Balasubramnian Gopal, born on 31 August 1970, completed his master's degree at Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and started his career as a biochemist by joining Torrent Pharmaceuticals at their Ahmedabad station.[8] Later, he took a break from his job and joined the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) from where he secured a PhD. Moving to the UK, he did his post-doctoral studies in crystallography at the National Institute for Medical Research. Returning to India, he joined the Molecular Biophysics Unit of IISc as a member of Lab 301[9] where he and his colleagues are engaged in researches on structural and mechanistic aspects of membrane-associated proteins involved in inter-cell communication, transcriptional regulation and mediate antimicrobial resistance.[10]
Gopal is known to have done considerable research in molecular biophysics[11] and has contributed to widening our understanding of the cell wall synthesis in Staphylococcus aureus, a common gram-positive bacterium found in human respiratory tract and skin.[12] He has published his research findings as articles in peer-reviewed journals[note 1] and Google Scholar, an online article repository has listed 77 of them.[13] He has delivered keynote addresses at several seminars including the Graduate Students' Meet 2007[14] and the 2nd International Conference on Structural and Functional Genomics organised by Sastra university, Tanjore in August 2016.[15]
Tavarekere S Girish; Eshita Sharma; B Gopal (August 2008). "Structural and functional characterization of Staphylococcus aureus dihydrodipicolinate synthase". FEBS Letters. 582 (19): 2923–2930. doi:10.1016/j.febslet.2008.07.035. PMID18671976. S2CID26217430.
B Gopal; Lalima L Madan; Stephen F Betz; Anthony A Kossiakoff (January 2005). "The crystal structure of a quercetin 2, 3-dioxygenase from Bacillus subtilis suggests modulation of enzyme activity by a change in the metal ion at the active site (s)". Biochemistry. 44 (1): 193–201. doi:10.1021/bi0484421. PMID15628860.
B Gopal; Lesley F Haire; Steven J Gamblin; Eleanor J Dodson; Andrew N Lane; KG Papavinasasundaram; M Jo Colston; Guy Dodson (December 2001). "Crystal structure of the transcription elongation/anti-termination factor NusA from Mycobacterium tuberculosis at 1.7 Å resolution". Journal of Molecular Biology. 314 (5): 1087–1095. doi:10.1006/jmbi.2000.5144. PMID11743725.
B Gopal; CP Swaminathan; Sudha Bhattacharya; Alok Bhattacharya; MRN Murthy; A Surolia (September 1997). "Thermodynamics of metal ion binding and denaturation of a calcium binding protein from Entamoeba histolytica". Biochemistry. 36 (36): 10910–10916. doi:10.1021/bi9702546. PMID9283081.