The Science I knew right from the childhood, the inventions and discoveries required a great deal of persistence and character in surpassing thousands of hurdles. It is this persistence that got me into Centre for Biotechnology, Anna University , where only the top 1% of students get admission, are the pioneers of biotechnology in India having a wide spread spectrum in research.
Everyone has their own role model in their life, the person they want to imitate and live. I was influenced by my Professor Dr P.Gautham (Bio organic lab, Anna University). He is a man of diversity laying his hand in every possible field. He likes experimenting, always exploring and peeping into new possibilities which exactly synchronized with my thoughts. I have worked under him for more than a year and a half. I got to know the fundamental approach towards an experiment. I felt it's very important to know about all the fields before narrowing down an area of specialization and so I dwelled myself in fields like cell imaging, cancer biology, Microbial Fuel Cells.
Leading a team is said to be a challenging job, he always has to be ahead of his team members by one step, the one important quality that's etched into me. I have been my Class representative for three years. I was the President for the National level symposium Biotechcellence 2010 organized in our college during 2009-10. It had scientists from all over the world spreading knowledge on their fields of research. Here I got to know the latest research by arranging Interviews and video conferences with experts. I had formed a green committee to ensure our program was an eco friendly event with zero plastics. In pursuit of extrapolating the good work I searched for better use of waste disposed, I came across Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC). The whole idea of using these microbes for degrading the waste and in addition putting it to produce electricity amazed me. When I approached my mentor regarding this he showed a great enthusiasm and we created a model similar to UREY MILLER apparatus in which we had a setup containing only about 30 ml of waste water (collected from a local water body) producing as large as 3 volts.
My final semester project with Dr. P. Gautham is on creating a model for Identification of Species using Florescence as an indicator. Here we are using TPPS (Tetra Phenyl Porphyrin Sulphate) as the fluorescing substance. The organisms when cultured and analyzed with Porphyrin at regular intervals gives a graph, with slope unique for the species. We have tried it over E coli (BL21, GJ15) and planned to extend it to other families. I have good experience in handling instruments like TIRF Microscope and AFM (Atomic Force Microscope). The whole perspective of the experiment is to identify the organism with a simpler experiment than going for 16srna sequencing or other expensive experiments.
My solemn urge to play my part in eradicating cancer led me in selecting the elective Cancer biology. I have learnt that one of the finest treatments for cancer is Photodynamic therapy where in they use fluorescence substance to identify the cancer cells. I went with an idea of using Porphyrin as one as it is resistant to photo bleaching. I associated with Dr. Laxmi, Lecturer Anna University, who won the young scientist award last year. We planned to tag Folic acid(as Folic acid receptors are over expressed in Cancer cells) to the Zinc Porphyrin (Porphyrin bearing a metal ion at the central position) similar to the quantum dots she had already done, and analyze it over cancer cell lines. Here I learnt the techniques to maintain Cancer cell lines.
In all the fields I have worked, I realized the domination of the Signal molecules like the electron mediators in the case of MFC or the Folic acid in case of photo dynamic therapy. I wish to further study them with respect to their activation using imaging techniques in my PhD degree".
Scientific research has its origins in a very fundamental human character -- curiosity. It is very important though, to ask the right question. Research in xyz at xyz has raised many relevant questions and I would like to be one of the people working towards the answers.
Everyone has their own role model in their life, the person they want to imitate and live. I was influenced by my Professor Dr P.Gautham (Bio organic lab, Anna University). He is a man of diversity laying his hand in every possible field. He likes experimenting, always exploring and peeping into new possibilities which exactly synchronized with my thoughts. I have worked under him for more than a year and a half. I got to know the fundamental approach towards an experiment. I felt it's very important to know about all the fields before narrowing down an area of specialization and so I dwelled myself in fields like cell imaging, cancer biology, Microbial Fuel Cells.
Leading a team is said to be a challenging job, he always has to be ahead of his team members by one step, the one important quality that's etched into me. I have been my Class representative for three years. I was the President for the National level symposium Biotechcellence 2010 organized in our college during 2009-10. It had scientists from all over the world spreading knowledge on their fields of research. Here I got to know the latest research by arranging Interviews and video conferences with experts. I had formed a green committee to ensure our program was an eco friendly event with zero plastics. In pursuit of extrapolating the good work I searched for better use of waste disposed, I came across Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC). The whole idea of using these microbes for degrading the waste and in addition putting it to produce electricity amazed me. When I approached my mentor regarding this he showed a great enthusiasm and we created a model similar to UREY MILLER apparatus in which we had a setup containing only about 30 ml of waste water (collected from a local water body) producing as large as 3 volts.
My final semester project with Dr. P. Gautham is on creating a model for Identification of Species using Florescence as an indicator. Here we are using TPPS (Tetra Phenyl Porphyrin Sulphate) as the fluorescing substance. The organisms when cultured and analyzed with Porphyrin at regular intervals gives a graph, with slope unique for the species. We have tried it over E coli (BL21, GJ15) and planned to extend it to other families. I have good experience in handling instruments like TIRF Microscope and AFM (Atomic Force Microscope). The whole perspective of the experiment is to identify the organism with a simpler experiment than going for 16srna sequencing or other expensive experiments.
My solemn urge to play my part in eradicating cancer led me in selecting the elective Cancer biology. I have learnt that one of the finest treatments for cancer is Photodynamic therapy where in they use fluorescence substance to identify the cancer cells. I went with an idea of using Porphyrin as one as it is resistant to photo bleaching. I associated with Dr. Laxmi, Lecturer Anna University, who won the young scientist award last year. We planned to tag Folic acid(as Folic acid receptors are over expressed in Cancer cells) to the Zinc Porphyrin (Porphyrin bearing a metal ion at the central position) similar to the quantum dots she had already done, and analyze it over cancer cell lines. Here I learnt the techniques to maintain Cancer cell lines.
In all the fields I have worked, I realized the domination of the Signal molecules like the electron mediators in the case of MFC or the Folic acid in case of photo dynamic therapy. I wish to further study them with respect to their activation using imaging techniques in my PhD degree".
Scientific research has its origins in a very fundamental human character -- curiosity. It is very important though, to ask the right question. Research in xyz at xyz has raised many relevant questions and I would like to be one of the people working towards the answers.
