The Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH), based in

Chandigarh Chandigarh is a city and union territory in northern India, serving as the shared capital of the states of Punjab and Haryana. Situated near the foothills of the Shivalik range of Himalayas, it borders Haryana to the east and Punjab in the ...

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

, is one of the constituent establishments of the

Council of Scientific & Industrial Research The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR; IAST: ''vaigyanik tathā audyogik anusandhāna pariṣada'') is a research and development (R&D) organisation in India to promote scientific, industrial and economic growth. Headquartere ...

(CSIR). It was established in 1984. The institute is engaged in research in many areas of modern

biological sciences Biology is the scientific study of life and living organisms. It is a broad natural science that encompasses a wide range of fields and unifying principles that explain the structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, and distribution of ...

and

microbe A microorganism, or microbe, is an organism of microscopic size, which may exist in its single-celled form or as a colony of cells. The possible existence of unseen microbial life was suspected from antiquity, with an early attestation in ...

-related

biotechnology Biotechnology is a multidisciplinary field that involves the integration of natural sciences and Engineering Science, engineering sciences in order to achieve the application of organisms and parts thereof for products and services. Specialists ...

, with special emphasis on research that is interdisciplinary and of a collaborative nature, such as

immunity Immunity may refer to: Medicine * Immunity (medical), resistance of an organism to infection or disease * ''Immunity'' (journal), a scientific journal published by Cell Press Biology * Immune system Engineering * Radiofrequence immunity ...

and

infectious disease An infection is the invasion of tissue (biology), tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host (biology), host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmis ...

protein design Protein design is the rational design of new protein molecules to design novel activity, behavior, or purpose, and to advance basic understanding of protein function. Proteins can be designed from scratch (''de novo'' design) or by making calcul ...

and engineering, fermentation science, microbial

physiology Physiology (; ) is the science, scientific study of function (biology), functions and mechanism (biology), mechanisms in a life, living system. As a branches of science, subdiscipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ syst ...

and

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinians, Augustinian ...

yeast Yeasts are eukaryotic, single-celled microorganisms classified as members of the fungus kingdom (biology), kingdom. The first yeast originated hundreds of millions of years ago, and at least 1,500 species are currently recognized. They are est ...

biology,

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field of science that develops methods and Bioinformatics software, software tools for understanding biological data, especially when the data sets are large and complex. Bioinformatics uses biology, ...

, microbial

systematics Systematics is the study of the diversification of living forms, both past and present, and the relationships among living things through time. Relationships are visualized as evolutionary trees (synonyms: phylogenetic trees, phylogenies). Phy ...

, exploitation of microbial diversity for bioactives and

enzyme An enzyme () is a protein that acts as a biological catalyst by accelerating chemical reactions. The molecules upon which enzymes may act are called substrate (chemistry), substrates, and the enzyme converts the substrates into different mol ...

s for

biotransformation Biotransformation is the biochemical modification of one chemical compound or a mixture of chemical compounds. Biotransformations can be conducted with whole cells, their lysates, or purified enzymes. Increasingly, biotransformations are effected ...

s. Present Director is Dr Sanjeev Khosla, and former directors were Dr

Anil Koul Anil Koul (born 1 June 1972) is a scientist and former Director of the CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH), a premier biomedical and biotechnology research institution under Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) und ...

, and Dr Girish Sahni.

Facilities

The institute is equipped with facilities for modern biology research. They include lab-to-pilot-scale fermenter of many capacities, tissue and cell culture facility, facility for maintenance, preservation and identification of micro-organisms, an animal house, workstations for bioinformatics and biocomputing, equipment for protein and DNA analysis, a library with around 64,000 references books, microscopy equipment, and databases for intellectual property management. The institute is equipped with biosafety level 3 (BSL3) laboratory facility for research work on pathogenic microorganisms.

Achievements

Patented natural, recombinant and clot specific Streptokinase as a vital lifesaving drug.

Academics

The institute offers Ph.D. jointly with the

Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR) An academy ( Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of tertiary education. The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 386 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, th ...

, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Computational Resources for Drug Discovery

CRDD (

Computational Resource for Drug Discovery Computational Resources for Drug Discovery (CRDD) is an important module of the in silico module of Open Source for Drug Discovery (OSDD). The CRDD web portal provides computer resources related to drug discovery, predicting inhibitors, and predi ...

) is a module of the in silico module of Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD). The CRDD web portal provides computer resources related to drug discovery on a single platform. This module is developed and maintained under the guidance of

Gajendra Pal Singh Raghava Gajendra Pal Singh Raghava is an Indian bio-informatician and head of computational biology at the Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology. Personal Early years and education Raghava was born in village Nagla Karan, Bulandshahr dist ...

at CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology. CRDD:Computational Resources for Drug Discovery
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Controversy of fake data

On 17 Jul 2014, mainstream media in India published reports about retraction of a total seven papers published by scientists at IMTECH in various journals. This was done after establishing that the data used in these papers were fake/fabricated. This came as a huge shock to the scientific community in India since CSIR and its constituent bodies are considered to be among the top research organizations in the country.

Bioinformatics services

More than 150

free and open source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

, databases and web-servers has been developed at the Institute of Microbial Technology,

. These servers are heavily used by scientific community worldwide.Web services developed by Raghava's group
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References

External links

* {{authority control Council of Scientific and Industrial Research Research institutes in Chandigarh Microorganisms and humans Medical research in India Research institutes established in 1984 1984 establishments in Chandigarh