Amit Verma

Amit completed his post-graduate studies in Plant Biotechnology at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, India. There he worked on development and characterization of iAc and Ds starter lines for gene tagging in plants in Dr Ramesh Bhat’s lab. For a short time, he served as a senior research fellow at NBPGR, New Delhi. He moved on to join Dr Chandan Sahi’s team for Doctoral studies at IISER Bhopal. There he was introduced to the world of molecular chaperones for the first time. Fascinated by the increasing number of JDP and Hsp70 encoding genes in eukaryotes, he aimed to dissect the JDP-Hsp70 network in complex eukaryotes using Arabidopsis and yeast as model organisms. His dissertation work demonstrated that expansion of the cellular chaperone network serves the needs of the organism through a combination of altered gene regulation and the acquisition of new functionality in higher eukaryotes.

In 2020 he joined Prof. Elizabeth Craig’s laboratory for his post-doctoral studies with the aim to get a better understanding of the JDP-Hsp70 system. He is interested in ribosomal JDPs and their partner Hsp70s and their coordination with other ribosomal proteins to understand their role in translation and protein folding of nascent polypeptides.