Facilities:
The School of Biotechnology is well endowed with State of the art facilities for cutting edge research in Biotechnology. Some of the major equipments/facilities in the school are as follows:
- Central Instrumentation Facility
- Recombinant Product Development Facility
- Spectroscopic Facility
- Microcalorimetric Facility
- Microscopic Facility
- Protein production and purification Facility
- Biosafety Level 2 Facility
- Biosafety Level 3 Facility
- Plant Tissue Culture Facility
Central Instruments Facility:
The School has a Central Instruments Facility (CIF) equipped with all the basic and advanced equipments/ instruments required for modern day research in biotechnology. The facility is open round the clock for both the students and the faculty.
Recombinant Product Development Facility (RPDF):
Under the FIST support from the Department of Science and Technology (DST), the School has created a Recombinant Product Development Facility. The facility includes all necessary upstream and downstream equipments, quality control and testing equipments required for the recombinant product development.
The facility created in the SBT at JNU is special, as it has the flexibility to be used to produce both recombinant products as well as the purification and characterization of non-recombinant products. In a university set up, this flexibility allows one to take up new research projects without compromising the stringent requirements of a facility of GLP standard. The RPDF-GLP will help in enhancing Industry-academia interaction, and thus facilitating transfer of technologies by the scientists from academic institutes to the industry.
Spectroscopic facility:
The spectroscopic facility includes several highly sensitive UV-Visible spectrophotometers, Fluorescence spectrometers, Circular Dichroism spectrometer with stopped flow attachment, FT-IR spectrometer and Nano drop Spectrophotometer etc.
Microcalorimetric facility:
This facility includes MicroCal differential scanning calorimetric and isothermal titration calorimetric set up for studying bimolecular stability, folding and interactions.
Microscopic facility:
This includes simple microscopes, fluorescent microscopes, laser scanning confocal microscope and phase contrast microscopes.
Protein Production and Purification Facility:
This facility includes refrigerated incubator shakers, bacterial and mammalian cell bioreactors with online FTIR analysis, AKTA-Prime, AKTA-Explorer FPLC for protein purification, Shimadzu HPLC, etc.
Flow Cytometer and Sorter Facility:
The flow cytometer facility includes BD FACSAriaTM Fusion machine with four laser cell analyser and sorter. The school also has Attune NxT Flow Cytometer facility.
DBT- supported Biosafety Level 3 Laboratory (BSL3) :
The Biosafety Level 3 laboratory has been running since 2010 thanks to the financial support provided by the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science of Technology, New Delhi. The facility strengthens our infrastructure for research and development in the areas of infectious diseases. It is also used for research involving manipulation of biological infectious agents, both indigenous or exotic, working with pathogens in their virulent form is helping us understand the mechanisms by which these agents cause disease and thereby open avenues that can be used for intervention during the setting or progression of the diseases. This is helping in developing new vaccines and therapeutics.
Other equipments:
Other specialized analytical facilities that are available in various labs and the Central facility include Real Time PCR, ELISA readers, Elispot Reader, Fluorescence Activated Cell Sorter, Bioreactors. Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis etc. In addition to the above, the University has an Advanced Instrumentation Facility. Details about the facility can be looked at: http://www.jnu.ac.in/AIRF
School’s Library and Computer Lab:
The school library is mainly supported by the funds from the Department of Biotechnology. It has over 700 books in different areas of teaching and research in Biotechnology. The library also subscribes to several scientific journals.
The computer lab houses a number of computers which are available to the students of the School for carrying out their assignments in different courses such as bioinformatics and computational biology, besides helping in online database searches and literature search.
Strong emphasis is placed on the interdisciplinary nature of Biotechnology; Thus, students coming from both the Physical and Biological Sciences streams are welcome.
Extramural Research Funding:
The faculty members have continuously been able to attract extramural funding from different scientific agencies and biotechnology industry for running various research projects. This has also contributed immensely in building up adequate infrastructure for advanced research.