Kumar Sarthak
e-mail: 
kumars2@illinois.edu
phone: 
(217) 904-2141
office: 
265 LLP

Loomis Laboratory of Physics
1110 West Green Street
Urbana, IL 61801-3080

I am a PhD student at the Center for Biophysics and Quantitative Biology, with a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry and Physics from the Indian Institute of Science. As a researcher in the Aksimentiev Lab, I specialize in the use of molecular dynamics simulations and numerical calculations to advance the fields of single molecule protein sequencing and fingerprinting using biological and solid-state nanopores. Additionally, I am involved in simulating intrinsically disordered proteins in phase separated biomolecular condensates using all-atom simulations. 

Publications

  1. Hadjer Ouldali, Kumar Sarthak, Tobias Ensslen, Fabien Piguet, Philippe Manivet, Juan Pelta, Jan C. Behrends, Aleksei Aksimentiev, and Abdelghani Oukhaled. "Electrical recognition of the twenty proteinogenic amino acids using an aerolysin nanopore." Nature Biotechnology 38:176-181 (2020). PDF icon Supplementary Information (15.98 MB)
  2. James Wilson, Kumar Sarthak, Wei Si, Luyu Gao, and Aleksei Aksimentiev. "Rapid and Accurate Determination of Nanopore Ionic Current Using a Steric Exclusion Model." ACS sensors 4:634-644 (2019). PDF icon sem_si.pdf (4.02 MB)
  3. Tobias Ennslen, Kumar Sarthak, Aleksei Aksimentiev, and Jan C. Behrends. "Resolving Isomeric Posttranslational Modifications Using a Biological Nanopore as a Sensor of Molecular Shape." Journal of the American Chemical Society 144:16060-16068 (2022). PDF icon supplementary_information.pdf (4.85 MB)
  4. Florian Leonardus Lucas, Kumar Sarthak, Erica Mariska Lenting, David Coltan, Nieck Jordy van der Heide, Roderick Corstiaan Versloot, Aleksei Aksimentiev, and Giovanni Maglia. "The Manipulation of the Internal Hydrophobicity of FraC Nanopores Augments Peptide Capture and Recognition." ACS Nano (2021). PDF icon nn0c09958_si_001.pdf (1.59 MB)
  5. Javier Antonio Alfaro, Peggy Bohländer, Mingjie Dai, Mike Filius, Cecil J. Howard, Xander F. van Kooten, Shilo Ohayon, Adam Pomorski, Sonja Schmid, Aleksei Aksimentiev, Eric V. Anslyn, Georges Bedran, Chan Cao, Mauro Chinappi, Etienne Coyaud, Cees Dekker, Gunnar Dittmar, Nicholas Drachman, Rienk Eelkema, David Goodlett et al. "The emerging landscape of single-molecule protein sequencing technologies." Nature Methods 18 (2021).
  6. Adnan Choudhary, Himanshu Joshi, Han-Yi Chou, Kumar Sarthak, James Wilson, Christopher Maffeo, and Aleksei Aksimentiev. "High-Fidelity Capture, Threading, and Infinite-Depth Sequencing of Single DNA Molecules with a Double-Nanopore System." ACS Nano 14:15566-15576 (2020). PDF icon nn0c06191_si_001.pdf (547.55 KB)
  7. Kumar Sarthak, David Winogradoff, Yingda Ge, Sua Myong, and Aleksei Aksimentiev. "Benchmarking Molecular Dynamics Force Fields for All-Atom Simulations of Biological Condensates." Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation 19:3721-3740 (2023). PDF icon Supporting Information (2.98 MB)