Student's Bio
Mrinmoyee Kalasikam is a sophomore majoring in Biochemistry and Medicine, Health, and Society. She works with Dr. Chazin on XPA, an NER protein that serves as an essential scaffold for the NER complex. Mutation of the interface between XPA and one of its binding partners RPA severely impairs NER, making this interaction a prime target for inhibitor development. Her work focuses on developing an XPA inhibitor using the approach termed fragment-based drug discovery.