Dr. Hitesh Kumar Bhattarai and his team have been able to publish their original research article, "Evolutionary History of the DNA Repair Protein, Ku, in Eukaryotes and Prokaryotes," in PLOS ONE (Q1, Impact Factor: 2.9). Dr. Bhattarai conceived the project "Evolutionary History of Ku protein" in 2020. During graduate school he had worked on bacterial Ku protein which is involved in Non-Homologous End Joining Pathway of DNA repair. Then senior undergraduates, Sadikshya Rijal and Ashmita Mainali, executed the project. They looked for Ku proteins in different species in different domains of life. They discovered that Ku in certain archaea are closely related to eukaryotic Ku70. Furthermore, the project explored the evolutionary relationship between prokaryotic Ku, Ku70 and Ku80. The paper, published after 5 years of research, establishes a phylogenetic relationship between different forms of Ku. Domain organization of eukaryotic Ku is also analyzed. Sandesh Acharya, a bioinformatics expert, joined the project and supervised construction of the phylogenetic tree and writing of the final version of the paper. The paper lays groundwork for further work on Ku found across different domains of life.

Heartfelt congratulations from the Department of Biotechnology! Wishing you endless success and breakthroughs in your scientific voyage!

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