Welcome to the Biochemical Sciences Division home page. Here, you can get to know more about the R & D activities going on in the division, scientist associated with the division, facilities and infrastructure available and much more. There are 15 scientist in the division (as of Jan 2013) and the research work being actively pursed include Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology, Microbial Technology and Enzymology, Structure Biology, and Infectious Diseases and Human Disorders.
Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology
The major focus of this research is on understanding the process of morphogenesis and transformation of crop plants, horticultural plants and forestry plants, biochemical and molecular processes in primary and secondary metabolites production in plants, and development of genetic tools using Omics approaches for applications in agriculture, health and energy. Ongoing research programs include -
- DNA marker technology
- Bio-prospecting of biodiversity for various applications
- Molecular interactions of plant-pest and plant-pathogen and their application in strengthening plant defenses
- Plant metabolic pathways: Analysis and engineering
- Environmental biotechnology
- Morphogenetic studies
Microbial Technology and Enzymology
The activities of the Microbial Technology group, in particular are centered on the use of microbial diversity including fungi, endophytes, extremophiles and unculturables to understand the basic microbial physiology and molecular processes leading to a variety of applications. Instead of identifying one molecule - one microbe, a cell is being viewed as a source of various enzymes and metabolites useful for human health care, agriculture and industry. The important research areas are -
- Bioprospecting for new bioactive molecules useful in agriculture, health and industry
- Industrially important enzymes: Strain improvement and activity enhancement
- Biomass conversion to value added products
- Biocontrol and bioremediation
- Biotechnology of endophytes for synthesis of nanoparticles and drugs
- Structural biology and biocomputation for structure-function relationship
- Biotransformation
Structure Biology
The structure biology group is interested in solving the structure of biological macromolecules, primarily proteins, for the purpose of understanding biological function and applying this knowlegde for the following -
- Biomolecular Crystallography and Biophysics
- Bioinformatics and protein modelling
- Evolutionary Genetics
- Targeted drug delivery
- Membrane protein structure
- Structural biology and biocomputation for structure-function relationship
- Structure of supra molecular protein assemblies
Infectious Diseases and Human Disorders
Recently, research work on human disorders and various infectious diseases has been initiated in the division. On human disorders, the primary focus now is on the role of glycation in diabetic complication and identification of diagonstic markers using proteomic approaches. Infectious disease reasearch is on malaria and Toxoplasmosis, studying metabolism to both further our understaning of parasite biology as well as enabling early stage drug target and small molecule inhibitor identification. The following topics are addressed -
- Developing mass spectrometric application for the proteomic research
- Understand the molecular mechanisms of biological process using proteomic approaches
- Proteomics of diabetic complications
- Identify a diagnostic marker for diabetic complications
- Identify drug targets and develop intervention strategies
- Novel uses for existing drugs and to understand the molecular mechanism of their toxicity
- Metabolomics approach for understaning metabolic plasticity in apicomplexan parasites
- Cell biology of organelle biogenesis and function in apicomplexan parasites
