Major Equipments Avialable at Department of Biotechnology

Some of the Major Equipments available and in use are Plate scintillation counter, Liquid handling system, Gel Documentation system, Deep freezer-80C, FPLC system, HPLC, Ultracentrifuge, Refrigerated centrifuges, Spectrophotometer, Fluorescence spectrophotometer, Deep freezer, Freeze-dryer, 300 lit, Fermenter, Continuous fermenter, CO2 Incubator, Fluorescence & Absorbance Elisa Reader, Computer systems, AKTA Prime, Microprocessor controlled ELISA Reader, Animal Cell Culture Reactor, Sonicator – Multi element and continuous.

Bioprocess Laboratory

Cell Signalling Laboratory

Computational Biology Laboratory

Bioprocess Laboratory

Department Library

The Departmental Library at the Centre has an automated library service system for students and faculty of the centre. The Centre subscribes to forty journals both National and International. It has a collection of more than 3000 volumes of latest books on Biotechnology, Food Technology and Pharmaceutical Technology. Students are provided with adequate computer facilities to access journals through the National Knowledge Network (NKN)

Distributed Information Centre (DIC) - Biotechnology Information System (BTIS)

• The BTIS-DIC is one of the Distributed Information Centres (DIC), set up by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India. Information dissemination, training and research in Computational Biology are mandates of the DIC. A number of Ph.D. students of the department also utilize this facility. DIC has Cluster Computing facility to support high performance molecular simulation and molecular docking studies. It also provides Internet facility to students through the Campus network.

• Since 1989, the BTIS facility at the Centre for Biotechnology, Anna University is working in the area of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. The BTIS facility was established as a sub-DIC in 1989 with grants from DBT and it was upgraded as a Distributed Information Centre (DIC) in April 2002. One of the mandates of the Centre is to provide state of the art research facilities and education in the area of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics.

• In addition to research in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, the DIC provides teaching and training services to the bio-community in India. The Undergraduate, Postgraduate and Doctoral students are trained in the area of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology through classroom teaching and research projects.

• DBT, New Delhi supported M.Tech Computational Biology Full-Time Degree Programme at Department of Biotechnology, Anna University, Chennai (Network Programme along with Pondicherry University commenced from 2014, formerly MSc Computational Biology -2010-2013) provide teaching and training services to the students in the core areas of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.

• The DIC also conducts workshops annually for training the College teachers and research scholars in teaching Bioinformatics and Computational Biology throughout the country.

Areas of Research

The main focus of research is in the areas of Enzyme structure function studies, Protein Protein interactions, Comparative Genomics and Systems Biology, Understanding Structure-Activity relationship (SAR) studies.

Infrastructure

The Centre currently has the following infrastructure facility:

Dell and HCL systems, one Dell Cluster (2010) and Scientific Software packages - Melanine 7.0 Classic 2D- gel image analysis software Open source Software such as GROMACS, AutoDock.

Genomics and Proteomics

The MALDI-7090 is a state of the art, high-resolution MALDI-TOF/TOF mass-spectrometer and one of the latest in the field of MALDI-TOF mass-spectrometry. The instrument is primarily focused on protein characterization and proteomics. Mascot search engine is used for database searching. Additionally, targeted analysis of other biomolecules is also done. Users are requested to follow the sample submission instructions and provide the necessary details.

Learning Management Systems

Animal House

Animal research and animal research facilities are critical to the biotechnology research enterprise. This facility was established with the objective of meeting the growing demand for high quality laboratory to conduct animal experiments.

KJ Auditorium

The auditorium is equipped with state of art video conferencing equipment and research seminars by eminent scientists, students and faculty are organized.