S. No.	Name of the Post	Name of the Department	Name of the Inst./Univ	Duration
3.	Assistant Professor	Botany Department	Banaras Hindu University (India)	2018-Present
2.	Assistant Scientist	Molecular & Celllar Pharmacology Department	University of Miami, Florida (USA)	2017
1.	Post Doctoral Fellow	Molecular & Cellular Pharmacology Department	University of Miami, Florida (USA)	2012-2016

Our lab has broad interest in understanding the regulatory role of arginylation in various cellular pathways. Arginylation is a protein posttranslational modification (PTM), which is a posttranslational addition of an extra arginine to the amino termini of acceptor proteins or peptides. This reaction is carried out by an enzyme called Arginyl transferase (Ate1). Arginylation is an essential component of N-end rule pathway, which describes the relation between half-life of a protein and its N-terminal residue. Ate1 mediated arginine addition at the N-terminus of target protein usually serves as an acute degradation signal and leads to the degradation of target protein. Ate1 plays essential role in several biological pathways, and Ate1 knockout leads to defects in cardiovascular development, neuronal development, angiogenesis, cardiomyopathy and embryonic development. Despite Ate1 being conserved across eukaryotes, and arginylation being an essential regulatory modification, the underlying molecular mechanism is poorly understood. Our lab focuses on studying the role of arginylation in stress response and in apoptotic cell death. Moreover, we are also interested in identifying the targets of Ate1, which is a limiting step in arginylation research field.

S. No.	Name of the Project	Duration	Source of Funding	Amount of Funding (Rs)
1.	Studies on the structure-function analysis of Arginyl-transferase 1 (Ate1): An essential enzyme of the N-end rule pathway (P.I)	2018- 2021	UGC, New Delhi	10.0 lacs

1. Michael D Birnbaum, Ning Zhao, Balaji T Moorthy, Devang M Patel, Oleksandr N Kryvenko, Laine Heidman, Akhilesh Kumar, William M Morgan, Yuguang Ban, Isildinha M Reis, Xi Chen, Mark L Gonzalgo, Merce Jorda, Kerry L Burnstein, Fangliang Zhang. Reduced Arginyltransferase 1 is a driver and a potential prognostic indicator of prostate cancer metastasis. Oncogene, (2018), 1-14. (Impact Factor: 7.519)
2. Deepaneeta Sarmah, Harpreet Kaur, Jackson Saraf, Kanchan Vats, Kanta Pravalika, Madhuri Wanve, Kiran Kalia, Anupom Borah, Akhilesh Kumar, Xin Wang, Dileep Yavagal, Kunjan Dave, Pallab Bhattacharya. Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Stroke: Implications of Stem Cell Therapy. Translational Stroke Research, (2018), 1-16. (Impact Factor: 8.2)
3. Michael D. Birnbaum, Leah Nemzow, Akhilesh Kumar, Feng Gong, Fangliang Zhang. A rapid and precise mutation-activated fluorescence reporter for analyzing acute mutagenesis frequency. Cell Chemical Biology, (2018), 25(8):1038-1049. (Impact factor: 6.7)
4. Amandeep Kaur, Ruchi Gautam, Ritika Srivastava, Avinash Chandel, Akhilesh Kumar, Subramanian Karthikeyan and Anand Kumar Bachhawat. The structure of ChaC2: An enzyme for slow turnover of cytosolic glutathione: Journal of Biological Chemistry, (2017), 292, 638. (Impact Factor: 4.125)
5. Akhilesh Kumar, Michael D. Birnbaum, William Morgan, Jayanti Singh, Antoni Barrientos, Fangliang Zhang. Posttranslational arginylation enzyme Ate1 affects DNA mutagenesis by regulating stress response. Cell Death and Disease, (2016), 7(9):e2378,1-16. (Impact Factor: 5.96)
6. Reena Rai, Fangliang Zhang, Kristen Colavita, Nicolae A Leu, Satoshi Kurosaka, Akhilesh Kumar, Michael D Birnbaum, Balazs Gyorffy, DW Dong, Michel Shtutman and Anna Kashina. Arginyltransferase suppresses cell tumorigenic potential and inversely correlates with metastases in human cancers. Oncogene, (2016), 35, 4058. (Impact Factor: 7.519)
7. Juan D. Chavez, Jimmy K. Eng, Devin K. Schweppe, Michelle Cilia, Kieth Rivera, Xuefei Zhong, Xia Wu, Terrence Allen, Moshe Khurgel, Akhilesh Kumar, Athanasios Lampropoulos, Marten Larsson, Shuvadeep Maity, Yaroslav Morozov, Wimal Pathmasiri, Mathew Perez-Neut, Coriness Pineyro-Ruiz, Elizabeth Polina, Stephanie Post, Mark Rider, Dorota Tokmina-Roszyk, Debora Viera Parrine SantAna, Katherine Tyson, James E. Bruce. A general method for targeted quantitative cross-linking mass spectrometry. PLOS One, (2016), 11(12):e0167547, 1-14. (Impact Factor: 2.806)
8. Fangliang Zhang, Devang M. Patel, Kristen Colavita, Irina Rodionova, Brian Buckley, David A. Scott, Akhilesh Kumar, Svetlana A. Shabalina, Sougata Saha, Mikhail Chernov, Andrei L. Osterman Anna Kashina. Arginylation regulates purine nucleotide biosynthesis by enhancing the activity of phosphoribosyl pyrophosphate synthase. Nature Communications, (2015), 6, 7517, 1-9. (Impact Factor: 12.124)
9. Calpena E, Deshpande A, Yap S, Kumar Akhilesh, Manning NJ, Bachhawat AK, Espinos C. New insights into the genetics of 5-oxoprolinase deficiency and further evidence that it is a benign biochemical condition. European Journal of Pediatrics, (2015), 174, 407. (Impact Factor: 1.92)
10. Akhilesh Kumar, Shweta Tikoo, Shuvadeep Maity, Shantanu Sengupta, Sagar Sengupta, Amandeep Kaur and Anand Bachhawat. Mammalian proapoptotic factor ChaC1 and its homologues function as gamma-glutamyl cyclotransferases acting specifically on glutathione. EMBO Reports, (2012), 13, 1095. (Impact Factor: 8.568)
11. Akhilesh Kumar and Anand Bachhawat. Pyroglutamic acid: throwing light on a lightly studied metabolite. Current Science, (2012), 102, 2, 288. (Impact Factor: 0.843)
12. Akhilesh Kumar and Anand Bachhawat. OXP1/YKL215c encodes an ATP-dependent 5- oxoprolinase in Saccharomyces cerevisiae: functional characterization, domain structure and identification of actinlike ATP-binding motifs in eukaryotic 5-oxoprolinases. FEMS Yeast Research, (2010), 10, 4, 394. (Impact Factor: 3.299)
13. Akhilesh Kumar and Anand Bachhawat. A futile cycle, formed between two ATP-dependant gamma-glutamyl cycle enzymes, gamma-glutamyl cysteine synthetase and 5-oxoprolinase: the cause of cellular ATP depletion in nephrotic cystinosis? Journal of Biosciences, (2010), 35, 1, 21, (Impact Factor: 1.422)

