Fluorescence Spectroscopy Lab @ IIT Palakkad

Ligand Scaffolded Metal Nano-Clusters: Metal nanoclusters (MNC) recently gained a lot of interest due to its wide range of applications in various interdisciplinary fields like optics, electronics, sensing, bio-medicine and catalysis. They are ultra-small nanoparticles comprising of roughly ten to hundreds of atoms, with metal core size in the range of Fermi-wavelength of electrons (<2 nm). The unique optical, electronic and chemical properties of metal nanoclusters compared to metal nanoparticles arise due to the presence of electronic transitions occurring between discrete energy levels. We are interested to develop easy one-pot protocol for the synthesis of various MNCs  with better quantum yield, high photo-stability, better water solubility, low toxicity and better bio-compatibility, that could serve as next generation fluorescent nanoprobes for cell imaging and drug delivery. We would also like to explore the remarkable characteristics of these luminescent metal nanoclusters for bio-sensing applications both at the ensemble and single molecule level.











                           Ref: J. Photochem. Photobiol. A: Chemistry 436, 114378 (2023).

Protein Misfolding and Aggregation: Proteins must fold into its unique compact three–dimensional structure in order to be biologically active. This complex mechanism of protein folding remained an interesting problem and grabbed a lot of recent attentions, but still not clearly understood. Proteins that fail to fold properly (“misfolding”) lead to a number of diseases, made it even more important to study its folding dynamics from therapeutic standpoint. My group at IIT Palakkad takes an interdisciplinary approach to study protein folding. The primary research interest of our group is to understand this complex mechanism of protein folding, misfolding and aggregation using different state of the art single molecule techniques such as single molecule fluorescence spectroscopy (FCS and smFRET) as well as single molecule force spectroscopy (using Optical Tweezers) and thereby identify small drug-like molecules (aggregation inhibitors) to prevent protein misfolding and aggregation.