Bhanu Pratap Jena

Bhanu Pratap Jena (born November 1, 1955) is an Indian-American cell biologist and the George E. Palade University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Physiology at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, who discovered porosome in the mid-1990s and demonstrated it to be the universal secretory machinery in plasma membrane. Following postdoctoral studies at Iowa State and Yale (1988–1994), he joined Yale University as an assistant professor, and in 2000, joined as professor in the Department of Physiology at Wayne State University School of Medicine.

Scientific career Using an atomic force microscope on live cells, Jena was the first to report the discovery of a new cellular structure the porosome in the mid-1990s. The porosomes are permanent supramolecular structures at the cell plasma membrane, where secretory vesicles dock and fuse to release intravesicular contents to the outside of the cell. This was a major breakthrough in our understanding of cell secretion. The porosome has been determined as the universal secretory machinery in cells, from exocrine cells of the pancreas, to neuroendocrine cells and neurons. Jena and his research team have determined the structure and dynamics of the porosome in live cells, at nm resolution and in real time. The structure of the porosome was further confirmed by electron microscopy in whole cells, and in isolated porosome preparations. The isolated porosome has been both structurally and functionally reconstituted in lipid membrane and live cells, and its composition determined. The discovery of the porosome, and an understanding of its structure, function, composition, and reconstitution, has opened a new field in cell biology: nano cell biology.