The Department since its inception in 1956, was first ever in India to introduce a course in Biochemistry. Incidentally, the first ever enzyme assayed and named in this country is from this department.The department has historically done some well cited work in microbiology, antibiotics action mechanisms, and the antioxidant effect of Vitamin C. The secret of success of this department lies in the academic environment and close ties between teachers and students. While one enjoys such flexibility, a rigid discipline is maintained as far as the classes and projects are undertaken. This makes the department efficient as a research institute minus the official rigidity therein.

Following its tradition, the present students in this department are exposed to most of the emerging areas in this (post) genomic era. In fact in the last revision three new courses have been included in the special papers namely, Bioinformatics and Plant Biotechnology and neuroinformatics

Presently a number of Research Projects are carried out by the different faculty members of this department. There has been some important work in the fields of Stress induced gene expression and role of reactive oxygen sp Similarly, work on Gene expression of Giardia lamblia and replication and transcription switch in Chandrapura virus are published in journals of international repute.

Similar acclaimed works have been carried by the plant group, one of whom are looking into the enzymology of abiotic stress response in plants and the other into the signaling pathways involved in the same. The work on active involvement of kinase (EMBL Y18055) in the drought response mechanisms of cultured cells has been respected by the international community of plant molecular biology.

As a number of new faculties have joined and as a result a number of new projects have been initiated. This involves projects on : structural changes in proteins associated with Glycation, AGE formation, Platelet hyper-aggregation, Digital Imaging and Neural Network based classification of different forms of hemoglobinopathy and nutritional anemia, Comparative Structure & Activity studies of Nitric Oxide synthase isolated from Drosphila, Plant and Yeast, and the molecular epidemiology of vibrio sp.

Diverse it may sound, but there is ample scope for integration of the different projects. The expertise in Gene Expression Studies and Structural Biology can be integrated to trace the Gene-Network of a Multigenic Disease like type II diabetes for which no molecular marker is available. A correlation between oxidative and Nitrosative stress can lead to better understanding of the molecular pathology of stress and disease. The computational works involving the 2-D imaging can be extrapolated to 3-D and higher dimensional analysis of images e.g. in confocal microscopic or brain imaging techniques The funds sought for in the project are primarily to cater the students to some emerging areas in biochemistry, and to integrate the current research projects in the manner referred above. In the proposed budget emphasis is given new instruments, spares, in silico instruments and maintenance in a balanced and phased manner.