National Workshop on Foldscope and Symposium on Applied Biotechnology on March 15, 2019

National Workshop on Foldscope and Symposium on Applied Biotechnology was organized by Research and Development Cell, Department of Biotechnology, IIS (Deemed to be University), Jaipur, on March 15-16, 2019. Convener of the event was Prof. Pradeep Bhatnagar, Dean, Faculty of Science, co-conveners were Dr. Radhika Sharma, Head, Department of Biotechnology, IISU and Dr. Shikha Jain, Manipal University, Jaipur, and organizing secretary was Dr. Nidhi Gupta, IISU.

On March 15, 2019, the event started with inauguration by Prof. Raakhi Gupta, Registrar, and Prof Pradeep Bhatnagar, IISU with invocation and lamp lightening.

Our keynote speaker for the day was Dr. Praveen Mathur from SMS Medical College and Hospital, Jaipur who enlightened us on a rare anomaly ‘Congenital pouch colon: From clinic to genetics’. He briefly described the classification of congenital pouch colon in which they reported type 5 for the very first time in medical science.

Our second speaker Dr. Ashima Bagaria from Manipal University, Jaipur delivered her lecture on ‘Peptides and proteins: a crystallographic detail’. She has worked over three dipeptides, their structures, bonding and crystallography. She has also detailed us over ribosomes inactivating proteins from plants. Our next invited speaker Dr. Akhil Agarwal from Central University of Rajasthan, Ajmer gave an interesting and valuable talk on prospects of biotechnology, its different applications in oil and gas industries. Followed by our next speaker Dr. Deepak Solanki from Punjab University, Chandigarh delivered his lecture on ‘Toll like receptors: Novel target for drug discovery’. In which he talked about TLR 7/8 agonistic imidazoquionolines and its importance as malaria and influenza vaccine. The last speaker of the day was Dr. Surendra Nimesh from Central University of Rajasthan, Ajmer who delivered a very knowledgeable lecture on ‘Biosynthesis of silver nanoparticles and its therapeutic applications’. Certain other applications such as antibacterial, antibiofilm and wound healing were detailed by him. After all the knowledgeable lectures we had hands on training session on Foldscope. The session started with the preparation of bacterial slide, followed by assembly of paper origami microscope. The prepared bacterial slides were monitored under the foldscope. This session was handled under the guidance of Dr. Charu Sharma and Dr.Nidhi Gupta.

The second day started with very enlightening talk by Dr. Mukesh Jain, from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He delivered a lecture on RNA sequencing for generating a blue print and discovery of candidate genes for crop improvement. He talked over the importance of high through put sequencing in functional and applied genomics. His research spans on indigenous crop improvement with prime focus on chickpea. Dr. Shailja Singh from JNU, Delhi delivered her lecture on ‘Trailing the high resolution microscopy tools for antimalarial drug discovery’ in which she explained the cellular and molecular basis of parasite-host cell interactions. Dr. Tarun Bhatt from Central university of Rajasthan, Ajmer delivered a comprehensive overview on vaccine development against Malaria parasite using computational biology and then translating the results into in vivo studies. Dr. Mani Subramanian from CSIR-IGIB, Delhi talked over ‘Novel inflammation resolution based therapeutic strategies for chronic inflammatory diseases’. Dr. Rohini Garg from Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida, enlightened us on untying the knots in DNA to reveal its role in plant development. Dr. Vishvanath Tiwari from Central university of Rajasthan, Ajmer talked over discovering alternative therapeutics for carbapenem resistant Acinetobacter baumannii. Dr. Soumya Pati from SNU, Greater Noida, expressed her views regarding spingolipid metabolism and correlaration with neuronal development. Dr. Divya Tiwari from Wellcome- DBT, Delhi delivered his lecture on Tuberculosis Chemotherapy.

The two day workshop and Symposium ended with a formal valedictory session where the conference report was presented and participants shared their views on the above academic endeavor.