Science City organized a webinar to celebrate birth anniversary of Nobel Laureate Har Gobind Khorana here today. Around 300 students and teachers from different schools of Punjab participated in this event.
Dr. S.S Marwaha Former Director, Bio Technology and presently Chairman Punjab Pollution Control Board was the Chief Guest on the occasion. He informed that, Dr. Har Gobind Khorana was one of the first scientists to demonstrate the role of nucleotides in protein synthesis and helped crack the genetic code. He also helped develop custom-designed pieces of artificial genes and methods that anticipated the invention of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) process, a biochemical technology used to amplify a single or a few copies of a piece of DNA.
Dr. Felix Bast, Associate Professor, Department of Botany, Central University of Punjab during his talk said that Khorana’s work on the revelation of the language of DNA and RNA molecules. Understanding of genetic code is instrumental for the elucidation of the structure of Coronavirus as well as identifying its spike proteins- the target antigen for most of the present vaccine development endeavors. Further he said that understanding of the genetic code paved way for the development of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine as well as Pfizer-Biotech’s mRNA vaccine against COVID-19.
Dr. Vandana Jaiswal Young Scientists awardee (CSIR) from Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology, Palampur delivered a special talk on “Molecular Biology Journey from DNA to Genomes Synthesis”.
Delivering her talk she said that, discovery of genetic code opened new avenues to understand the molecular and genetic mechanism. Molecular biology and DNA technology have been successfully implemented in several human health and crop improvement programs. Further, she said that CRISPR/Cas is the latest genome editing tool that can manipulate the genome in a precise manner to produce the desired characters; and has been successfully implemented in crop improvement programs. In the current pandemic of Covid-19, CRISPR/Cas assay is also being utilized to test the corona virus.
Speaking at the occasion Dr. Neelima Jerath, Director General Science City said that, Indian academia have always made the country proud on a global scale with their ground breaking works. Dr Khorana extraordinary work in genetics has led to the decoding of the genetic code and construction of first synthetic genes. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1968.
Dr. Rajesh Grover, Director Science City present at the occasion said that Har Gobind Khorana was a pioneer and a visionary. His passion for science started under a tree in the small village of Raipur, India, and grew into Nobel Prize-winning research on nucleotides and genes. During this period, he published more than five hundred papers in chemistry and in biology.