Ullas K Seetharam
TIFR, Mumbai
Ullas Kolthur is a Professor at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research with labs in TIFR-Mumbai and TIFR-Hyderabad. He obtained his M.Sc from Bangalore University and Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He joined TIFR in 2008 after a postdoctoral stint at IGBMC, Strasbourg-France. Prof. Kolthur has built an outstanding globally competitive program on Molecular Physiology to study mechanisms that govern organismal physiology/survival. He has made fundamental discoveries in cell/tissue autonomous/non-autonomous mechanisms that establish organ-system hierarchy and aging, mitochondrial functions, and unraveling nuclear-mitochondrial cross-talk via retrograde signaling. Besides being recognized by several awards and fellowships, he also serves on the editorial boards of many leading journals. He has led the efforts to establish Advanced-Research-Unit-on-Metabolism-Development-and-Aging at TIFR (ARUMDA) and National-Analytical-Facility-for-Nutrition-and-Metabolism-Research, which involves leading basic biologists and clinical researchers. He also collaborates with ISRO on Gaganyaan-I. ARUMDA and collaborations with ISRO aim to translate basic discoveries and contribute to national missions. He is a fellow at the Indian National Science Academy (2022), and he was elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2021.
Lectures by Fellows/Associates
C Pulla Rao, IIT, Tirupati
You are what you eat: linking metabolism to physiology & health
All diseases run into old age and lifestyle, mostly inappropriate dietary intake and insufficient energy expenditure have led to a high incidence of non-communicable diseases. Why/how does diet/metabolism affect our health, and when does this encode changes to cause the emergence of diseases later in life? Dietary inputs and metabolism/energetics play a pivotal role in all biological processes, including neurocognition. Metabolic plasticity, which is the ability to utilize nutrients differentially, is essential for the survival of all cells and organisms. An inability to bring about metabolic switching has been implicated in several diseases and accelerated aging. Therefore, discovering/understanding diet/metabolism-driven mechanisms that govern physiological homeostasis is important to tackle the explosive burden of non-communicable diseases. In this talk, I will give an overview of our program, highlight fundamental discoveries and showcase our efforts to translate our expertise to societal needs or national missions viz. Space biology and Double Burden of Malnutrition.