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Institut für Parasitologie

Venungopal Kannan

Kannan Venugopal

  • Research Associate
Tel.
044 635 85 32

Biography: I obtained my masters degree in biomedical sciences from Bharathidasan University, India in 2011. Following a stint as a research assistant at the University of Crete in Greece, I moved to France in 2013. I did my PhD under the LabEx ParaFrap International PhD program in the lab of Dr Sabrina Marion at the Institut Pasteur de Lille, co-supervised by Dr Gordon Langsley from Institut Cochin, Paris. During my PhD, I studied protein trafficking in the apicomplexan parasite Toxoplasma gondii, focussing on two protein molecules AP1 and Rab11A, and their functions in the parasite lytic cycle. Following my PhD, I moved to Glasgow for my postdoc to work in the lab of Prof Matthias Marti. 

Research Interests: My work is focussed on the characterisation of sexual merozoites in Plasmodium as a novel cell state. Recently published transcriptional studies and previous work on early gametocyte development have helped us identify sexual stage specific merozoite antigens. In this context I have generated transgenic parasite lines in both the human malaria parasite P.falciparum and the rodent malaria model P.berghei, with my target genes tagged and knocked out to perform localisation and functional characterisation. I have also actively invested efforts in establishing a pipeline to study parasite host interactions using organs on a chip, specifically the bone marrow microenvironment.