Ramanujan Hegde

Ramanujan Hegde serves as a Professor and Group Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), University of Cambridge, where he directs research on membrane protein biosynthesis and cellular quality control mechanisms. His work examines how membrane proteins are accurately targeted to organelles, inserted into lipid bilayers, folded, and assembled into functional complexes, with emphasis on the cellular pathways that eliminate defective proteins to prevent disease.

Professor Hegde's research program focuses on fundamental questions in cell biology: How do cells ensure precise membrane protein localization? What molecular machinery governs protein insertion and folding? How do quality control systems detect and degrade misfolded proteins? His investigations reveal that biosynthetic failures are common, triggering degradation pathways linked to diseases like neurodegeneration. Key research areas include:

• Intramembrane chaperone mechanisms for multipass membrane proteins
• Orphan subunit recognition during complex assembly
• Ribosome-associated mRNA degradation in autoregulation
• Proteasome assembly quality control
• ER membrane protein complex functions
• Molecular basis of protein aggregation diseases

His 2017-2023 publications in Cell, Nature, and Science demonstrate consistent innovation in protein quality control, with landmark discoveries including UBE2O's role in orphan subunit degradation, the EMC as a transmembrane domain insertase, and TTC5-mediated tubulin autoregulation. These works bridge basic cell biology with disease mechanisms through rigorous biochemical and structural approaches.

Professor Hegde mentors a research team of 11 scientists:

• Christine Desroches Altamirano
• Zhong Yan Gan
• Dino Janssen
• Ryan Judy
• Jennifer Miao
• Elizabeth Miller
• Tim Stevens
• Julia Toplak
• Huping Wang
• Haoxi Wu
• Eszter Zavodszky

His laboratory operates within the MRC LMB's world-class infrastructure, utilizing advanced techniques in biochemistry, structural biology, and cell imaging. Supported by Medical Research Council funding, the group maintains strong collaborations across Cambridge and internationally to dissect protein biogenesis pathways with implications for therapeutic development in protein-misfolding disorders.