Dr. Deepak Modi
Dr Deepak Modi is a scientist at the National Institute for Research in Reproductive and Child Health. His research interests include Cell and Molecular Biology, Functional genomics and Proteomics.
Dr Modi was first given an overview of our project; after that, he gave his suggestions which were as follows:
- Generation of a theoretical model for altered protein expression at different temperatures: At higher or lower than ambient temperatures, the amount of protein produced changes. A notable example is the induction of heat shock and cold shock proteins at higher and lower temperatures. One of our project’s aims was to standardize those 5' UTRs, which are part of the mRNA of these proteins, in the hopes that a similar increase in expression could be attained for heterologous proteins at higher or lower temperatures. Dr Modi suggested that perhaps a theoretical model for predicting the extent to which the protein’s expression is affected could be very beneficial in making/designing UTRs for increased expression.
- Our project’s primary focus was to provide alternative constructs to improve yields of therapeutic proteins, lowering the cost of said proteins. However, Dr Modi suggested that we try to make non-therapeutic proteins our selling point since most therapeutic proteins are produced using eukaryotic systems. He mentioned that if we could perhaps test out our 5’ UTRs in yeasts or even mammalian vectors, then we could go for improving yields of therapeutic proteins as our focus.