Lions, and Tigers, and Proteins, Oh My!

By Danielle LaVaque-Manty

Even in high school, Anuj Kumar thought he'd study biology, partly because the older brother he idolized was a biology major, and partly to avoid liberal arts classes. "I didn't like that group circle they were always making us form," he says.

After college, he attended medical school for one quarter. He enjoyed gross anatomy but didn't have much interest in clinical medicine. "We'd wear white coats and go to a hospital, and they'd teach us to interview patients. I hated that part of the week the most, so I figured that was a sign."

He decided to pursue a Ph.D. in biochemistry instead. He'd spent time in John Paietta's lab as an undergraduate at Wright State University and was interested in continuing that research, so he contacted Paietta, told him he'd be applying for graduate school, and returned to the lab right away.

Paietta, Kumar says, was an excellent mentor. "He taught me everything. I found out a lot about what faculty life was really like from him."

In Mike Snyder's lab at Yale, where he did his postdoctoral work, he applied genomic approaches to molecular and cell biology. He continues to build on that research today, using systematic, high-throughput studies to examine stress-response in yeast, work that should help clarify the pathways and processes through which fungi become infectious.

To conduct the volume of experiments he requires, Kumar uses an automated series of pipetters that allows him to run tests on ninety-six samples at a time. "If you look very intensely at a particular protein or small set of proteins that function together," he says, "you can learn a lot about those proteins, but there are certain things you might miss. We take more of a survey."

Kumar's parents are from India, but he was born in Detroit and raised in Ohio, where his parents still live. "People always think I should be the ambassador and tell them all about life in the villages, but I've only been there a couple of times, when I was a little kid," he says. "I know next to nothing about India."

One advantage to living in Ann Arbor? "It's close to my Tigers, and my Lions, and Redwings and Pistons." And Detroit has a great music scene these days, "thanks to the White Stripes."

An avid music fan, he has played drums since age thirteen and still owns a drum set. "I don't play it as much anymore," he says, "because by the time I get home, it's night, and I don't want to make too much noise. I have to put a bunch of pads on the drums to quiet the sound."

Kumar came to the UM in 2003 with appointments in the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, and the Life Sciences Institute. Michigan has been a good place for him because the faculty has expertise in so many different areas.

"I like the Institute in particular," he says, "because genomics lends itself well to interdisciplinary studies. I often collaborate with bioinformatics folks when interpreting large data sets. And being here offers nice opportunities for collaborative research."

He is currently working on a project with Jason Gestwicki, who has developed a system for controlling the interaction of two proteins in mammalian cells that the two are now applying to yeast. He also collaborates with Dan Klionsky on a study of the relationship between stress responses and autophagy.

Kumar hopes, over the course of his career, to develop new technologies, or methodologies, that might be adopted by others.

"I think this is part of genomics," he says. "If you just take the existing technology, there are limitations to how you can apply it to large sets of genes and proteins, so you have to think up new approaches that can be used for those purposes."

The bottom line? "I just want to contribute some useful information to the field."

Kumar keeps a small, inflatable punching bag covered with images of superheroes in the corner of his office—a gift from a friend. Batman and Spiderman are his favorites.

"When I was a kid, I learned to read with comic books," he says. "Batman got cooler as the years went by. Superman, I read those comics, but he was lame. Batman I liked."