Boston Bangalore Biosciences Beginnings (B4) Program
The B4 program aims to build a scientific research corridor between India and the US by engaging scientists from India and Harvard through exchange programs. This program is a collaboration between the Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB), Bangalore, India, and the Harvard South Asia Institute, Cambridge, MA. The program is supported by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, and the Department of Information Technology & Biotechnology and Science and Technology, Government of Karnataka.
B4 Science and Technology Fellowships at Harvard
(left to right) Venki Murthy, Professor of Molecular & Cellular Biology, B4 fellows: Ramya Purkanti, Gayatri Ramakrishnan, Parvathi M Sreekumar & Praveen Anand
B4 Fellows
B4 Young Scientist Program
GAYATRI RAMAKRISHNAN
Another component of the B4 program was the Young Scientist Program (YSP) on neuroscience, a two-week immersion course run by SAI and IBAB to introduce Indian students to the excitement of brain science.
Ramakrishnan is working with Martha Bulyk at Harvard Medical School. She is looking at the structural basis of DNA-binding specificity of transcription factors. Her study aims to understand and analyze: a) rules that aid interactions between DNA and certain biomolecules known as transcription factors (that “activate” a gene); and b) rules (mutations) that could potentially damage such interactions. The inferences from such a study are valuable in directing experiments on genetic diseases in human and cancer research.
From a pool of 150 applications from undergraduate and graduate students from across India, 25 students were selected to be the first batch of the YSP.
PARVATHI MADATHIL SREEKUMAR Sreekumar’s role with Philippe Cluzel’s group is to extend the principal idea of optimization of gene/protein expression levels in eukaryotic system, starting with yeast as model system and then extending further to plant/ mammalian system based on the progress/ success. She is involved in the bacterial research to fine tune and taper the ongoing experiment, meanwhile gearing up with all the logistics for the yeast experiments.
B4 Young Scientist Development Course Participants in Bangalore
The course was taught by Venki Murthy, Laura Magnotti, Neurobiology Advisor and Preceptor in Molecular and Cellular Biology, and three teaching assistants from the National Institute of Biological Sciences in Bangalore.
PRAVEEN ANAND Four Science and Technology Fellowships for 2016–17 were offered in fields related to the biosciences at Harvard University and other institutions in the Boston area. In the inaugural year of the B4 program, the four Fellows selected from a pool of 52 applications are working in laboratories at Harvard and Boston related to their field such as bioinformatics, biomedical engineering, genomics, neuroscience, synthetic biology and more.
FACULTY DIRECTORS Venki Murthy, Professor of Molecular & Cellular Biology, Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences Tarun Khanna, Director of the Harvard South Asia Institute, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School Savitha Ananth, Program Coordinator, Bangalore
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SOUTH ASIA INSTITUTE
Anand explores a lot of avenues for handling, analysis and interpretation of high-throughput next-gen sequencing data, working in Sean Eddy’s lab.
RAMYA PURKANTI Purkanti is working in Michael Desai’s lab on experimental evolution of yeast populations as it adapts to nutritional stress. Allele frequencies are monitored over the period of adaptation thereby providing a window into evolution in real time. This enables them to ascertain the role of different evolutionary processes towards the final adaptation.
The Program encouraged interdisciplinary thinking and training through a course in neuroscience, for students from engineering and non-life science background. ‘Knowledge Exchange Platform’ day brought together leaders from industry, faculty and students, to engage in conversations around the study of neuroscience, the climate of neuroscience in India, career opportunities that exist in the field, and challenges facing the industry. “I think it was a great experience to have the corporate perspective on research in neuroscience,” said one participant. “I gained a lot of valuable insights and actually found myself reconsidering some beliefs I had about research in industries.”