Recognizing Plant Direct first authors: Anutthaman Parthasarathy

Anutthaman Parthasarathy, co-first author of The Arabidopsis thaliana gene annotated by the locus tag At3g08860 encodes alanine aminotransferase

Current Position: Postdoctoral Research Associate (Prof. A. O. Hudson), Thomas H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences

Education: BSc – Chemistry (Madras University, India), MSc – Chemistry (Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India), PhD – Biology [Microbial Biochemistry] (Max Planck Institute/Philipps University, Marburg, Germany)

Non-scientific Interests: listening to music (Indian, Latin, and Fusion), plays Indian percussion, hiking, cycling, cricket, painting

Brief bio: I was born in Chennai, India and grew up in the tropical hills of the Western Ghats and later in the coastal city of Chennai. After doing Bachelors and Master’s degrees in Chemistry in India, I did projects in biochemistry before being accepted into the International Max Planck Research School, as a PhD student. I did PhD and postdoctoral studies on enzymes from anaerobic amino acid degradation in clostridia under the guidance of one of Marburg’s giants of anaerobic metabolism, Prof. Wolfgang Buckel. Following work in organohalogen reduction by anaerobes at Stanford, CA and 2 years of non-profit work in India, I joined RIT as a senior postdoc in 2018. My interests are antibiotic discovery, organohalogen and plastic bioremediation, and amino acid metabolism.