Dr. NIDHI BATRA

Biography

Nidhi Batra joined Department of Biotechnology, Jaypee Institute of Information Technology as an Assistant Professor in July 2023. Prior to joining JIIT, she was working as Scientist at Indian Biological Data Centre, Regional Centre for Biotechnology, Faridabad where she was involved in big data handling, database design and development. She completed her Ph.D. from University of Delhi under the supervision of Dr. N. Latha, Department of Biochemistry, University of Delhi. Her doctoral research work focused two drug targets (catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) and dopamine receptor D4 (DRD4)) involved in neurological disorders mainly associated with dopaminergic system. These targets were of diverse nature; COMT is a soluble protein while DRD4 is a transmembrane protein belonging to G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) family. She utilized structure prediction methods and molecular dynamics simulation studies to successfully predict and understand the structural characteristics of DRD4 and its mutants. On the other hand, computer-aided drug design methodologies namely structure-based, ligand-based and de novo approaches were applied for design of novel hits as potential COMT inhibitors used in the treatment of various neurological disorders including Parkinson’s disease.

After completing Ph.D., she joined CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) as a post-doctoral fellow under the mentorship of Dr. Rajesh S. Gokhale and Dr. Lipi Thukral from November 2014 to March 2021. She availed two fellowships during her post-doctoral tenure, DBT-Research Associateship and SERB N-PDF. Working in a computational biology group at IGIB, she expanded my expertise in molecular simulations to understand the mechanism and biology of critical autophagy proteins, RNA-protein interactions and many GPCRs.

Nidhi is a computational structural biologist and has extensive research experience in various areas of Bioinformatics including computational structural biology, molecular biophysics, structural Bioinformatics, computer aided drug design and database design and development. She has many publications in high impact international journals and has attended many national and international conferences.

Publications

• Justin Jose, Ujjaini Alam, Divye Singh, Nidhi Jatana, Pooja Arora. (2022). PandoraRL: DQN and Graph Convolution based ligand pose learning for SARS-COV1 Mprotease. 2022 IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (BIBM). Las Vegas, NV, USA, 380-385.
• Jyoti Tanwar, Akshay Sharma, Suman Saurav, Shyamveer, Nidhi Jatana, Rajender K Motiani. (2022). MITF is a novel transcriptional regulator of the calcium sensor STIM1: Significance in physiological melanogenesis. The Journal of Biological Chemistry. 298(12):102681.
• Saman Fatihi, Surabhi Rathore, Ankit K Pathak, Deepanshi Gahlot, Mitali Mukerji, Nidhi Jatana, Lipi Thukral. (2021). A rigorous framework for detecting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein mutational ensemble from genomic and structural features. Current Research in Structural Biology 3: 290-300.
• Nidhi Jatana, S. Keerthic Aswin, Surabhi Rathore and Lipi Thukral. (2020). Revealing Conformational Transitions in G-Protein-Coupled Receptor Rhodopsin upon Phosphorylation. Biochemistry. 59(3): 297–302. 
• Nidhi Jatana, David B. Ascher, Douglas E.V. Pires, Rajesh S. Gokhale and Lipi Thukral. (2020). Human LC3 and GABARAP subfamily members achieve functional specificity via specific structural modulations. Autophagy. 16(2):239-255.

• Pramod Kumar, Rajesh Pandey, Pooja Sharma, Mahesh S Dhar, Vivekanand A, Bharathram Uppili, Himanshu Vashisht, Saruchi Wadhwa, Nishu Tyagi, Saman Fatihi, Uma Sharma, Priyanka Singh, Hemlata Lall, Meena Datta, Poonam Gupta, Nidhi Saini, Aarti Tewari, Bibhash Nandi, Dhirendra Kumar, Satyabrata Bag, Deepanshi Gahlot, Surabhi Rathore, Nidhi Jatana, Varun Jaiswal, Hema Gogia, Preeti Madan, Simrita Singh, Prateek Singh, Debasis Dash, Manju Bala, Sandhya Kabra, Sujeet Singh, Mitali Mukerji, Lipi Thukral, Mohammed Faruq, Anurag Agrawal, Partha Rakshit. (2020). Integrated genomic view of SARS-CoV-2 in India. Wellcome Open Research. 5:184.

• Vipul Panchal, Nidhi Jatana, Anchal Malik, Bhupesh Taneja, Ravi Pal, Apoorva Bhatt, Gurdyal S Besra, Lipi Thukral, Sarika Chaudhary, Vivek Rao. (2019). A novel mutation alters the stability of PapA2 resulting in the complete abrogation of sulfolipids in clinical mycobacterial strains. FASEB Bioadvances. 1: 306-319
• Ngee Kiat Chua, Vicky Howe, Nidhi Jatana, Lipi Thukral and Andrew J. Brown. (2017). A conserved degron containing an amphipathic helix regulates the cholesterol-mediated turnover of human squalene monooxygenase, a rate-limiting enzyme in cholesterol synthesis. The Journal of Biological Chemistry. 292:19959-19973.
• Hemandra Kumar Tiwari, Prashant Kumar, Nidhi Jatana, Krishan Kumar, Sandeep Garg, N. Latha, Puran Singh Sijwali, Kailash C. Pandey, Nickolay Yu. Gorobets, Ben M. Dunn, Virinder S. Parmar and Dr. Brajendra Kumar Singh. (2017). In vitro anti-malarial evaluation of piperidine and piperazine-based chalcones: inhibition of falcipain-2 and plasmepsin II hemoglobinases activities from Plasmodium falciparum. ChemistrySelect. 2: 7684–7690.
• Arjun Ray, Nidhi Jatana, Lipi Thukral. (2017). Lipidated proteins: Spotlight on protein-membrane binding interfaces. Progress in Biophysics & Molecular Biology. 128:74-84.
• Nidhi Jatana, Lipi Thukral and N. Latha. (2016). Structural signatures of DRD4 mutants revealed using molecular dynamics simulations: Implications for drug targeting. Journal of Molecular Modeling. 22(1):14.
• Nidhi Jatana, Lipi Thukral and N. Latha. (2015). Structure and dynamics of DRD4 bound to an agonist and an antagonist using in silico approaches. Proteins: Structure, Function, and Bioinformatics. 83(5):867-80.
• Avijit Podder, Nidhi Jatana, N. Latha. (2014). Human Dopamine Receptors Interaction Network (DRIN): A systems biology perspective on topology, stability and functionality of the network Journal of Theoretical Biology. 357: 169-183.
• Antony Michealraj, Nidhi Jatana, Md. Jafurulla, N. Latha, Amitabh Chattopadhyay and B. K. Thelma. (2014). Functional characterization of rare variants in human Dopamine receptor D4 gene by genotype-phenotype correlations. Neuroscience. 262: 176-189.
• Nidhi Jatana, Apoorva Nagarajan, Sonika Malik, Aditya Sharma and N. Latha. (2013). Inhibitors of Catechol-O-methyltransferase in the treatment of neurological disorders. Central Nervous System Agents in Medicinal Chemistry. 13: 166-194.
• Nidhi Jatana, Aditya Sharma and N. Latha. (2013). Pharmacophore modeling and virtual screening studies to design potential COMT inhibitors as new leads. Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modelling. 39: 145-64.
• Nidhi Jatana, Sarvesh Jangid, Garima Khare, Anil K. Tyagi and N. Latha. (2011). Molecular modeling studies of Fatty acyl-CoA synthetase (FadD13) from Mycobacterium tuberculosis -a potential target for the development of antitubercular drugs. Journal of Molecular Modeling. 17: 301-313.

Academic Presentations

International

• Contributed talk on “Human LC3 and GABARAP subfamily members achieve functional specificity via specific structural modulations” at an international conference titled “AMMA Molecular Modelling Conference 2019” organized by Association of Molecular Modellers of Australasia (AMMA) from Dec 5-8, 2019 at Bintan Island, Indonesia.
• Presented a poster on “Mechanism of peptide-bound GPCR-MC1R binding” at workshop on “Towards Simulating Cell Membranes: Closer to Reality” organized by University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany on 6-7 February, 2019.
• Presented a poster on “Integrating CADD methodologies for the design of novel COMT inhibitors” at Albany 2011: 17th conversation from June 14-18, 2011 at State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA.

National

• Presented a poster on “Dynamical Characterization of Dopamine Receptor D4 using Molecular Dynamics Simulations” at National Symposium on Biophysics and Golden Jubilee meeting of the Indian Biophysical Society organized by Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi on February 14-17, 2015.
• Presented a poster on “Molecular Modeling studies of Fatty Acyl-CoA Synthetase (FadD13) from Mycobacterium tuberculosis – A potential target for the development of antitubercular drugs” at Workshop on “Molecular Modelling and Drug Design” organized by Centre for Modelling Simulation and Design, University of Hyderabad on August 2-7, 2010.
• Oral presentation on “Insights into the Predicted Structure of fadD13 using Computational Approaches: A Novel Target for Tuberculosis Drug Discovery” at International Conference on “Open Source for Computer Aided Drug Discovery” organized by Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh on March 22-26, 2009.
• Presented a poster on “Structure Prediction & Characterization of Emerging Drug Targets using in-silico approaches” at “National Conference on Drug Discovery and Development” organized by Sri Venkateswara College, New Delhi on January 21st-23rd, 2009.
• Presented a poster on “In silico Modeling and Docking studies of FadD13 – A novel target for tuberculosis drug discovery” at International Symposium on “Emerging Trends in Tuberculosis Research: Biomarkers, Drugs and Vaccines” organized by ICGEB, New Delhi on December 1st-3rd 2008.

Awards/Fellowships:

• Selected for ICMR-Research Associate fellowship in October 2020.
• Selected for bursary award for attending the MM2019 conference at Bintan Island, Indonesia.
• Has been awarded SERB-National Post Doctoral Fellowship (N-PDF) in October 2017.
• Has been awarded DBT-Research Associate in June 2015.
• International travel grant from Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi in 2011.
• Cleared CSIR-NET Junior Research Fellow in December 2008.
• Has been awarded Junior Research Fellowship in Science, Humanities & Social Sciences by University Grants Commission (2009-2014).