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 ...

In a recent series of papers, Dr. Raghavendra Kikkeri’s group explores the therapeutic potential of heparan sulfate, a linear carbohydrate (polysaccharide) molecule, which is typically found at the cell surface and in the extracellular matrix that holds cells together. Shown to be important...

In a paper in the Biophysical Journal, Dr. Chaitanya Athale’s group described an automated programme to track intracellular granules while viewing the molecules under a differential interference contrast (DIC) microscope. This image-analysis programme will help researchers observe, follow, and stu...

In a paper published in Cell Chemical Biology, Dr. Siddhesh Kamat's research group studied the role played by the lipid tail of lyso-PS in regulating the function of cells involved in immune response.    Lysophospholipids are a class of signaling lipids that regulate many important physiolo...

On the biomechanics of the somersault movement in Hydra In a recent paper published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, the research groups led by Prof. Sanjeev Galande from the Biology department and Dr. Shivprasad Patil and Dr. Apratim Chatterji from the Physics department at IISER Pu...

In a paper published in The Lancet’s EClinicalMedicine, in collaboration with the BJ Medical College and Sassoon General Hospitals in Pune, researchers from IISER Pune report that by accurately measuring the ability to smell, one could detect an asymptomatic COVID-19 infection caused by SARS-CoV-2...

In a paper that addresses the increasing levels of water pollution, Prof. Sujit Ghosh’s group has developed a  hybrid material that can purify water by removing a wide range of toxic ions from water. “Inorganic oxoanions, classified among the primary substances present in polluted water, en...

Like tagging your grey suitcase with a bright ribbon helps you spot it from among tens of others, tagging molecules with fluorescent probes gives certain functionalities to the molecules we try to study. We can now see where they reside in a cell, when they traverse, which other molecules they mee...