Tanmay Bharat

After studies at Oxford, I pursued my PhD at EMBL Heidelberg, where I used cryo-EM to study the structure and assembly of pathogenic viruses including Ebola virus, Marburg virus and HIV-1. In particular, I studied the structures of several viral capsid proteins leading to mechanistic insights into filoviral and retroviral assembly in infected cells. As an EMBO/FEBS funded post-doctoral fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, I used novel cryo-EM techniques to study macromolecules directly inside cells, in their native environment. In my post-doctoral work, I solved structures of molecules forming ordered arrays in bacterial cells including bacterial actin and surface layers. In my independent laboratory in Oxford, I am studying how prokaryotic cells interact with their environment through specialized cell surface molecules. Interaction with the environment is crucial to several processes, such as adhesion to host surfaces in infection and biofilm formation. We leverage our expertise in cryo-EM and electron tomography, combining it with advanced biochemical techniques to study fundamental problems related to prokaryotic cells.