Education

Ph.D.  Biological Sciences and BioEngineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, 2009
M. Sc.  University of Calicut, Kerala, India, 2003
B. Sc.  Kannur University, Kerala, India, 2000

Background

Sajish Mathew, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the College of Pharmacy Department of Drug Discovery and Biomedical Sciences at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Mathew's research interest is to understand the molecular basis of diseases caused by metabolic dysfunction, like diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. 

Research Interests

• Metabolic dysfunction
• Molecular basis of diseases
• tRNA synthetases

Research Laboratory

My interest is to understand the molecular basis of diseases caused by metabolic dysfunction, like diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. My current focus is on the non-translational functions of aminoacyl tRNA synthetases (the amino acid binding proteins) to understand how the amino acids are involved in glucose homeostasis. We believe that elucidation of the functional role of aminoacyl tRNA synthetases in the regulation of metabolic flux will shed light on the etiology of various metabolic diseases and will provide novel strategies to tackle metabolic dysfunctions.

Publications

Jhanji, Megha & Rao, Chintada & Massey, Jacob & Hope, Marion & Zhou, Xueyan & Keene, Christopher & Ma, Tao & Wyatt, Michael & Stewart, Jason & Sajish, Mathew. (2022). Cis- and trans-resveratrol have opposite effects on histone serine-ADP-ribosylation and tyrosine induced neurodegeneration. Nature Communications. 13. 10.1038/s41467-022-30785-8. 

Jhanji, M., Rao, C.N. & Sajish, M. Towards resolving the enigma of the dichotomy of resveratrol: cis- and trans-resveratrol have opposite effects on TyrRS-regulated PARP1 activation. GeroScience 43, 1171–1200 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-020-00295-w

Jhanji, Megha & Rao, Chintada & Zhou, Xueyan & Keene, Christopher & Ma, Tao & Stewart, Jason & Sajish, Mathew. (2021). Tyrosine Inhibits TyrRS-mediated DNA Repair and Induces Neuronal Oxidative DNA Damage. 10.21203/rs.3.rs-785404/v1. 

Sajish M, Zhou Q, Kishi S, Valdez DM Jr, Kapoor M, Guo M, Lee S, Kim S, Yang XL, Schimmel P. Trp-tRNA synthetase bridges DNA-PKcs to PARP-1 to link IFN-γ and p53 signaling. Nature Chemical Biology, 8(6): 547-54 (2012).

Sajish M and Schimmel P. A human tRNA synthetase is a potent PARP1 activating effector target for resveratrol.
Nature, 519, 370–373 (2015).

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