Biotechnology is the engineering of products involving living organisms or their derivatives. Earlier it was used mainly in agriculture and wine industry without knowing the molecular basis of plant transformation or product formation. However, the earth-shaking discovery of DNA double helix by J. D. Watson and F. C. Crick in early 1950s revolutionized this field as never-before and paved the way for understanding life at cellular and molecular level. The discovery of restriction enzymes (molecular scissors) gave birth to recombinant DNA technology and it allows the manipulation of genetic makeup of any organism including human being at will. This field is popularly known as Genetic Engineering. It has made possible the cloning of individual genes and the whole organism as well. The cloning of Dolly the sheep by Ian Wilmut and colleagues at the Roslin Institute in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1996, was a major milestone in science and technology and holds out hope for therapeutic cloning. Modern biotechnology is also associated with the use of genetically modified organisms for the production of antibiotics or biological molecules of human origin.
Over the years, biotechnology has evolved as an interdisciplinary area of science and technology having linked with many engineering fields like chemical engineering, computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering and so on. Understanding of the biological processes in all these living organisms will revolutionize the pharmaceutical industries, food industries, agriculture sector, heath care etc. and will provide solutions to different problems like aging, cancer development, infections caused by viruses and microbes and so on. It is a challenge for new generation of budding scientists and technocrats to crack this problem and contribute to science and technology so that mankind will be benefited.
The department also boasts of a mixed balanced of well recognized faculty members with rich academic and research profile. Many of our postgraduate students qualify in various national fellowship programs such as UGC-CSIR NET, GATE and pursue Ph.D programmes at premiere institutes like IIT Delhi, Pondicherry University, Calcutta University, Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Bose Institute, National Institute of Biomedical Genomics, S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Dr.D.Y.Patil University and National Bureau Of Fish Genetic Research. Many of them are also pursuing their PhD at various universities abroad, the SEMM European School of Molecular Medicine (Italy), Iowa State University (USA) National Yang Ming University (Taiwan), Rice Research Institute (Philippines)
PROGRAMMES OFFERED:
- M.Sc BIOTECHNOLOGY (2 YEARS)
- Ph.D