Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Sarah Teichmann for her help and guidance during my PhD. She has been very inspiring, and at the same time provided me with the right amount of freedom to do what I wanted. She has been more of a friend and a good colleague rather than a supervisor in the strict sense. I learnt a lot from the various discussions we had over the last few years. Simply put, it was a pleasure knowing and working with her.

I would like to acknowledge Dr. Cyrus Chothia, my second supervisor for various helpful suggestions and discussions at different times during my PhD.

I thank Dr. L. Aravind at the NCBI, NIH, USA for inviting me to the NCBI and for stimulating discussions during my stay in the USA.

Knowing and working with Nick Luscombe for a couple of months when he was in the Lab was just great. I learnt the importance of making good illustrations to convey scientific concepts from him. I thank him for the many insightful discussions we had.

Thanks to Loredana Lo Conte for been such a caring friend and helpful colleague. She has been with me through the tough and nice times of my stay in Cambridge, providing continual motivation and support from the first days of my PhD to the shaping of the final form of this thesis. Discussing with her was a most pleasant way of organizing ideas and thoughts into a coherent and logical framework.

Senthil, Raj and Murali have become friends for life. Together with Venkat, Meena, Siarhei, Prabhakar, Vidya, Janki, Anu and Jawahar, they made my stay in Cambridge very memorable.

The Lab has been a wonderful place to work, with very helpful colleagues. I would like to thank the following people for inspiring discussions: Christine, and Martin were a pleasure to work with; Jose Leal for his input on the thesis and general discussions; Siarhei Maslau - the ever inspiring ‘crazy boy’ and Raj for support and exciting discussions, table tennis and snooker sessions; Jay, Elena, Anna and Jenny for carefully reading the chapters of this thesis; Sarah Kummerfeld, Julian, Mathew, Bernard, Emma, Veronica, Pedro and Goga for general discussions; Sam Li and Peter Rosenthal for never ending discussions during the ‘night owl’ sessions.

Harvey and Kelly McMahon have been a wonderful family friend and I thank Harvey for being a great source of inspiration. I learnt a lot from him and from the many exciting discussions we had together.

Venki Ramakrishnan, Kiyoshi Nagai, Harvey McMahon, Richard Henderson, Arthur Lesk, Graeme Mitchison, Alan Weeds and Aaron Klug have been a great source of motivation during my stay at the LMB. I benefited a lot from them and realised the value of being able to ask the right questions in science.

I am indebted to Terry Horsnell for computer support; Ian and Wanda for excellent library support; Jenny, Jackie, Karen and Claudia for administrative support; Joy and the canteen team for good food; Margaret for her support in Blue Boar, Trinity College; my housemates in Portugal street and Blue Boar for the good times.

I would also like to thank my tutor Mr. Khalfa for his support and encouragement.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dr. P. Balaram, Dr. K. Sankaran, Dr. M. Geetha for their continued encouragement from my undergraduate days; my classmates from Center for Biotechnology, Anna University; classmates from M. CT. M school; Dr. S. Prakash for his encouragement right from school days and Dr. M.C. Aruna, who was a wonderful teacher and made a difference in my life by encouraging me to pursue biology.

I also thank Mr. Linus Aloysius and Dr. S. Arunachalam for their continued encouragement.

I would like to thank the LMB for making an exception in my case and consider my application for a PhD; Cambridge Commonwealth Trust, Trinity College, Cambridge and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology for generous support.

Of all the people mentioned here, I am most grateful to Raji and Mohan (my parents) and Nithya (my sister), who have been with me throughout my life providing me with love, care and support.