Dr. Samir Brahmachari received a PhD in Molecular Biophysics from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1978. He has shown exemplary scientific leadership and has made contribution in the area of Functional Genomics with special emphasis on molecular genetics of neurological and psychiatric disorders and functional Genomics.
Prof. Brahmachari has demonstrated the structural flexibility of DNA and the role of repetitive sequences in DNA transactions much before the discovery of repeats association with genetic disorders. He has made major contributions in molecular analysis of genetic disorders associated with trinucleotide amplification and repetitive sequence instability. Using a combination of structural biology, computational genomics and population based polymorphism scanning he and his group have provided a novel structural frame work for understanding the etiology of several neurological disorders. He was first to establish a close clinical network to address genetics of complex disorders and demonstrated association of two genes to Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder (synaptogyrin 1 and MLC1 gene) and identified several SNPs and other markers associated to various neurological disorders.
Prof. Brahmachari and coworkers have carried out extensive computational analysis of the repetitive sequences in the genome and were one of the first to propose functional role of such sequence. He and his associates have developed novel and unique tools for genome annotation and identification of functional signature for hypothetical proteins in the genome through comparative genomics approach. A recent finding of Prof. Brahmachari and his associates are that the human miRNA can target critical genes in HIV, preventing HIV proliferation. This has received wide international recognition. (Petit-Zeeman, S. Nature Rev. Drug Discovery, 2006, 5.5).