1. Glutathione Production in Yeast. In: Satyanarayana T., Kunze G. (eds) Yeast Biotechnology: Diversity and Applications. A. K. Bachhawat, D. Ganguli, J. Kaur, N. Kasturia, A. Thakur, H. Kaur, A. Kumar, A. Yadav, Springer-Dordrecht. ISBN: 9781402082917, (2008), Chapter-13, 259-280, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8292-4_13

1. Akhilesh Kumar, Michael D Birnbaum, Devang M Patel, William M Morgan, Jayanti Singh, Antoni Barrientos, Fangliang Zhang. Posttranslational arginylation enzyme Ate1 affects DNA mutagenesis by regulating stress response. The FASEB Journal, (April 2017), vol. 31 no. 1 Supplement602.12
2. Akhilesh Kumar, Michael Birnbaum William Morgan and Fangliang Zhang. Ate1-mediated posttranslational arginylation is essential for stress response regulation and mutagenesis suppression. The FASEB Journal, (April 2016) vol. 30 no. 1 Supplement 864.2
3. Akhilesh Kumar, Michael Birnbaum and Fangliang Zhang. Arginyltransferase (Ate1) is a Pro-apoptotic Enzyme Essential for Stress Response. The FASEB Journal, (April 2015) vol. 29 no. 1 Supplement 569.2
4. Akhilesh Kumar, Michael Birnbaum, Devang Patel, F Zhu, Y Guan, Fangliang Zhang. Arginyltransferase is critical for stress response and apoptosis and involved in cancer progression Molecular Biology of the Cell, (2014), 25
5. Akhilesh Kumar and Fangliang Zhang. Posttranslational arginylation is essential for stress response. The FASEB Journal (April 2014), vol. 28 no. 1 Supplement 555.15
6. Michael Birnbaum, Akhilesh Kumar, William Morgan and Fangliang Zhang. Arginyltransferase1 as a novel suppressor of prostate cancer metastasis Cancer Research, (July 2017) 77 (13 Supplement), 3523-3523
7. Devang Patel, Akhilesh Kumar, William Morgan, Michael Birnbaum, Chaunhua Jiang and Fangliang Zhang. Talin plays an important role in cell-cell interactions Cancer Research, (July 2017)
8. Michael Birnbaum, Akhilesh Kumar and Fangliang Zhang. Abstract 2801: Arginylation as a novel regulator of prostate cancer progression. Cancer Research, (July 2016) Vol 76, Issue 14, Supplement
9. Devang Patel, Akhilesh Kumar, William Morgan, C Yanucil, JG Samaranayake, Fangliang Zhang. Talin plays an important role in cell-cell interactions. Molecular Biology of the Cell, (2015)
10. Fangliang Zhang, Michael D. Birnbaum, Akhilesh Kumar, and William M. Morgan. Abstract 1252: Arginylation as a new link between oxidative stress response and prostate cancer progression. Cancer Research, (August 2015), Vol 75, Issue 15 Supplement