Four from CCMB bag honours

Jan. 20: Four scientists of the city-based Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology have bagged the prestigious J.C. Bose National Fellowship-2011. The director of CCMB, Dr Ch Mohan Rao, along with senior scientists Dr R. Nagaraj, Dr Veena K. Parnaik and Dr Ghanshyam Swarup have been awarded the fellowship.The fellowship was constituted by the Union government in 2005 and is operated by the department of science and technology. It recognises a scientists outstanding performance and contribution to science. The fellowship comes with Rs 25,000 per month and a separate contingency of Rs 10 lakh per year towards conducting scientific research. Initially, it is for a five-year term. While Dr Mohan Raos focus is on protein folding, aggregation and diseases, Dr Nagaraj is working on host-defence peptides, fatty acid acylation and peptide self-assembly. Dr Parnaik is carrying out research in nuclear organisation and lamin biology and Dr Ghanshyam Swarup is looking into the molecular mechanisms of tumour biology and apoptosis.Dr Mohan Rao said the recognition would greatly help CCMB in carrying out basic research in the frontier areas of modern biology and to seek potential applications thereof.

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