WE ARE COMMITED TO

IBAB welcomes its newest Faculty member, Dr. Urvashi Sharma, who joins us as a DBT-Ramalingaswami fellow. A structural biologist and biophysicist by training, Dr. Urvashi obtained her PhD from NCL, Pune, after which she worked in a variety of related domains in the Europe and USA as a post-doctoral fellow. Her research interests include: (A) Validation of novel Glycosyl transferases involved in Mycobacterium tuberculosis cell wall biosynthesis as drug targets, employing classical tools in biochemistry and biophysics. (B) Understanding the diverse roles of zinc-metallopeptidases in human health and disease using structure-based approaches. We are excited for Dr. Urvashi to be part of the IBAB family!

IBAB Faculty, Dr. Gaurav Sharma, recently published an article in the journal PeerJ where he, along with a team of six MSc09 students, explored SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences to understand the diversity and evolution of coronaviruses. In his words, “This work initially started as an exercise to combine class-level teaching with research. When COVID lockdown was implemented in mid-March, I started teaching the “Advanced Bioinformatics” course to MSc first-year students using recently sequenced SARS-CoV-2 genomes to motivate them and to make them aware of how genomics can help understand these viruses and their pathogenicity.” The paper is available at: https://peerj.com/articles/9576/