Archives
Here are some events we conducted earlier..!
BioBattalion Webinar Series Chapter #7 - Dr. Zachary Ardern
Dr. Zachary Ardern, Postdoctoral Fellow, Wellcome Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK delivered an exciting talk on, ‘How can life evolve new genes?’. In his talk, he highlighted the importance of overlapping genes and short genes like ORFs(Open Reading Frames) in microbial genomes. He also explained another key feature called ORFan genes which are found only in a small group of species or in one genome. He also pointed out the overlapping genes present in SARS-CoV-2 genome and discussed about its strong selection and the dynamic evolution of novel overlapping genes which act as a factor in SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. He briefly talked about different models of gene origins and other useful methods like RNA profiling, comparative genomics, evolutionary sequence analysis etc. He introduced a tool, ‘OLGenie’ which detect the overlapping genes by analysis of excess constraints. Looking at the genotype-phenotype maps between the single stranded sequences and the fault in the structure, is the important part of the whole region of de-novo origin. He brought into attention on ORF3a overlapping genes in SARS-CoV-2 and in finding the correlation between different reading frames. He concluded his talk by supporting the highly dynamic behaviour of genomes over time and to understand how this happened is fundamental in biology.
BioBattalion Webinar Series Chapter #6 - Dr. Prashanth N. Suravajhala
Dr. Prashanth N. Suravajhala, Principal Scientist, Systems Biology, Amrita University, Kerala, delivered an amazing talk entitled, ‘Where are we heading as researchers post covid times? A Systems Biologist perspective’. Throughout his talk he emphasized the importance of seeing the pandemic as an opportunity to foster thinking and learning as a researcher. He presented a series of three fascinating studies his lab conducted/conducting on SARS-CoV-2 with regard to its infection capability and persistence. He concluded the talk with a brief introduction to Bioclues and the need to have work-life balance to become better scientists.
BioBattalion Webinar Series Chapter #5 - Dr. Babak Momeni
Dr. Babak Momeni, Assistant Professor of Biology, Boston College, USA, delivered a very fascinating talk entitled ‘Harnessing microbial potentials: from protection against infections to food safety’. In his brilliant talk, he explained the importance of studying the complexity of microbial interactions and their community structures in two parts. In the first part, his lab employs a combination of theory and wet lab driven approaches to answer the puzzling questions of how these complex microbial interactions can be exploited to fend off the consequences of antimicrobial resistance and other infections. His lab studies the nasal microbiota and harnessing their potential in improving respiratory health. In the second part of the talk, he explained some of the efforts taken out in his lab to reduce the hazardous impact of aflatoxin in food safety.
BioBattalion Webinar Series Chapter #4 - Dr. Shikha Sharma
Dr. Shikha Sharma, Project Scientist - I, DBT - National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR), New Delhi, India delivered an exciting talk entitled, ‘Bacterial Research in OMICS ERA’. In her brilliant talk, she walked us through the different state-of-the-art innovations in the field of microbial research and their implication in human and plant health. The major thrust of the talk was given to the importance of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) platforms in deciphering the characteristics of biofilms, oral microbiome etc.
BioBattalion Webinar Series Chapter #3 - Dr. Thais Langer
Dr. Thais Langer, Founder of Science Writer Space, delivered an exciting talk titled, ‘How to navigate a scientific career path’, in which she discussed about her life and career in science. With a very realistic account of the difficult times, she had to endure to make her passion come true. Through her talk, she loudly and clearly made the point that life is not at all linear and every step in it comes with an opportunity to learn something new. This was also her motivation that she always looked up to when things go awry. Last but not the least, she even highlighted the significance of bringing a proper work-life balance (she herself is a scientist, science communicator and writer and a professional diver and sailor) and the real need for proper scientific knowledge dissemination.
BioBattalion Webinar Series Chapter #2 - Dr. Adarsh Dharan
Dr. Adarsh Dharan, Research Associate Professor, Loyola University Chicago, USA delivered an exciting talk titled; ‘Understanding HIV- 1 Nuclear Import’. He discussed about the cytoplasmic trafficking and nuclear import of HIV-1 genomes during infection and several other factors associated with its entry into the nucleus by showing these nuclear import kinetics during infection in a number of cell lines. Also he discussed in his talk that unlike all other previous studies, reverse transcription is not a process that is completed in the cytoplasm but still an ongoing process once the nuclear import is even done. He presented his study confirming the presence of assembled capsids inside the nucleus and also the functional role of these capsids there.
BioBattalion Webinar Series Chapter #1 - Dr. Sarah Wettstadt
Dr. Sarah Wettstadt, the Director of MicroComms delivered a very insightful talk entitled, ‘From the bench to the beach - A scientific career is as sunny as you make it’. She discussed about her career path as a microbiologist turned science writer and communicator, the importance of science communication and the need to talk about microbes. She also shared insights about some of her projects on helping scientists talk about their science better, and works on empowering the scientific community to understand the necessity of science communication. In the end, she also discussed about the prospects and challenges ahead in making science communication an integral part of scientific research.
