I am a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biophysics at Johns Hopkins University. My research focuses on engineering proteins whose functions can be tuned using light in a spatio-temporal manner. I develop in vivo high-throughput screening assays for enrichment of proteins with light tunable activities. During my PhD, I investigated the spatial and temporal organization of ribosomes and translation factors in bacterial cells using super-resolution imaging and single molecule tracking.

I enjoy reading Biorxiv preprints in the areas of synthetic biology, biophysics, bioengineering and microbiology. Articles focusing on cell-free enzyme engineering, novel enzyme screening assays, bottom-up construction of synthetic cells or cells with novel functionalities are of particular interest to me. The number of preprints that are generated every month are enormous, making it difficult to fish out interesting articles from different areas of science. Through preLights, I am interested in curating interesting preprints and presenting them to a broader community in a concise manner. I hope to use my preLight posts as an opportunity to highlight work done by a diverse range of institutions across the world.