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Copyright

Aswin Sai Narain Seshasayee

Published On

2025-02-28

Page Range

pp. 33–64

Language

  • English

Print Length

32 pages

2. The molecules of bacteria and of life

Chapter of: Bacterial Genomes: Trees and Networks(pp. 33–64)
The high levels of metabolic plasticity of bacteria, and the discovery of viruses that prey on bacteria leading to a fascinating predator-prey interplay, led them to serve as tools resulting in the founding of molecular biology. In particular, they helped show that DNA is the genetic material for cellular life and eventually establish what is known as the central dogma of molecular biology. These discoveries also helped build the field of phylogenetics, which brought bacteria into the tree of life in a systematic manner.

Contributors

Aswin Sai Narain Seshasayee

(author)
Researcher and Associate Professor at National Centre for Biological Sciences
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7028-1803
http://www.ncbs.res.in/aswin

Aswin Sai Narain Seshasayee is a researcher and Associate Professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), a centre of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Bangalore, India. His lab is interested in fundamental aspects of the function and evolution of bacterial genomes and gene regulatory networks. His career in the sciences started off with a Bachelors of Technology at Anna University, Chennai, India, during which a lot of time left alone to explore and break things in the bioinformatics laboratory of Professor Gautam Pennathur and in the experimental microbiology and protein engineering laboratory of Professor Sankaran encouraged him to take up research for a career. He then pursued research as an intern, a PhD student and then briefly a postdoc with Nicholas Luscombe at EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, Cambridge, UK (and St John’s College and Girton College, University of Cambridge). He has been with NCBS since December 2010, his research here funded over the years by the Department of Atomic Energy (Govt of India) core support to TIFR and NCBS, Department of Biotechnology, Department of Science and Technology and Science and Engineering Research Board (all Govt of India), CEFIPRA and DBT-Wellcome Trust India Alliance. Beyond science, he enjoys making music, painting watercolour landscapes and reading classic crime and fantasy fiction and popular history.