Research Interests:

Ionotropic glutamate receptors (iGluRs) mediate 60% of excitatory neurotransmission in the central nervous system (CNS). They are encoded by 18 genes in vertebrates that assemble as tetrameric cation channels with distinct functional properties into four groups, namely; AMPA (?-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxalolepropionic acid), NMDA (N-methyl-D-aspartic acid), Kainate and Delta families. Their dysfunction is linked to a number of neurological disorders such as autism, epilepsy, schizophrenia, psychiatric disorders, and pain. Our group primarily focuses on the kainate and delta receptor families. On the one hand, we intend to elucidate the molecular underpinnings of receptor assembly, gating, and modulation; on the other hand, we are interested in deciphering the architecture of native, heteromeric receptors and their complexes with auxiliary proteins.

We employ a multipronged approach that includes single-particle cryo-electron microscopy, X-ray crystallography, electrophysiology, and a host of biophysical and biochemical techniques to gain insights into how iGluRs work and are modulated by their cognate auxiliary proteins to affect synaptic neurotransmission and plasticity.

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Selected Publications

Bharti P, Visal S, Vinnakota R, Kumar J. Mapping the Multi-Domain Allosteric Network for CKAMP44 Modulation of AMPA Receptors J. Biol. Chem. 2026, 113131. doi: 10.1016/j.jbc.2026.113131.

Vinnakota R, Dawath BK, Assaiya A, Bhar S, Kumar J. Multilayered regulation of GluK3 kainate receptors is mediated by Neto subunits and zinc. Commun Biol. 2026 Feb 12. doi: 10.1038/s42003-026-09707-

Vinnakota R, Bharti P, Dawath BK, Kumari J, Chopade PM, Kumar J. Modular control of AMPA and Kainate receptor gating revealed by systematic domain swapping. Int J Biol Macromol. 2025 Nov;330(Pt 4):148228. doi: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2025.148228.

Dhingra S, Boraste P, Vinnakota R and Kumar J. Functional Implications of the Exon 9 Splice Insert in GluK1 Kainate Receptors. eLife. (2024) 12:RP89755 doi.org/10.7554/eLife.89755.1

George B, Assaiya A, Roy RJ, Kembhavi A, Chauhan R, Paul G, Kumar J*, Ninan SP*. CASSPER is a semantic segmentation-based particle picking algorithm for single-particle cryo-electron microscopy. Commun Biol. 2021 Feb 15;4(1):200. doi:/10.1038/s42003-021-01721-1 (*Corressponding authors)

Burada AP, Vinnakota R, Kumar J. The architecture of GluD2 ionotropic delta glutamate receptor elucidated by cryo-EM. J Struct Biol. 2020 Aug 1;211(2):107546.

Burada AP, Vinnakota R, Kumar J. Cryo-EM structures of the ionotropic glutamate receptor GluD1 reveal a non-swapped architecture. Nat Struct Mol Biol. 2020 Jan;27(1):84-91. doi: 10.1038/s41594-019-0359-y.