Nine Bioscientists were honoured today with the National Bioscience Awards for Career Development to recognize outstanding contributions of young scientists below 45 years of age in basic and applied research in the areas of biosciences and biotechnology including agricultural, biomedical and environmental sciences with potential for application/product and technology development. Each award carrying a cash prize of Rs.1.00 lakh and a trophy along with a citation and a project research grant of Rs.9.00 lakhs for 3 years for career development was presented by Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, Shri Kapil Sibal at a function held in New Delhi to mark the 22^nd Foundation Day of Department of Biotechnology.

The awardees are as follows:

1. Dr. Amit Prakash Sharma, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, New Delhi has made pioneering work in the crystal structure analysis of DBL domains involved in red blood cell invasion by the malaria parasite. He has made pivotal contributions to structural principles that govern molecular function of malaria parasite proteins. His insightful essays on the atomic resolution details of proteins involved in crucial parasite stages are targets for drug discovery against human malaria.

2.       Dr. Bhaskar Saha, National Centre for Cell Science, Pune has done pioneering research in demonstrating that a single receptor can perform reciprocal effector functions and maintain homeostasis. The studies have revealed the crucial inducing role of neutrophils in three-phase evolution of T cell-dependent immune responses.

3. Dr. G. Dhinakar Raj, Madras Veterinary College, Chennai has made pioneering work in development and commercialization of several immunology based diagnostic kits for Egg drop syndrome (EDS), Peste des petits ruminants (PPR) and rabies. He used flow cytometry in lymphocyte subset analysis in tuberculosis positive buffaloes, rabies antigen and antibody detection.

4. Dr. Owais Mohammad, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh has made pioneering work in development of nano-particles based delivery systems such as virosomes for gene packaging, liposomes and microspheres for vaccine development, gene therapy vectors and drug delivery systems. He developed liposome based antigen delivery vehicles, which can elicit strong immune response against model antigens in animals.

5. Dr. Ranjan Sen, Center for DNA Fingerprinting & Diagnostics, Hyderabad has made pioneering work in the area of transcription anti-termination mechanism. His work on transcription anti-termination has revealed elusive interaction surface of an anti-terminator protein on the transcription elongation complex.

6. Dr. Ramanathan Sowdhamini, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore has made pioneering work for the development of webtools, computer algorithms and protocols for structure and function predication from the whole genomes. She has been working on protein structural modeling and has made important contributions to the understanding of structure function relationships of protein domain superfamilies 

7. Dr. Srinivasan Ramachandran, Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Delhi has made pioneering work in development of SEAPATH software program with Graphic User Interface for predicting virulence factors in bacterial pathogens. Dr. Ramachandran has also developed novel algorithms for the prediction of virulence factors in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

8. Dr. Snehasikta Swarnakar, Indian Institute of Chemical Biology, Kolkata has made pioneering work on gastric ulceration. Her research work has demonstrated upregulation of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-9 gene is associated to pathogenesis of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and Helicobacter pylori infected gastric ulcers. She reported the critical role of melatonin in regulating MMP-9 via tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinase -1 during protection against endometriosis.

9. Dr. Tilak Raj Sharma, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi has made pioneering work in molecular cloning and functional validation of a resistance gene Pi-k^h effective against pathogen population of rice blast pathogen. The cloned gene has shown high degree of resistance to rice blast with commercial potential

PRA/SKK