ANNUAL REPORT - Department of Biotechnology

ethical principles and ethical practices, to increase
the involvement of communities by protecting the
individuals in those communities that participate in
clinical research, update clinical researchers on the
ethics requirements by Indian and international
research and regulatory agencies and to provide a
platform for sharing real-life experiences (problems
and solutions) concerning bioethics in the conduct of
clinical research and clinical trials. Overwhelming
response was received from scientists and clinicians
in the country.
Training of Indian Scientists
Over the period a large number of Indian scientists
(about 300 scientists) have been trained in leading
institutions in the USA for vaccine development and
other related technologies. Considerable
infrastructure and other facilities have been
established under the programme in the
collaborating Indian institutions, for advanced R&D.
About 175 scientific articles were published in
reputed national/international scientific journals.
During the year about 7 exchange visits taken place
and about 11 scientific papers published in reputed
international scientific journals.
Joint Working Group
The twentieth meeting of Joint Working Group of
Indo-US Vaccine Acton Programme was organized
in September 26-27, 2006 to review the progress
made under ongoing and completed projects and
also to consider new joint projects. A joint Indo-US
workshop on “Translational Research” was also
organized with JWG meeting, in which several
renowned Indian and US scientists were
participated. During the workshop the third Rama-
Robbins lecture was also organized in honour of late
Prof. V. Ramalingaswami and late Prof. Frederick C.
Robbins, Nobel Laureate, which was delivered by
Prof. V.S.Chauhan, Director, ICGEB, New Delhi on
the topic “India Vaccine Hub : Reality or Mirage”
Indo-US Agriculture
Indo-US Joint Working has a project sanctioned on
“Development and evaluation of salt and drought
tolerant transgenic rice”. DRR Hyderabad, CSSRI,
Karnal, ICGEB, New Delhi and Cornell University,
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Ithaca are partners in the project. The project has
been sanctioned to develop transgenic IR64 rice
overexpressing trehalose biosynthesis genes using
a marker free gene construct through Agrobacterium
- mediated transformation and screen and test the
performance of transgenic rice lines under
glasshouse and limited field conditions. The gene
constructs pLHW-TPSP (harbouring the gene for
trehalose biosynthesis) and pJS 17 (carrying the
antibiotic selection marker gene) were received from
Cornell University DRR, Hyderabad. The plasmids
were transferred to other two participating Institutes
where they were mobilized into Agrobacterium strain
LBA 4404.
At DRR approximately 300 putative transgenic lines
have been regenerated out of which 279 plants
analyzed by PCR using gene/marker specific primer.
41 plants have been found to be positive. 20 plants
have been analyzed for “southern blot” but the
signals have been found to be weak. Other plants are
being confirmed. A total 210 putative transgenic lines
have been regenerated at ICGEB so far. An average
of 5 seeds have been collected from 65 putative
plants. The presence of transgene in the regenerated
plants has been confirmed by PCR using the gene
specific forward and the reverse primers. The
transgenic status of some of these lines has also
been confirmed by southern hybridization. However,
the integration pattern of this gene is not very clear
from the southern blots. Importantly, preliminary
screening for the enhancement in salt tolerance has
been carried out for the putative lines. Total 185 lines
were screened out of which 32 lines have shown
high tolerance and 30 lines shown moderate
tolerance to salinity.TNAU carried out
standardization of the protocol for regeneration and
transformation IR64. 20 putative plants are in
hardening process in test tubes which will be planted
in soil soon.
An Indo-US Interactive Workshop in the area of Plant
Molecular Virology was held from Feb 11-12, 2006 at
INSA, New Delhi. The main recommendations of the
workshop are: (i) To set up a Center of Excellence in
the area of Plant Molecular Virology. The proposed
Center would have focus on the following viruses
with the participations of certain institutions yet to be
finalized. Begomoviruses (IARI, Danforth);
Tospoviruses (IARI, SV); Ilarviruses (IISC &