ANNUAL REPORT - Department of Biotechnology

plasmamembrane localisation of GFP-PR244 in
the transgenics
At University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore,
work on transcriptome profiling of drought stress
responsive genes from groundnut and their
functional characterization has been initiated.
Among the genes isolated from Arachis hypogaea,
nearly 70% had homologues in Arabidopsis thaliana
as revealed by genome analysis. The functional
relevance of some of the stress responsive genes
was validated. A genomic library of groundnut was
developed in lambda as a genomic resource for
cloning genes of interest. A few full-length stress
responsive transcription factors and functional genes
have been cloned from both finger millet and
groundnut for functional validation. Trangenics
expressing DREB2A, DREB1A and NAC genes in
groundnut and finger millet have been developed
and are being evaluated for drought tolerance and
preliminary studies showed stress adaptive
response. Work on introgression of specific drought
tolerance traits such as water use efficiency and root
characteristics through molecular breeding to
improve drought tolerance in rice has been initiated.
Biotech Facilities
The sophisticated biotech facilities have been set
up in research Institutes / Universities spread
across the country for wide spread use by
scientists, institutions, industries and students
engaged in biotechnology activities. The facilities
undertake production and supply of Biologicals,
reagents, microbial cultures and experimental
animals. The facilities also conduct regular training
programmes for capacity building in areas of
instrumentations, handling of small animal houses,
bioprocessing, microbial taxonomy and molecular
Biology. The department has supported
establishment of following facilities during the year
2006-07:-
i) Automated DNA Sequencing and Controlled
Environment Plant Growth Chamber Facility at
National Centre for Plant Genome Research, New
Delhi.
DBT Annual Report 2006-07
32
ii) Creation of P3 facility for studying dangerous
pathogens with special reference to anthrax causing
pathogen Bacillus anthracis at Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi.
iii) NMR facility for structure biology at National
Institute of Immunology, New Delhi
The significant achievements at the ongoing facilities
are as under:
International Depository Authority (IDA),
Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh:
The Microbial Type Culture Collection (MTCC) and
gene bank supported during 1987 jointly by DBT and
st th th
CSIR became 1 IDA in India and 7 in Asia and 34 in
the world in October, 2002. Besides IDA deposits,
cultures for regular purposes and safe deposits are
maintained in the IDA.
Repository for Filarial Parasites and Reagents at
Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences
(MGIMS), Sevagram, Maharashtra
The activities and achievements of the facility are as
follows:
Maintenance of Brugia malayi infection in rodents
(Mastomys & jirds): there are about 322 Mastomys
and 285 jirds maintained in a CPCSEA registered
animal house with about 24 Mastomys and 42 jirds
carrying filarial infection. For breeding and rearing of
Aedes aegypti mosquito colony (as vector for
transmission of filarial infection to animal models), an
Insectarium is also being maintained. Apart from
being sources of parasite material & reagents, the
animals have been used for filarial vaccine
development studies involving Anna University,
Chennai and BHU, Varanasi.
Maintenance of Filarial parasite Bank: presently
there are about 40 million B. malayi mf, 500 male and
female adult worms (from infected animals) and 1000
infective larvae (collected from infected mosquitoes)
and about 2000 W.bancrofti mf collected from
different endemic zones. The parasites from the bank
from time to time have also been used for research
work in the facility and supplied to VCRC (ICMR),