Indrani Mukharji

Indrani Mukharji is the author of a 2020 scientific memoir of Emanuel Margoliash. The memoir explains how work on cytochrome c connected protein chemistry with the reconstruction of evolutionary relationships. It follows the isolation and sequencing of the protein through to comparisons between species, showing how a laboratory material became evidence for evolution.^[ref]

One concrete example is the assembly of a phylogenetic tree from cytochrome c sequences for 20 species. The useful idea is to compare corresponding positions in the same protein, rather than treat every difference between organisms as an unrelated observation. Indrani Mukharji's contribution here is documenting and explaining that scientific history; authorship of the memoir is distinct from authorship of the earlier experiments it describes.^[ref]