Ramanujan Shankar Hegde (born 1 April 1970) is a group leader at the Medical Research Council (MRC)
Laboratory of Molecular Biology
The Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) is a research institute in Cambridge, England, involved in the revolution in molecular biology which occurred in the 1950–60s. Since then it has remained a major medical r ...
(LMB).
Education
Hegde was educated at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...
where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree and the
University of California, San Francisco
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It con ...
Hegde's research investigates how proteins are localised correctly inside cells, and how errors during protein maturation are recognised and disposed. These processes are important because the accumulation of abnormal proteins is disruptive to cell function, and underlies numerous diseases.
His laboratory have discovered a widely conserved protein targeting pathway needed by a subset of proteins to reach their correct membrane-embedded destination. Their studies of such protein targeting pathways are revealing how
membrane protein
Membrane proteins are common proteins that are part of, or interact with, biological membranes. Membrane proteins fall into several broad categories depending on their location. Integral membrane proteins are a permanent part of a cell membrane ...
s are accurately recognised by the machinery responsible for their proper localisation and insertion. Hegde's work has also shown that even modest failures of individual proteins to reach their correct cellular location can lead to neurodegeneration, and that cells have specialised pathways to identify these wayward proteins and target them for destruction.
, according to
Google Scholar
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his most cited research include papers published in ''
Science
Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...
'', ''
Nature
Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...
'', and ''
Cell
Cell most often refers to:
* Cell (biology), the functional basic unit of life
Cell may also refer to:
Locations
* Monastic cell, a small room, hut, or cave in which a religious recluse lives, alternatively the small precursor of a monastery ...
Hegde was awarded the R.R. Bensley award in Cell Biology in 2008 and elected a member of the
European Molecular Biology Organisation
The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) is a professional, non-profit organization of more than 1,800 life scientists. Its goal is to promote research in life science and enable international exchange between scientists. It co-funds cour ...
(EMBO) in 2013. He was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2016. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: