Major Equipments Available 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

Food Engineering Lab

BUILDER - COMPUTATIONAL FACILITY

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

• The BTIS-DIC was 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 were mandates of the DIC. A number of Ph.D. students of the department also utilized this facility. DIC had Cluster Computing facility to support high performance molecular simulation and molecular docking studies. It also provided Internet facility to students through the Campus network.

• From Apr 1989 to Jun 2020, the BTIS facility at the Centre for Biotechnology, Anna University was 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 was 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 provided teaching and training services to the bio-community in India. The Undergraduate, Postgraduate and Doctoral students were 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 to 2022 (formerly MSc Computational Biology -2010-2013) provided teaching and training services to the students in the core areas of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.

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

• Areas of Research : Enzyme structure function studies, Protein Protein interactions, Comparative Genomics and Systems Biology, Understanding Structure-Activity relationship (SAR) studies.

Structural Informatics and Chemical Biology-BIC Project

Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India has sanctioned a Project entitled “STRUCTURAL INFORMATICS AND CHEMICAL BIOLOGY-BIC to Dr.B.S.Lakshmi, Professor, DoBT, Anna University during March 2022 for a period of Five Years. The Anna University Bioinformatics Centre (BIC) focuses on development of research and manpower in the thematic areas of Structural Informatics and Chemical Biology. Together with research and education in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, the BIC also conducts workshops for College Teachers and Research Scholars.

Computational Biology Labs

The Centre currently has the following Computational Biology Labs:

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.