Our research focus has been on revealing the molecular mechanisms underlying genome maintenance and gene expression (transcription and translation) in bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes using structural biology (cryo-EM and cryo-ET) and biochemical approaches.

Latest news:

December 19, 2025: Devin Hendrix, BMMB graduate student, joins the Murakami’s lab (co-mentored by Prof. Armache). Welcome Devin.

November 19, 2025: Shilpa Bera, BMMB graduate student, joins the Murakami’s lab. Welcome Shilpa.

November 1, 2025: Katsu Murakami is appointed to the Stanley R. Person Professorship of Molecular Biology (ECoS News).

September 4, 2025: A paper reporting the cryo-EM structure and RNA probing of archaeal ribosome is published (JBC).

August 20, 2025: Yun Song received the 2025 Neil C. Patel Changemaker Scholarship.

May 5, 2025: Jacob Orrico received the Gerard A. Hauser Award for best poster presentation at Penn State Undergraduate Exhibition.

February 22, 2025: A paper reporting the cryo-EM structure of human DNA polymerase δ is published (JBC).

February 5, 2025: Katsu Murakami is appointed as Director of Center for Structural Biology, Penn State Huck Institutes of Life Science.

November 1, 2024: Manju Narwal is promoted to being an Assistant Research Professor.

June 11-16, 2023: Manju Narwal, Rishi Vishwakarma and George Fordjour presented their researches at the Gordon Research Conference “Mechanism of Microbial Transcription”

April 10, 2023: A paper reporting the SARS_CoV_2 main protease (Mpro) and polyprotein interaction is published (JBC). Press release (Penn State News).

February 7, 2023: A paper reporting the allosteric mechanism of NusG-dependent transcription pausing is published (PNAS).

January 1, 2023: Natalie Smith (MCIBS) and George Fordjour (BMMB) joined the Murakami lab as graduate students