In the recently announced AYUSH awards presented by the Central Council for Research in Ayurvedic Sciences (CCRAS), an autonomous body of the Ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy), a research group from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay has won two top prestigious awards.

An interdisciplinary study by scientists from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and the Francis Crick Institute, London, United Kingdom, has attempted to understand and model the role of asymmetry in the process of cell division in eukaryotic cells—cells with a nucleus enclosed within a membrane—using the roundworm (Caenorhabditis elegans) embryo. The findings of the study is published in Biophysical Journal.

A recent study by researchers at the Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata, has resulted in the development of a novel molecular ‘switch’ that turns on in the presence of specific proteins.

Haven’t we all heard about DNA, the genetic material that makes who we are? Short for Deoxyribonucleic acid, the DNA is made of two chains that coil around each other forming the double helix structure as we know it today. Although Friedrich Miescher first isolated the DNA molecule in 1869, it was not until 1953 that we understood its structure. Two scientists, James Watson and Francis Crick, are well-known for showing us the double-helix structure of the DNA.