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Male infertility is real, and has a genetic basis
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Of course, not! 50% infertility cases in couples are due to men. Thangaraj's team has identified 8 new genes that are linked with male infertility in India. These genes account for 60% of male infertility cases in India. Their earlier studies had identified genes found responsible in the other 40% cases.
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How stem cells decide their style of cell division?
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Pluripotent stem cells can divide in two ways. They either give rise to more stem cells or specialized cell types and tissues of the body. The decision between the two is regulated by a protein named Nanog. Less Nanog in the cells allows stem cells to give rise to specialized cells but more Nanog prevents it. Chandra Shekar and his lab have discovered that stem cells utilize another protein called ERK to adjust the levels of Nanog in the stem cells.
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Where there is high Nanog, ERK is low, and vice versa (as shown in the yellow demarcated regions in the picture). This knowledge is useful in designing methods to establish large-scale cultures of stem cells and deliberately control their ability to give rise to specific specialized cell types. This is key for regenerative medicine protocols. This finding also propels our understanding of behaviour of cancerous cells since Nanog and ERK are known to be activated in stem cells of many types of cancers.
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The tug of war between SARS-CoV-2 and immunity
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Biologists are still trying to understand the details of how SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus goes past our immune systems and infects us. There are two recent studies from CCMB that shed light into it.
A study by Mohammad Idris, Archana B Siva and R Nagaraj show that human defensins, crucial components of innate immune system, are downregulated during SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Another study by labs of H Krishnan and Divya Tej Sowpati tell us how the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 could escape our body's immune system and thrive much better than the other variants. While the hosts' immune system was triggered due to infection of other variants and started production of a variety of defense molecules, the Delta variant could rather silently replicate in the host cells.
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Annual Meeting of Society of Reproductive Biology and Comparative Endocrinology hosted at CCMB
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About 350 researchers across India, most of them PhD and Masters students came to CCMB to attend the meeting. The meeting brought in experts of developmental and reproductive biologists and endocrinologists. In addition to offering a forum to experts and young researchers alike to share their work, a number of talks were made publicly available.
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CCMB Biologue - Connecting with leaders in life sciences
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Join Philip Rosenthal on discussing Plasmodium becoming resistant to drugs against them in Africa, and its implications to India.
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CCMB welcomes new research groups
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Janesh Kumar joins us as Senior Principal Scientist and DBT-Wellcome Trust India Alliance Senior Fellow. His lab works towards investigating the architecture of glutamate receptor signalling complexes in the central nervous system.
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Santosh Chauhan joins us as Senior Principal Scientist. His lab studies the various roles of immunity in host-pathogen interactions, autoimmune disorders and cancers.
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Raj Bahadur for the best poster award at the 44th All India Cell Biology Conference and International Symposium. Raj works with Manjula Reddy on finding out the details of bacterial cell wall growth when those cells divide.
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Debabrata Jana for the best oral presentation award at the All India Cell Biology Conference. He works with P Chandra Shekar on understanding development and regulation mouse embryonic stem cells.
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Sharada Iyer for the second prize in poster presentation at the Indian Zebrafish Investigators Meeting (IZIM), 2022 held at IISER Pune. Sharada works with Megha Kumar at CCMB studying cell division during embryogenesis of zebrafish.
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7000+ visitors at CCMB's Open Day
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Since the COVID-19 pandemic, CCMB opened up for public on Sept 26 for its Open Day again. The campus was visited by more than 7000 people, most of them school students. Research labs at CCMB put up working models, exhibits and posters to explain their work.
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Reaching out to schools with hands-on experiments
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We work with partners like Royal Society of Chemistry and Atal Tinkering Labs to do hands-on experiments and classroom activities. If you would like us to work with you, reach out to us at socialmedia[at]csirccmb[dot]org.
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Have you ever planted a tree and wondered how they grow quickly so tall? What really happens in the tree? How does it get so tall, and we don't? Jigyasa and Utsuka from the IndiaAsksWhy team ponder on it and talk to Vinita Gowda, a plant biologist from India.
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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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