Researchers from IIT Bombay use simulations to predict future shoreline changes in Paradip Port of Odisha, India.

Urbanisation and agricultural intensification alter rainwater draining and soil movement, saysa study from IIT Bombay

Researchers from IIT Bombay find evidence of high potential geothermal systems existing on the west coast of Maharashtra

Study explores how farmers spend on pesticides in cotton farms based on land size, irrigation and tenancy.

Study details how floating plastic debris can affect physical processes in the oceans

Today cancer has been identified as one of the deadliest diseases that mankind is combating with. This is certainly curable and there exists a variety of treatment owing to the diversity and intensity of the problem.However, most of these treatments yield fruitful results only when the patients are treated at a rather early stage. This leaves with a major challenge of cancer detection which detection, there are several methods and protocols. Some of these include tumor marker method, cell morphology method and cellimaging.

Graphene and its derivatives, graphene oxide (GO), reduced graphene oxide(RGO), and graphene quantum dots (GQDs) have drawn huge attention of researchers worldwide due to their amazing physicochemical properties for biomedical applications.GO and RGO have been used as a drug-carrier and photothermal agents for cancer therapy whereas GQDs have been employed for bioimaging and sensing applications.Conventional cancer therapeutic techniques like chemotherapy cause side effects also, therefore, photothermal therapy for cancer has been explored extensively.

With a particle size of 1 micro meter and grnome size of more than 2 Mbp, which is bigger than many bacteria, giant viruses are changing the way we think about viruses and concept of obligate parasitism.Not too long ago, scientific community believed that viruses cannot be much bigger than 200 nm and in the process missed them completely until an accidental discovery of a giant virus (microbe mimicking virus or mimivirus) in 2003. The rest is history.If one looks at their enigmatic genetic makeup, their abundance and prevalence, it appears

Sickle cell disease is an
inherited blood disorder that affects the red
blood cells (RBCs). A mutation alters the
hemoglobin present inside the RBCs. As a result, normally biconcave and deformable RBCs become stiff and sickle-shaped leading to blockage of blood vessels, recurrent pain, and other related complications. Since there is no cure at the moment, patients have to learn different techniques to manage the disease. Detecting sickle cell disease at an early stage, ideally at birth, helps in better management and control.

With the recent thrust in the Internet-of-Things and wearable electronics, it is expected that all the conventional medical instruments would be highly unobtrusive as well as connected to the internet in near future. However, this imposes several fundamental challenges in their design like low-power consumption, low-noise design, EMI immunity, motion artifact tolerance, low radiation bio-signal communication.

The present scenario in the field of Parkinson’s disease (PD) is grim with no treatments available to halt the progression of the disease. Our group is rigorously working on the development of therapeutics against PD. Using an interdisciplinary approach we have designed smart biomaterials (hydrogels) using small peptides (fragments of proteins) self-assembled into nano-fibres.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a common neurological disorder prevalent mostly in elderly people. This is characterised by progressive loss of brain cells/neurons in specific regions (substantia nigra) of the brain resulting in gradual decline in the sufferer’s motor skills. Mutations in protein, α-synuclein is associated with rare early onset familial forms of PD. The presence of abnormal clumps (aggregates) of the same protein in the neurons surviving in affected regions of PD patients’ brains indicate the key role of α-synuclein in the pathogenesis of PD.

Deafness is the most prevalent sensory disability across nations. Unlike other senses, hearing has been least understood owing to the challenge in accessing the deeply positioned inner ear. The long term goal of our Auditory Biomechanics Lab at IIT Bombay is to develop a better understanding and effective diagnosis of hearing loss by investigating active vibroacoustics in the inner ear using novel instrumentation as well as computational modeling.

Sunscreen products work by absorbing or scattering UV radiation. Formulating superior sunscreen is of utmost importance in protecting our skin from sunburn, skin cancer and other deleterious effects. This is especially true for people with light skin due to lower concentration of melanin in their skin, which is the natural absorber and dissipater of UV radiation. The normal zinc oxide (ZnO) used as an active ingredient in sunscreen are micro-­dimensional and because of this, they scatter light and appear white when applied on the skin, which is not aesthetically pleasing.

Among the several essential trace elements of biology, iron, copper and zinc are three most important and crucial ones for life since two-thirds of the metalloenzymes performing various functions in the human body comprise these elements in the form of their ions, viz., Fe 2+/3+ , Cu1 +/2+ and Zn 2+ . Perhaps cobalt can be placed next to it though there are only limited number of enzymes in human body based on this element. The presence of these ions in human tissue in their optimal concentrations is essential for healthy life.

Separating plasma from cellular elements of blood is imperative in disease diagnostics. Conventionally, blood plasma is separated in a centrifuge. However, this process of separation is difficult to replicate at the microscale, requires large sample volume, and is laborious and time consuming.

Hydrodynamic focusing is a simple yet effective technique for flow focusing and control. It can be utilised in applications such as on-chip microfluidic flow cytometry, flow switches, generation of microdroplets, and micromixers. Hydrodynamic focusing can be 2D or 3D.In 2D focusing, the sample fluid is compressed/ sandwiched only in one direction by the two side flowing sheath fluids. However, 3D focusing allows for sample being completely surrounded with sheath fluid in all directions, and this is realised by compressing the sample flow in both the horizontal and vertical directions.

The cellular processes in the human body and all other organisms are very complex and each event is intertwined with numerous other processes. There are two ways to study these processes. One can either study the cascade of events as a whole to see how they affect the functioning of the cells, or the process can be broken down into its constituting molecules and each molecule studied individually in detail. In the second approach, the properties of the molecules studied individually are then patched together to give an in-depth account of what happens in the cell.

Human malaria is caused by parasites (Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax) that are introduced into the body by the bite of a female Anopheles mosquito. These parasites first invade the liver and then the red blood cells (Fig. 1). In both the liver and red blood cells, parasites multiply so rapidly that one infected person can have as many as several billion parasites in his/her blood cells. To carry out this massive multiplication, parasites need to copy themselves.

Periplasmic substrate binding proteins (SBPs) bind to a specific ligand with high affinity and mediate their transport into the cytoplasm via the cognate inner membrane ATP binding cassette (ABC) proteins. Because of very low sequence identities, understanding the structural basis of substrate recognition by SBPs has remained very challenging. A peri plasmic glucose binding protein from Pseudomonas putida CSV86 (ppGBP) is found to be highly specific towards glucose with an affinity of ~0.3 μM and has very low specificity towards galactose.