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Srikanth Ranganathan, PhD


Program: Cellular and Molecular Pathology
Graduated: 12/2004
Mentor: Dr. Robert Bowser
Thesis:
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis: Molecular Mechanisms to Diagnostics

Previous Institutions Attended:
Bangalore University, B.Sc. in Zoology, Botany and Chemistry
Bangalore University, MSc in Zoology
Georgia Institute of Technology, MS Applied Biology

I am currently a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Kenneth Fischbeck, MD, in the neurogenetics branch studying the molecular mechanisms and therapeutics for neuromuscular diseases. A point mutation in the p150 subunit of dynactin causes slowly progressive motor neuron disease. The clinical phenotype resembles that of spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA), which is caused by an expanded polyglutamine repeat in the androgen receptor. I am investigating if synaptic alterations, impairment of axonal trafficking of proteins and mitochondrial aberrations contribute to disease pathogenesis in these two hereditary neurological disorders.

Publications while a graduate student at Pitt:

Ranganathan S, Bowser R. Alterations in G(1) to S phase cell-cycle regulators during amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Am J Pathol. 2003 Mar;162(3):823-35.

Ranganathan S, Williams E, Ganchev P, Gopalakrishnan V, Lacomis D, Urbinelli L, Newhall K, Cudkowicz ME, Brown RH Jr, Bowser R. Proteomic profiling of cerebrospinal fluid identifies biomarkers for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. J Neurochem. 2005 Dec;95(5):1461-71.

Srikanth Ranganathan, Anna Polshyna, Georgina Nicholl, James Lyons-Weiler and Robert Bowser. Assessment of protein stability in cerebrospinal fluid using surface-enhanced laser desorption / ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry protein profiling. Clinical Proteomics (In Press).

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