Science City organized a webinar to celebrate birthanniversary of Nobel Laureate Har Gobind Khorana here today. Around 300students and teachers from different schools of Punjab participated in thisevent.
Dr. S.S Marwaha Former Director, Bio Technology andpresently Chairman Punjab Pollution Control Board was the Chief Guest on theoccasion. He informed that, Dr. Har Gobind Khorana was one of the firstscientists to demonstrate the role of nucleotides in protein synthesis andhelped crack the genetic code. He also helped develop custom-designed pieces ofartificial genes and methods that anticipated the invention of the polymerasechain reaction (PCR) process, a biochemical technology used to amplify a singleor a few copies of a piece of DNA.
Dr. Felix Bast, Associate Professor, Department ofBotany, Central University of Punjab during his talk said that Khorana’s workon the revelation of the language of DNA and RNA molecules. Understanding ofgenetic code is instrumental for the elucidation of the structure ofCoronavirus as well as identifying its spike proteins- the target antigen formost of the present vaccine development endeavors. Further he said that understanding of thegenetic code paved way for the development of Moderna’s mRNA vaccine as well asPfizer-Biotech’s mRNA vaccine against COVID-19.
Dr. Vandana Jaiswal Young Scientists awardee (CSIR) fromInstitute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology, Palampur delivered a specialtalk on “Molecular Biology Journey fromDNA to Genomes Synthesis”.
Delivering her talk she said that, discovery of geneticcode opened new avenues to understand the molecular and genetic mechanism.Molecular biology and DNA technology have been successfully implemented inseveral human health and crop improvement programs. Further, she said thatCRISPR/Cas is the latest genome editing tool that can manipulate the genome ina precise manner to produce the desired characters; and has been successfullyimplemented 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, DirectorGeneral Science City said that, Indian academia have always made the countryproud on a global scale with their ground breaking works. Dr Khoranaextraordinary work in genetics has led to the decoding of the genetic code andconstruction of first synthetic genes. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiologyor Medicine in 1968.
Dr. Rajesh Grover, Director Science City present at theoccasion said that Har Gobind Khorana was a pioneer and a visionary. Hispassion for science started under a tree in the small village of Raipur, India,and grew into Nobel Prize-winning research on nucleotides and genes. Duringthis period, he published more than five hundred papers in chemistry and inbiology.