Dr Gokhale's work has discovered a new family of long-chain fatty acyl-AMP ligases (FAALs) and has also elegantly elucidated "biochemical crosstalk" between fatty acid synthases and polyketide synthases, which produce diverse unusual lipids of the complex cell wall of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. His studies have significantly expanded our understanding of how pathogens evolve their gene products to generate metabolic diversity.