Department of
Biology

Siddhesh Kamat is currently an Associate Professor, an India Alliance Fellow, and an EMBO Young Investigator, in the Department of Biology at IISER Pune. Dr. Kamat completed his BTech from the Institute of Chemical Technology (former UDCT) in 2007, and a PhD from the Department of Chemistry at Texas A&M University in 2012. Before joining IISER Pune as an Assistant Professor in 2016, Dr. Kamat was the 9th Irving S. Sigal Postdoctoral Fellow of the American Chemical Society at the Department of Chemical Physiology, The Scripps Research Institute.

Research

Chemical biology of mammalian lipid signalling pathways

Dr. Siddhesh Kamat's group is interested in studying the biological mechanisms of lipid signaling pathways in the mammalian nervous and immune system. To achieve their goals, the group integrates aspects of chemical biology, biochemistry, molecular and cell biology, immunology, animal and/or cellular models, in conjunction with advanced mass spectrometry (LC-MS) based metabolomics and proteomics techniques. The long term goal is to identify and understand as-of-yet uncharacterized lipid signaling pathways in vivo, annotate enzymes and receptors that regulate their biology and provide new insights and therapeutic paradigms for orphan and/or emerging human neurological and immunological diseases.

Selected Publications

Khandelwal, N., Shaikh, M., Mhetre, A., Singh, S., Sajeevan, T., Joshi, A., Balaji, K. N., Chakrapani, H., Kamat, S. S. (2021) Fatty acid chain length drives lysophosphatidylserine dependent immunological outputs, Cell Chemical Biology 28, 1169-1179.

Kumar, K., Mhetre, A., Ratnaparkhi, G. S., Kamat, S. S. (2021) A superfamily-wide activity atlas of serine hydrolases in Drosophila melanogaster, Biochemistry 60 (16), 1312-1324.

Singh, S., Joshi, A., Kamat, S. S. (2020) Mapping the neuroanatomy of ABHD16A-ABHD12 & lysophosphatidylserines provides new insights into the pathophysiology of the human neurological disorder PHARC, Biochemistry 59 (24), 2299-2311.

Chattopadhyay, T., Maniyadath, B., Bagul, H. P., Chakraborty, A., Shukla, N., Budnar, S., Rajendran, A., Shukla, A., Kamat, S. S., Kolthur-Seetharam, U. (2020) Spatiotemporal gating of SIRT1 functions by O-GlcNAcylation is essential for liver metabolic switching and prevents hyperglycemia, PNAS 117, 6890-6900.

Rajendran, A., Vaidya, K., Mendoza, J., Bridwell-Rabb, J., Kamat, S. S. (2020) Functional annotation of ABHD14B, an orphan serine hydrolase enzyme, Biochemistry 59 (2), 183-196.

Kumar, M., Ojha, S., Rai, P., Joshi, A., Kamat, S. S., Mallik, R. M. (2019) Insulin activates intracellular transport of lipid droplets to release triglycerides from the liver, J. Cell Biology 218, 3697-3713.

Kelkar, D. S., Ravikumar, G., Mehendale, N., Singh, S., Joshi, A., Sharma, A. K., Mhetre, A., Rajendan, A., Chakrapani, H., Kamat, S. S. (2019) A chemical genetic screen identifies ABHD12 as an oxidized phosphatidylserine lipase, Nature Chemical Biology 15, 169-178.

Joshi, A., Shaikh, M., Singh, S., Rajendran, A., Mhetre, A., Kamat, S. S. (2018) Biochemical characterization of the PHARC associated serine hydrolase ABHD12 reveals its preference for long chain lipids, J. Biological Chemistry, 293, 16953-16963.

Pathak, D., Mehendale, N., Singh, S., Kelkar, D. S., Mallik, R. M., Kamat, S. S. (2018) Lipidomics suggests a new role for ceramide synthase in phagocytosis, ACS Chemical Biology, 13, 2280-2287.

Rai, P., Kumar, M., Sharma, G., Barak, P., Das, S., Kamat, S. S., Mallik, R. M. (2017) Kinesin-dependent mechanism for controlling triglyceride secretion from the liver, PNAS, 114, 12958-12963.