In a recent paper published in the journal ACS Omega, Prof. Sudha Rajamani’s group explored how life may have originated on early Earth by testing if a nucleotide analogue made of barbituric acid could be used to make RNA. What they found prompted them to propose that barbituric acid could hav...

The Governor of Maharashtra Shri Ramesh Bais released a book titled 'Gateways to the Sea: Historic Ports and Docks of Mumbai Region' at Raj Bhavan, Mumbai on June 22, 2024. The book has been published by the Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India.  ...

In a recent paper published in the journal ACS Materials Letters, research groups of Prof. Sujit K. Ghosh and Prof. Satishchandra Ogale have synthesised a covalent-organic framework to sequester hazardous iodine waste and have employed it as a cathode material for Lithium-ion battery. Here, BS-MS st...

The Aditya-L1 mission of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is scheduled for September 2, 2023. Prof. Bhas Bapat from IISER Pune has been involved with this work since his earlier tenure at Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad and continues to be part of the team. He contributed in a m...

In a paper published in the journal Nature Materials, Prof. Arun Venkatnathan’s group at IISER Pune studied the properties of lithium-ion battery materials at a molecular level using powerful computer simulation techniques. This work was carried out in collaboration with researchers from Templ...

In a new paper in the journal Current Research in Neurobiology, Dr. Nixon Abraham’s group from the Biology department at IISER Pune reported on persistent olfactory learning deficits during and post-COVID-19 infection. This work was carried out in collaboration with researchers from BJ Governm...

Along with PhD student Pooja Sindhu and collaborators, Prof. Nirmalya Ballav's group from the Chemistry department at IISER Pune designed a thin film made of two materials, referred to as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), and captured metallic conduction at the interface where the two MOFs meet. Cons...

Water crisis has been documented as an important global risk by the World Economic Forum and rightly so. Fresh water supplies are subjected to constant contamination owing to increasing industrialisation and urbanisation. Studies have identified metal-based oxoanions, such as arsenate, as one of the...

Shoot regeneration in plants: how are the cells selected and what governs their journey to become a complete plant Plants have a remarkable ability to rebuild new shoot and root systems, and give rise to fully grown plants from any part when cultured under optimum conditions. This ability has been ...

Computer simulations reveal molecular interactions and ion dynamics in sodium-ion battery electrolytes In a recent series of papers, Prof. Arun Venkatnathan’s group has been studying intermolecular interactions and ion dynamics in sodium battery electrolytes through state-of-the-art computer ...

In a recent paper in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, researchers from IISER Pune and Rice University studied a fascinating mechanism for catalysis. Their results offer clues to a more directed approach for designing new catalysts. Catalysts help accelerate a chemica...

Variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus pose a major challenge as some of these may have altered virulence, transmissibility, the potential to cause re-infections, and even breakthrough infections in the fully vaccinated. It is essential in this scenario to identify virus variants rapidly, at scale, along ...

Economic richness drives fossil richness: The impact of socio-economic factors and colonial history on the study of fossils A team of seven paleontologists from Germany, the UK, South Africa, Brazil, and India, investigated how colonial history and socio-economic factors affect the global distribut...

A paper with researchers from University of Calgary, University of Alberta, University of Ottawa, and companies Svante and BASF SE describes a new compound, a metal organic framework (MOF), that can capture carbon dioxide at an unprecedented scale from a stream of gas containing water.  Dr...

Dr. Sandanaraj Britto and team has been granted a US patent on their method for incorporating novel chemical functionalities onto supramolecular protein assemblies. By making it easier to define the functionality of a protein assembly, the method developed by the team is expected to have application...

Dr. Britto Sandanaraj’s group is working on developing new technologies and engineering new molecules for applications in the field of chemical biology and molecular imaging. In a recent set of papers, the group reported synthesis of new types of self-assembling artificial proteins and design ...

Creating spaces for defined chemical interactions: a new phosphorus-based supramolecule to spot chirality In a recent paper in the journal Angewandte Chemie, Prof. R. Boomi Shankar’s group at IISER Pune described the design and synthesis of an amino-phosphonium supramolecule for the chiral re...

There is a time and pace for everything, cytokinesis is no different! In a paper in e-Life, integrated PhD student Swati Sharma and faculty member Dr. Richa Rikhy study the process of cell division and describe how a protein named GRAF regulates the time and pace of actin ring constriction, a pheno...

The Department of Science and Technology (DST) and IISER Pune have set up a Technology Innovation Hub on Quantum Technologies. Named as the I-Hub Quantum Technology Foundation (I-Hub QTF), the technology hub has now been set up as a Section-8 company at IISER Pune. The I-Hub QTF will aim to develop ...

Most things are what they are, no matter what their genesis. For calcium though, provenance matters. This is the take-home from a recently published study from Dr. Suhita Nadkarni’s group at IISER Pune in which the team has investigated if and how calcium ions from different sources impact memory ...