Career Summary

She finished her Masters in Biotechnology in 2020 from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. During her master studies, she worked various projects and got an opportunity to purse her Master thesis at the Chromosome Biology Lab in IISER Pune. At IISER, she investigated the role of nuclear lamins in DNA DSB repair via the NHEJ pathway.

Main Research Focus

Bushra Khan joined the Chromatin and SUMO Physiology group (AG Nayak) through the HBRS MD/PhD Molecular Medicine program. Her primary focus is- (1) Identification of the molecular mechanisms underlying tyrosine kinase inhibitor-triggered cachexia. (2) Role of the SUMO isopeptidase SENP2 in skeletal muscle development and function.

Expertise

Primary and mammalian cell culture, cell & molecular biology techniques including nucleic acid isolation, qPCR, SDS-PAGE, western blotting, chromatin immunoprecipitation, immunofluorescence, confocal microscopy, mitochondrial functional assays and others. Bioinformatics tools such as protein structure analyses (RasMol, Ramachandran Plot, UCSF Chimera), proteomic and transcriptomic analyses including DAVID, STRING and R.

Publication

• Sorafenib induces cachexia by impeding transcriptional signaling of the SET1/MLL complex on muscle-specific genes, 
  Bushra Khan, Chiara Lanzuolo, Valentina Rosti, Philina Santarelli, Andreas Pich,Theresia Kraft, Mamta Amrute-Nayak, Arnab Nayak, iScience . 2024 Sep 10;27(10):110913. eCollection 2024 Oct 18, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2024.110913, Link Journal, PubMed
   
• Emerging Mechanisms of Skeletal Muscle Homeostasis and Cachexia: The SUMO Perspective, Bushra Khan, Luis Vincens Gand, Mamta Amrute-Nayak, Arnab Nayak, Cells, 2023 Feb 17;12(4):644, doi: 10.3390/cells12040644, PubMed
   
• Identification of galectin-3 as a novel potential prognostic/predictive biomarker and therapeutic target for cerebral cavernous malformation disease, Souvik Kar, Andrea Perrelli, Kiran Kumar Bali, Raffaella Mastrocola Arpita Kar, Bushra Khan, Luis Gand, Arnab Nayak, Christian Hartmann, Wolfram S. Kunz, Amir Samii, Helmut Bertalanffy, Saverio Francesco Retta, Genes & Diseases, Available online 3 April 2023 ScienceDirect, doi.org/10.1016/j.gendis.2023.02.045, PubMed
   
• SENP7 deSUMOylase-governed transcriptional program coordinates sarcomere assembly and is targeted in muscle atrophy,
  Mamta Amrute-Nayak, Luis Vincens Gand, Bushra Khan, Tim Holler, Ekaterini Kefalakes, Maike Kosanke, Theresia Kraft, and Arnab Nayak, 2022, Cell Reports 41, 111702, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2022.111702