Two-day workshop on Protein Biology Techniques Begins at Panjab University

Chandigarh September 29, 2022: A two day workshop on “Protein Biology Techniques and Applications-PBTA 2022” begins at Department of Biochemistry, Panjab University on 29^thSeptember, 2022.Scientific Social Responsibility policy of DST-SERB is in place with a view to take science to the society at large.  The workshop had 50 participants that included faculty from colleges and research scholars from North of India.

The workshop was inaugurated by Prof. Sudhir Kumar, Director Research Development Cell, Panjab University. He touched upon the idea that the science has to be responsible and should be accountable to the society. He appreciated the efforts of the department in organizing such an event wherein faculty, research scholars and students are being exposed to cutting edge techniques in studying role of proteins in health and disease.

Dr. Ashish Ganguly from CSIR-IMTECH, Chandigarh spoke on the methods to solve or predict protein structure. He enlightened the audience about use of artificial intelligence in solving protein structure. He has been able to solve the structure of gelosin which is an important protein in many diseases especially neurological and kidney condition. He emphasized that one can perform studies with limited resources, especially the college faculty keeping in mind that they have resource crunch. Later, Dr. Beena Krishnan from CSIR-IMTECH talked on protein structure prediction by various contemporary techniques.

Later, Prof. Ashwani Thakur from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur shared his work related to the protein responsible for the Huntington’s disease, it being a devastating neurological condition. His work has identified molecules, which may disrupt protein aggregation that is responsible for Huntington’s disease. Dr. Suman Thakur, Principal Scientist, CCMB, Hyderabad shared how the proteomic techniques can be used in developing biomarkers for SARS-CoV2diagnosis using saliva. He also shared his work related to cancer and even developing anti-cancer molecules.

On the day two,Dr. Abhay Pande, NIPER, Mohaliwould be talking on Protein chimerization for improving the short circulatory half-life of protein therapeutics. Dr. Sagarika Biswas, CSIR-IGIB, New Delhi would be sharing her work on developing biomarkers for Rheumatoid Arthritis.

The workshop is expected to provide the participants with a flavour of the ongoing research in the field of proteomics and help to apply these  in their research activities.