PROF. PADMANABHAN BALARAM RECEIVES THE R. BRUCE MERRIFIELD AWARD!

ATREE congratulates Dr. Padmanabhan Balaram on winning the prestigious R. Bruce Merrifield Award 2021. The Merrifield Award,
presented at the biennial symposia, recognizes the lifetime achievement of the peptide scientist; his work exemplifies the highest level of scientific creativity.

Dr. Balaram is the co-chair of the Board of Trustees at ATREE. Dr Balaram’s early research focused on the membrane active peptide alamethicin, leading to a long-standing interest in the conformational restrictions on backbone folding promoted by the unusual residue
alpha aminoisobutyric acid (Aib). The facile formation of 310-helical structures in Aib peptides was established by his studies in the late 1970s.

His laboratory has contributed to studies of the enzyme triosephosphate isomerase from plasmodium falciparum and more recently in the mass spectrometric and transcriptome based characterization of disulfide-rich peptides from marine cone snail venom. He has mentored
and trained a large number of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.