Life Sciences:

The Infosys Prize for Life Sciences is awarded to Professor Satyajit Mayor whose work provides new insights into regulated cell surface organization and membrane dynamics, necessary for understanding self-organization and trafficking of membrane molecules in living cells, and in signaling between cells.

Satyajit Mayor is the Professor of Cellular Organization and Signalling Group at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), Bangalore.

Jury citation: Mayor’s earliest independent contributions were to define the nanoscale organization of GPI-linked proteins using fluorescence anisotropy, showing that these proteins exist in small (tens of nanometers) clusters, fundamentally clarifying the way in which membrane “rafts” are now understood.  He then went on to show that these microdomains are organized by actin and are endocytosed by a novel pathway that is clathrin- and dynamin-independent and regulated by cdc42 – this newly-discovered pathway is also responsible for a significant fraction of the micropinocytosis (fluid-phase uptake) by cells.  He followed up on this discovery with a broad-scale analysis of the mechanisms of several different pathways of endocytosis of different classes of membrane proteins.  This work has implications for endocytosis of immune regulators and modulation of immune responses (by HIV and other pathogens).

He developed and applied fluorescence microscopic methods to another important problem, the analysis of gradients of morphogens important in pattern regulation in development and in cancer, such as Hedgehog and Wnt signaling, providing fundamental insights into the detailed mechanisms involved, and opening possible routes to intervention in such diseases.