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CCMB celebrates 36 years!
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It came a full circle at CCMB's Foundation Day celebrations, with the senior students and postdocs speaking about their research on fundamental questions of biology to the Foundation Day lecture by Dr Rajesh Gokhale, Secretary, Department of Biotechnology, GoI emphasizing on the revamp that Indian life science ecosystem needs to support its young researchers better and become their own individual selves.
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DTD are a class of enzymes that act as chiral proofreaders; they remove D-amino acids from the protein translation apparatus. So, much so that they now compel researchers to think of evolution from the tRNA-DTD angle, not just tRNA. Umesh Varshney writes.
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But there is more to DTD's function that chiral proofreading.
Metabolic reactions give rise to aldehydes in cells, which are toxic at high concentrations. However, archaea and plants can endure them. Rajan Sankaranarayanan's lab show DTD helps them do that. Their earlier work had identified a translation proofreading enzyme, DTD2, which protects plants and archaea from acetaldehyde. Their recent work shows DTD2 has a much broader role, and protects these cells from various aldehydes.
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Do you all the organisms co-existing with you?
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Be it the joy of curiosity to know the other organisms that co-exist with us or the need to study the impact of climate change on biodiversity, we need tools to detect the wide variety of life forms around us. Existing methods are very laborious or biased to specific groups of organisms. Manu S and G Umapathy have developed a new method to overcome this.
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What makes primates different from other mammals?
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An international study including G Umapathy, S Manu and Mihir Trivedi from CCMB identified causal non-coding genomic elements.
They assembled 239 primate genomes and compared them with 202 other mammalian genomes to identify thousands of gene regulatory elements that are evolutionarily conserved in primates but not in other mammals. These regions control the development of traits specific to primates.
They also found that mutations in these non-coding genomic regions are often associated with many human genetic diseases. The results from this study have important implications for understanding the evolution and genetic basis of complex traits and disorders in humans.
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Sickle Cell Anemia - Past, Present and Future
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This talk will take you through a common genetic disease in India, and the tools and tech that the scientists are developing to detect, treat and manage the disease more effectively.
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Aditi for the best poster award at the Proteomics Society, India's annual meeting at NIPGR, Delhi from Nov 20-22
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Vinod Kumar for the Morris Animal Foundation Award at the 8th International Society of Wildlife Endocrinology conference at Jim Corbett Park from Nov 6-9
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Wastewater surveillance - A timely tool for cities to consider
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Populated cities are hotspots of infectious diseases. But these diseases can now be tracked down and prevented before they turn into large-scale outbreaks, using molecular biology tools. Looking at the wastewater from the cities, from the sewage treatment plants to drains and nallahs, the water holds information to many of these. Sarthak Agrawal, IAS, Prayagraj and Archana B Siva from CCMB write on how Prayagraj is leveraging on this tool.
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Wildlife DNA forensics - a tool for wildlife officials
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CCMB is well-known for its wildlife forensic services. And it regularly trains wildlife officials into the details of the technology. In our recent workshop, we not only had colleagues from Indian institutes joining us but also from Bhutan.
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If you have enjoyed reading the CCMB Daak, do subscribe and share it with your friends and colleagues!
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Please send us your feedback at socialmedia[at]csirccmb[dot]org. Looking forward to them.
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