Lab news
Selected papers, teaching and milestones from the Ramanathan Lab.
Congratulations · 11 September 2026
Dr Paulami Dey
Paulami Dey successfully defended her PhD thesis on 11 September 2026.
Her work asked how mammalian cells sense and adapt to mild cold, and identified the cold-shock protein RBM3 as a mediator that strengthens mitochondrial metabolism and muscle-cell differentiation. Two papers in Communications Biology came out of it, and they are the foundation our cold-resilience programme is built on.
For years she has been quietly persuading cells to keep their cool. It is now the rest of the lab’s turn to celebrate.
Cold-shock proteome and RBM3 → Molecular mediators of cold adaptation →
Award · August 2026
Heera Lal wins Best Poster at Longevity India
Heera Lal received the Best Poster Award in the Metabolic Health and Aging theme at the RISE Longevity India Conference, held at the Indian Institute of Science on 6–7 August 2026. The award was presented by Professor Deepak Saini of IISc.
The conference theme was the lab’s own subject, which makes the award a useful reading of where the work stands among the people who do it.
Mission · 2025
Project Myogenesis reaches the International Space Station
Our human muscle stem-cell experiment flew aboard Axiom Mission 4 and was cultured on the International Space Station by astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla. Matched ground controls were maintained at inStem, and post-flight molecular and metabolic analyses are underway.
Explore Project Myogenesis → · Read the Nature India coverage →
Teaching · July 2026
Biology for Human Spaceflight Engineers
Arvind Ramanathan taught Biology for Human Spaceflight Engineers at inStem for engineers from ISRO’s Human Space Flight Centre, 20–22 July 2026.
2026 · Publication
A human muscle model moves from platform to experiment
A study in ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering uses bioengineered human skeletal muscle to examine how a metabolic intervention influences tissue development. The study anchors our human tissue-model programme, pairing tissue-scale imaging with metabolic measurement.
2026 · Publication
Mapping sarcopenia in an Indian pilot cohort
With our clinical collaborators we reported an integrative analysis of plasma small-molecule and gut-microbiome markers of sarcopenia in Scientific Reports.
2025 · Publication
Molecular mediators of cold adaptation
A review in Communications Biology brings together the molecular mechanisms through which mammalian cells sense and adapt to cold.
2024 · Publication
RBM3 links cold adaptation to muscle-cell metabolism
Our proteomics study identified RBM3 as a mediator of enhanced mitochondrial metabolism and myoblast differentiation during mild hypothermia.