Dr. Ravindra Pal Singh, PhD

– Prestigious Ramalingaswami Re-entry & Ramanujan Fellowship Award

About

Following my PhD in Life Science at CSIR-Central Salt & Marine Chemicals Research Institute, I worked as a postdoc at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK, before returning to India to take up a Ramanujan Fellowship and later a Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship at the National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute. I aim to address industrial challenges through my research in the area of host- microbial interactions, and am interested in the interface between biology and chemistry over several years. I currently focus in the areas of prebiotics and probiotics, and define their integrated interactions of host- microbial associations through various techniques.

EXTRAMURAL RESEARCH GRANTS

- - Current Project
    - - 1. Development of inhibitors against FMO 3 and TMA lyases that are involved in progression of atherosclerosis. Approved grant: ₹ 60,95,168. (Role-PI). (06/2026 – present). Funded by GSBTM- India
        
        2. Establishment of a novel enzymatic process for augmenting bioactive oligosaccharide production from cereal-based arabinoxylan and β-glucan, targeting Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium surface receptors to enhance their rate of repopulation addressing obesity. (BT/PR60990/BME/172/17/2025). Approved grant: ₹ 58,88,880. (Role-PI). (05/2026 – present). Funded by DBT- India
        
        3. Bioengineering of enzymes for producing linear and branch lacto-N-triose for baby infant formula: highly promising human milk oligosaccharides (BT/PR61701/BME/172/67/2025). Approved grant: ₹ 48,69,840. (Role-PI). (05/2026 – present). Funded by DBT- India
        
        4. Plant-Based Biomanufacturing: Engineering Synthetic Operons in Chloroplasts for Scalable Production of Cellulase, Mannanase, and Lipase (BT/ PR61531/BME/172/122/2025). Approved grant: ₹ 51,08,800. (Role-C0-PI). (05/2026 – present). Funded by DBT- India
        
        5. Can β-glucan-induced gut microbiome metabolites improve PCOS symptoms? An experimental and clinical study. (09/2024 – present) Funded by DBT- India. Approved grant: ₹ 39,18,800. (Role-PI).
  - Completed Project
    - - 6. Exploring prophylatic activities of diverse structural pectin oligosaccharides: a step towards nutrigenomics. (12/2021 – 07/2025) Funded by DBT- India. Approved grant: ₹ 32,00,240. (Role-PI).
        
        7. Novel enzymatic strategy for synthesizing human milk oligosaccharides for promoting health of infants. (12/2020 – 12/2024) Funded by DBT- India. Approved grant: ₹ 43,50,000. (Role-PI).
        
        8. Prophylactic health products from macroalgae and their digestion by human gut microbial communities. (06/2019 – 05/2024) Funded by DBT- India. Approved grant: ₹ 114,10,000. (Role-PI).
        
        9. Prophylactic health products of plant and vegetables and their degradation by gut microbial communities- glycomics and proteomics approaches. (10/2018 – 05/2019). Funded by DST-SERB- India. Approved grant: ₹ 109,10,000. (Role-PI).
        
        10. Evaluating costs and benefits of prophylactic health products and novel alternatives on smallholder aquaculture farmers in Asia and Africa (IMAQulate). (04/2016 – 03/2019), Funded by BBSRC and Newton Fund, UK, and DBT India. Approved grant: £1.5 Million. (Role- Co-I).
        
        11. Microbiome study of the vegetable crop in order to understand virulence of bacteria in the presence of surrounding microbial communities. (01/2016 – 01/2019). Granted by UGC India. Approved grant: ₹ 2.2 Million. (Role- Co-PI).
        
        12. Development of quorum quenching peptides targeting Clostridium perfringens. (10/2013 – 10/2015)
        
        13. Sponsored by JSPS, Japan. Approved grant: ¥ 2.5 Million. (Role- Co-PI).

Honours and Awards

2018 Prestigious Ramalingaswami Re-entry Fellowship Award sponsored by DBT, Govt. of India.
2018 Prestigious Ramanujan Fellowship Award sponsored by DST-SERB, Govt. of India.
2017 Travel grant (£200) for attending event on Algal Polysaccharides at IBCarb, Edinburgh, UK.
2016 Best oral presentation award in Applied Bioscience theme in a National conference held at Mohanlal Sukhadia University Udaipur in March 18th- 19th,.
2015 Dr. D. S. Kothari Postdoctoral Fellowship Award sponsored by UGC.
2013 Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Postdoctoral Fellowship Award was sponsored by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Japan.
2013 Outstanding PBC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Award, Israel in (Not availed).
2013 The Zuckerman Postdoctoral Fellowship Award at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel (Not availed).
2013 Outstanding Tel Aviv University Postdoctoral Fellowship Award was sponsored by Tel Aviv University, Israel.
2011 Senior Research Fellowship Award, sponsored by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi, India.
2008 Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering award in the subject of life science provided by Ministry of human resource development, Government of India. (All India Rank 197).

Research Expertise

Glycobiology; molecular microbiology; gut microbiome; proteomics; systems biology and gene cloning.

