MBRC & CIC

Area of my research interest is viral genes and genomes.

• We use multidisciplinary approaches such as metagenomics and molecular biology, for fundamental understanding of how viruses target and regulate biological processes.
• My additional interest is bio-prospecting and development of viral vaccines.
• Our work has mainly focused on the human gut virome and the pathogenic viruses, chikungunya virus and SARS coronavirus.

• Jayant Maini did his B.Sc. in Botany and M.Sc. in Microbiology. For his dissertation, Jayant identified of novel transcripts using gene-trap mutagenesis and further elucidated their spatio-temporal expression pattern in Zebrafish embryos. He also dissected the role of microRNA in vasculogenesis in Zebrafish. He was also a part of Zebrafish Genome Annotation team at Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology. At IGIB, he was a part of the team that developed databases such as the FishMap and ZebrafishGenome Wiki.
• For his Ph.D., he worked on identification of Cellular Memory Modules (CMM) in the Human Genome in Prof. Vani Brahmachari’s Lab in University of Delhi. CMMs play significant role in cellular identity and cell fate decisions.
• He continued his post-doctoral work in University of Delhi, correlating diverse protein-protein interactions of chromatin remodeler, INO80 with functional diversity.
• He is also a part of Mealybug Genome Sequencing team which is trying to establish Mealybugs as model for Genomic Imprinting due to its unique Biology.
• Jayant is a voracious reader and enjoys scientific brainstorming sessions.

• Dr. Kapila Kumar is Ph.D. in Biotechnology (CSIR-UGC- NET) having worked in the area of Molecular Virology on Chandipura and Chikungunya Viruses. She has teaching and research experience of over 6 Years.
• She is Mentor of two government funded Start One being incubated at IIT Mandi and other at Manav Rachna Incubation Centre.
• She has many publications to her credit in high impact peer reviewed Journals, she has also filed a patent
• She has been trained by DBT, GOI in the area of Synthetic Biology in many Prestigious
• Kapila has mentored and Trained a Team of Students to participate in International Synthetic Biology Competition (iGEM 2020) Organized by MIT, USA. The team won bronze medal for the same. The participation was fully sponsored by DBT, GOI.
• Active Member of MOLECULAR BIOSCIENCES RESEARCH CLUSTER
• Research Domains: Molecular Virology, Synthetic biology, Infectious Disease Biology, Network Biology

• Prachie Sharma has done her B.Tech and M.Tech in Biotechnology. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. She has a few innovations such as air filtration device, farming techniques using enhanced sunlight, biopackaging in her name and is a partner in one of the startups (PARIMUKH).
• Prachie has published three research papers and is a co-inventor of three applied patents. She has been the recipient of three national level first prize awards.
• Pursuing Ph.D. in the area (Molecular Virology) titled “Working on Elucidation of extra-hepatic vaccine targets for HBV infection”.
• Commercialization of Innovation Product (Pariyayantra) under the start up-Parimukh
• RESEARCH ASSOCIATE IN HORTICULTURE DEPARTMENT: Novel method of using enhanced sunlight for the early maturation of plants.
• D. SCHOLAR AND RESEARCH ASSOCIATE: MOLECULAR BIOSCIENCES RESEARCH CLUSTER: responsible for the technical and administrative responsibilities of the cluster lab under the guidance of The Cluster Head.
• Research Domains: Molecular Virology, Bioinformatics, Synthetic biology, Environmental sciences, Food sciences.

RESEARCH ASSISTANT, MBRC, BT

• Nikita Nagpal has done her B.Tech in Biotechnology and is currently working as Research Assistant in Department of Biotechnology,FET, MRIIRS.
• As Research Assistant- MOLECULAR BIOSCIENCES RESEARCH CLUSTER: responsible for the technical and administrative responsibilities of the cluster lab.
• She has published two review articles and has secured 1^st position in zenith-ace the excellence, Cos-fit play and Greenakriti Fashion show.
• Research Interests: Food technology, microbiology, Food sciences
• She has a keen interest in doing gymnastics, dancing, reading books and listening music.
• She has a Linguistic proficiency in English, Hindi and German.