Jain (Deemed-to-be University) ’s School of Sciences, Department of Biotechnology together with Indian Science Congress Association, Bangalore Chapter organized the One Day Symposium on “Future India: Science and Technology- Frontier Research Domains in Biotechnology” on 9 August 2018.
The symposium was graced by the Chief Guest Prof MK Mathew and luminaries including the Registrar of Jain (Deemed to be University) Mr. NVH Krishnan, The General Secretary (membership affairs) of Indian Science Congress Association Prof. Gangadhar and Prof. S Ramakrishna (Convener of ISCA Bangalore chapter). Prof. K N Varalakshmi, Director School of Sciences, Jain (Deemed to be University) welcomed the whole gathering. About 150 MSc students of Biotechnology, Microbiology and Biochemistry streams from School of Sciences and students from different colleges of Bangalore, actively participated in the symposium.
The keynote speaker, Prof. M K Mathew from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru, spoke on "How Mechanical Forces Affect the Electrical System of the Heart". Prof M K Mathew explained the effect of the mechanical stress on the electrical activity of the heart. To study this, hERG1a, a gene was expressed in HEK293T cells to laminar shear and observed that shear activates the hERG1a.
Prof. C Durga Rao, from Indian Institute of Science, spoke about "Rotavirus viroplasms, stress granules and processing bodies: the union of the triad to promote virus replication". Rotavirus replicates in the cytoplasm of infected cells. Prof Durga Rao showed that using Pull-down assays one could study the presence of several other co-localized proteins like heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoproteins (hnRNPs) that gets re-localized in cytoplasm upon rotavirus infection.
Prof. Hemalatha Balaram, Jawaharlal Centre for Advanced Research Centre, Bengaluru spoke on "Proteins: Structure, function and dynamics". She explained how the structure of a protein is studied and how it is important for protein structure to follow the Ramachandran rule. She also spoke that in the bacterium, Methanocaldoccocus, how the formation of a particular intermediate succinimide in the glutaminase subunit of GMP synthetase results in greater structural stability of the enzyme.
The last speaker, Prof. Nellaiah H from Biozeen Bengaluru, spoke on "Vaccine development in Biopharma industries - A case study". He discussed the use of Pichia expression vector and inducing the expression of recombinant antigen using methanol specific promoter. Prof Nellaiah also spoke in depth about the different stages of recombinant Hepatitis vaccine production in an industry. The program concluded with a vote of thanks.
