CCMB Daak - Building leaders in science

Let's celebrate the curiosity, openness, space, and understanding in and support of the community to move ahead in addressing the unknowns. And the Daak will take you through some of the questions and avenues that are keeping us kicking. Cover art by Nabanita Nag at NNoodleit.

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Bacteria infect plants - how exactly though?

Xoo is a bacterium that causes blight disease in rice plants. It secretes many hydrolysing enzymes to break down the plant cell wall. One of the important ones that help the bacteria infect plant cells is CbsA. It has a catalytic domain associated with a Fibronectin type III (FnIII) domain.
The latest paper by R Sankaranarayanan and Ramesh Sonti's groups shows that the FnIII domain is important for the stability of CbsA in bacterial cells and its optimal secretion by the cell. Once secreted out, the FnIII domain is removed from the catalytic domain, and the latter goes on to break the plant cell wall. Secretion of the CbsA enzyme followed by the removal of its FnIII domain allows the bacteria to infect the rice plant.

Repurposing anti-bacterial peptides against coronavirus?

De novo discovery of drugs is time consuming. So, repurposing of molecules has been a potent alternative strategy to treat COVID-19. In this study, Kiran Kumar and Md Idris' teams describe the anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity of the well-studied antibacterial peptides gramicidin S and melittin obtained from Bacillus brevis and bee venom respectively in cell culture system.

How did the Delta variant trick our immune system?

The recent preprint from H Krishnan's lab shows that Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, responsible for severe COVID-19 in many, has mastered to trick the antiviral response from the infected epithelial cells. This variant has gained the capability to replicate silently in epithelial cells. This might allow the virus to remain in the infected tissues for longer time than the earlier variants could do. This might cut off the infected cells from the other arms of the immune system such as macrophages, NK cells and T cells, thereby delaying the assistance from these components. These additional features evolved in Delta might be partially responsible for the distinct pathophysiological conditions in Delta-infected persons. These findings help in understanding how the virus-host relationships evolve over a period of time in a pandemic setting.

Resolving challenges of nucleic acid-based paper diagnostic devices

Some diseases are silent; their symptoms come up only when things are difficult to repair. Aortic aneurysm is one of them. Abishek Bharadhwaj, a PhD student working on it, writes about the disease and what needs to be done more.

Read here

Cryo-EM facility inaugurated at CCMB

Our brand new cryo-electron microscopy facility with 200kV Talos Arctica and 120kV Talos L120C scopes from ThermoFisher Scientific is up and running now. Inaugurated by Dr Shekhar Mande, DG, CSIR the facility will be open to scientists across research institutes, universities and industries to look at structures at atomic details.

Science leaders meet in Hyderabad to create Vision@2047

Directors of more than 150 research institutes across India came together in a conclave organized by Ministry of Science and Technology and Vijnana Bharati. CCMB organized the One Health session at the event, where life science leaders have identified the need for inter-ministerial departments to come together to work on zoonotic infections, antimicrobial resistance and food safety.

Many congratulations

Gayathri Sreedharan for featuring one of the best stories at DST AWSAR Award 2021.

CCMB Biologue - Meet life science experts across the world

Join Sheila Teves in her studies on how transcription is initiated and maintained in embryonic stem cells.

Milo CCMB - the plant biologists here

Plants can fight microbes, just like us, using their immunity. There are genes that give rise to this immunity. We can choose these genes and insert in crops around us to make them stronger. Join us in this video to see how we can do that.

CSIR's 80 years_80 Success stories

Watch here

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