Research Group Overview

My group works on interdisciplinary science that involves areas of human gut glycobiology and discovery of novel drugs from marine sources. Much impact of my group in this field has been based on integrative and hypothesis-driven approaches employing multidisciplinary techniques belonging to analytical chemistry, microbiology, molecular biology and biotechnology. Broadly, this fits into two categories:

Glycobiology, gut microbiota and human health
- Our gut harbours several hundred billion microorganisms that display several beneficial roles including but not limited to earlier development of the immune and microbiome systems, maintain structural integrity of the gut mucosal barrier and check on incidence of any gastrointestinal disorders. We learnt that any disturbances in the gut microbiota by long or short-term escort to dysbiosis conditions. Such microbial imbalance can end up with either obesity or other several gut-associated diseases such as inflammatory bowel diseases, colon cancer and irritable bowel syndrome. Dietary fibers are primary energy source for these communities and understanding their molecular mechanism for digesting dietary fibers will pave the way to cure disturbed gut. We are currently dissecting molecular mechanisms of human gut beneficial bacteria (Bacteroides, Bifidobacteria, Lactobacillus and Blautia) for utilizing various β- glucans obtained from algae, yeast and staple crops. Some related publications are:
Drug from marine source
- Antibiotics are generally used to cure several diseases caused by pathogenic bacteria that kill them. However, excessive and indiscriminate usage of antibiotics has led to development of multiple drug-resistant bacterial strains which cause crisis not only in clinical sites but also in agricultural fields and natural environments. Such scenarios place a great burden on scientists to find more robust antibiotics and alternative ways to tackle them. My group identifies natural compounds from marine sources through metabolomic approaches, and develops rational design- based mimetic compounds to block the bacterial communication system.

Publications

- - Bhaiyya, R., Gayen, D., Sharma, S.C., Singh, R.P. (2026) Prebiotic potential and in vitro fermentation of pectin and pectin-oligosaccharides derived from kinnow waste through microwave-assisted extraction, Food Hydrocolloids, Food Hydrocolloids 172:111911.
  - Niharika, J., Italiya, B., Singh, R. P*. (2025). Enzymatic synthesis of analogous human milk oligosaccharide and its prebiotic attributes. Bioactive Carbohydrates and Dietary Fibre. 34: 100479
  - Niharika, J., Singh, R. P*. (2025). Synthesising human milk oligosaccharide using biotechnology-driven enzymes. Systems Microbiology and Biomanufacturing. 5: 459–488.
  - Gupta, H., Gajera, C., Kumari, P., Singh, R. P*. (2025). The specificity of family 4 carbohydrate-binding modules (CBMs) of BpGH16MLG influences the binding and utilization of β-glucans in a human gut bacterium, Blautia producta. Bioactive Carbohydrates and Dietary Fibre 33: 100475.
  - Singh R. P.,* Niharika, J., Thakur, R., Wagstaff, B. A., Kumar, G., Kurata, R., Patel, D., Levy, C. W., Miyazaki, T., Field, R. A. (2023). Utilization of dietary mixed-linkage β-glucans by the Firmicute Blautia producta. Journal of Biological Chemistry. 299(6) 1-18.
  - Bhaiyya, R., Sharma, S. C., Singh, R. P*. (2023). Biochemical characterization of bifunctional enzymatic activity of a recombinant protein (Bp0469) from Blautia producta ATCC 27340 and its role in the utilization of arabinogalactan oligosaccharides. International Journal of Biological Macromolecules. 253(Pt 2):126736
  - Maurya, R., Ali, U., Kaul, S., Bhaiyya, R., Singh, R. P., Mazumdar, K. (2023) Immobilization of α-transglucosidase on silica-coated magnetic nanoparticles and its application for production of isomaltooligosaccharide from the potato peel. Scientific Reports. 13: 12708.
  - Bharadwaj, A., Singh R. P.* (2023). Beta-glucans: A potential glycan for maintaining gut microbiota and the immune. Frontiers in Nutrition. 10:1143682.
  - Singh, R. P.,* Bhaiyya, R., Thakur, R., Niharika, J., Singh, C., Latousakis, D., Saalbach, G., Nepogodiev, S.A., Singh, P., Sharma, S.C., Sengupta, S., Juge, N., Field, R. A.* (2022). Biochemical basis of xylooligosaccharides utilisation by gut beneficial bacteria. International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 23(6): 2992. (IF 6.0).
  - Singh, R. P.,* Niharika, J., Kondepudi, K. K., Bishnoi, M., Tingirikari, J. M. R. (2022) Recent understanding of human milk oligosaccharides in establishing infant gut microbiome and roles in immune system. Food Research International. 151: 110884. (IF 6.5)
  - Singh, R. P.,* Bhaiyya, R., Khandare, K., Tingirikari, J. M. R. (2021). Macroalgal dietary glycans: potential source for human gut bacteria and enhancing immune system for better health. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition. 16: 1-22. (IF 11.2).
  - Singh, R. P.,* Rajarammohan, S., Thakur, R., Hassan, M. (2020) Linear and branched β- Glucans degrading enzymes from versatile Bacteroides uniformis JCM 13288T and their roles in cooperation with gut bacteria. Gut Microbes. 12(1): 1-18. (IF 10.3).
  - Singh, R. P.,* Prakash, S., Bhatia, R., Negi. M., Singh, J., Bishnoi, M., Kondepudi, K. K. (2020). Generation of structurally diverse pectin oligosaccharides having prebiotic attributes. Food Hydrocolloids. 108: 105988. (IF 9.3).

Dr. Ravindra Pal Singh, PhD