co.uk/nar/database/summary/219.

 

3.      V.S. Gowri, S.B. Pandit, B. Anand, N. Srinivasan and S. Balaji (2004) PALI (release 2.2) Nucleic Acids Res. http://www3.oup.co.uk/nar/database/summary/274.

 

4.      S.B. Pandit, R. Bhadra, V.S. Gowri, S. Balaji, B. Anand and N. Srinivasan (2004) SUPFAM (release 1.4) Nucleic Acids Res. http://www3.oup.co.uk/nar/database/summary/219.

 

5.      S. Balaji, Sujatha, S. Aruna, N.S. Mhatre and N. Srinivasan (2002) PALI (Release 1.3) Nucleic Acids Res. http://www3.oup.co.uk/nar/database/summary/274.

 

 Presentations / Posters

1.      (Invited presentation) An integrated approach to understanding transcription regulation in biological systems: from protein sequences to molecular interaction networks, Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK, Feb 2008.

 

2.      (Seminar series) Differences in transcriptional networks reconstructed from genetic and ChIP-chip data: What do they mean? NCBI, NLM, NIH, Oct 2007.

 

3.      (Invited presentation) Discovery of the principal specific transcription factors of Apicomplexa, Lambda Lunch, National Institutes of Health, USA, 6 June 2006.

 

4.      (Seminar series) Principles of transcription factor co-regulation in yeast transcriptional regulatory network, NCBI, NLM, NIH, Oct 2005.

 

5.      Comparison of sequence-based and structure-based phylogenetic trees of homologous proteins: Inferences on protein evolution, Joint retreat of Computational groups of the Indian Institute of Science and National center for Biological Sciences, India, Jan 2004.

 

6.      (Invited Presentation) A survey of Structural Classification of Proteins, Protein folding society, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, 21 Oct 2001.

 

7.      (Invited  Presentation) Application of J0 technique for optical interference based characterization of materials, Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology, June 1998.

 

8.       (Poster Presentation) PALI – a database of phylogeny and alignment of homologous protein structures, International Symposium on Crystallography and Bioinformatics in Structural Biology, Nov 22 - 25, 2001, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.

 

Professional Activities

Editorial board of Biology Direct (discovery notes section), Reviewer for Nucleic Acids Res., Trends in Genetics, BMC Systems Biology, BMC Evolutionary Biology, BMC genomics, BMC Bioinformatics, Briefings in Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics, Proteins: Structure, function and Bioinformatics and International Journal of Biological Macromolecules.

 

Achievements and Fellowships

·            NIH post-doctoral Fellowship

·            Nominated for best thesis award in the Biological sciences division by the Molecular Biophysics Unit of India Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

·            Senior and Junior research fellowship for graduate studies in computational biology from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, India

·            Selected for graduate studies in physics (in the year 1998) by the Tata Institute of fundamental research, Mumbai, India based on national level entrance test and interview

·            Selected within top 8% of the candidates in Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (in Physics) at the National level in India (in the year 1998).

·            University 2nd rank holder in M.Sc (Physics)

 

Technical Skills

·            Operating Systems: UNIX (Solaris, LINUX), Windows, DOS, Macintosh, X-Windows

·            Programming Languages: Perl, C, C++, FORTRAN, Pascal, BASIC, MATLAB, HTML

·            Co-developer of  a software package, TASS, in Perl for large scale analysis of sequences and structures

 

Referees

  1. Dr. L. Aravind (Post-doc advisor)

Senior Investigator, National Center for Biotechnology Information

National Library of Medicine (NLM)

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

BLDG 38A, Room 5N505, 8600 Rockville Pike

             Bethesda, MD 20894, USA

             Phone: 1-301-594-2445, Fax: 1-301-435-7794 or 1-301-480-9241

             Email:  aravind@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

  1. Prof. N. Srinivasan (PhD advisor)

Associate Professor, Molecular Biophysics Unit

Indian Institute of Science

             Bangalore, India

Phone: 91-80-2932837, Fax: 91-80-360 0535 or 91-80-360 0683

Email: ns@mbu.iisc.ernet.in

 

  1. Dr. Chava Kimchi-Sarfaty

Prinicpal Investigator, OBRR / DH / LH

Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research
Food and Drug Administration
NIH Building
29, Room 316, HFM-340

Bethesda, MD 20894, USA

Phone: 1-301-827-0039, Fax: 1-301-402-2780

E-mail: Chava.kimchi-sarfaty@fda.hhs.gov

 

  1. Dr. Teresa Przytycka

Investigator, National Center of Biotechnology Information

NLM, NIH, Bldg 38A room 812 S

8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA

Phone: 1-301-402-1723, Fax: 1-301-480-4637

E-mail: przytyck@mail.nih.gov

 

5.     Dr. M. Madan Babu

            Group Leader / Investigator

      MRC-Laboratory of Molecular Biology,

      University of Cambridge 

      Hills Road,

      Cambridge CB2 2QH, United Kingdom

      Phone: 44-1223-402 208, Fax: 44-1223-213556

            Email: madanm@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk