Dr. N. S. Punekar
Prof. NS Punekar has been one of the founding members of the Biotechnology Centre, now known as the Department of Biosciences & Bioengineering. Prof. Punekar brought his expertise in fungal biology to the department’s research profile. His work on the metabolism and expression of proteins in Aspergillus niger led to many novel discoveries and industry collaborations.
He was glad to hear about our project and mentioned that gene expression is not always ideal at the laboratory level or the industrial scale. He suggested that we should go about pursuing the topic and be in constant discussion with industrialists and academicians concerning our progress. He asked us to look for examples of work done in strain engineering and gene expression studies. We understood the concept behind TRP operon and T7 promoters, and realized how our work was an advance on similar lines. We plan to have complex iterative cycles involving arginine-sensitive 5’ UTRs or 5’ UTRs activated by sRNAs in our future pipeline of work.
