Environmental Biotechnology
Laboratory Home
  Major activities:

  • Biodegradation of chlorinated pesticides and remediation of contaminated soils.

  • Genetic polymorphism of xenobiotic-metabolizing enzymes in Indian population, and association with risk for lung cancer.

 
  • Transcriptomics and proteomics of rat brain for determination of mechanism of action of lead-toxicity.

 

Highlights of Current Research:

  • Biodegradation and Bioremediation
    Chlorinated pesticides have been used extensively in the past for the protection of crops and prevention of vector-borne diseases. Numerous sites contaminated with these pesticides are present through out the world, and pose serious health risks. Bioremediation, which includes gainful utilization of microorganisms for the degradation of target pollutants, is a potential method for restoration of contaminated sites. 

    Our laboratory has been working on the biodegradation of chlorinated pesticides DDT (Ahuja, R. and A. Kumar, Curr. Microbiol. 46: 65-69, 2003), endosulfan (Awasthi et al. Appl. Microbiol. Biotechnol., 62: 279-283, 2003) and hexachlorocyclohexane (HCH; Kumar et al. Environ. Sci. Technol., 39: 4005-4011, 2005) for last 10-12 years. The present focus is on the characterization of genes for the degradation of HCH-isomers (Singh et al. Appl. Microbiol. Biotechnol., 2007, in press). Efforts are underway to analyze the metagenome of HCH-contaminated soils, and to isolate gene variants that might encode enzymes with improved degradative potential. Studies on these genes are also expected to help in understanding the mechanisms of acquisition, assembly and evolution of degradative genes.

  • Toxicogenomics
    It involves genome wide studies to understand the mechanism of action of various toxicants, and also the understanding of genetic basis for inter-individual variations in susceptibility to the toxicants. 

    Our laboratory is working on (a) genetic polymorphism of human microsomal epoxide hydrolase (by RFLP/nucleotide sequencing) in Indian population and evaluation of its association with the risk of lung cancer, (b) understanding the molecular mechanism of action of lead by transcription profiling (microarray based) and proteomic analysis (2D-PAGE) of different regions rat-brain.

 

Major Facilities available:

  • Genetic analyzer 3100 (Applied Biosystem, USA)

  • 2D-PAGE (Amersham Biosciences)

  • 'WAVE' DNA analysis system (Transgenomics, USA)

  • Gradient Thermal cyclers (Eppendorf, Germany; Applied Biosystem, USA; MJ Research, USA)

  • Gas Chromatograph (GC-14B, Shimadzu, Japan)

  • Gel documentation system (Alpha Imager 2200, Alpha Innotech Corporation, USA)

  • Gene Pulsar (BioRad, USA)

  • Ultra sonicator (Hielscher, Germany) and other small laboratory equipment for molecular biology and microbiology

 

  Staff:
Dr. Ashwani Kumar, Head & Scientist F

Research Fellows: 
Pankaj Chaudhary
Ankit S. Macwan
Anup R. Tilak
Divya Gupta


Divya, Ankit, Ashwani, Anup and Pankaj

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Copyright © 2008 Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, India