| 1 |
Engineering Mathematics |
| A |
Linear Algebra: Matrices and determinants; Systems of linear equations; Eigen values and Eigen vectors |
| B |
Calculus: Limits, continuity and differentiability; Partial derivatives, maxima and minima; Sequences and series; Test for convergence. |
| C |
Differential Equations: Linear and nonlinear first order ODEs, higher order ODEs with constant coefficients; Cauchy's and Euler's equations; Laplace transforms. |
| D |
Probability and Statistics: Mean, median, mode and standard deviation; Random variables; Poisson, normal and binomial distributions; Correlation and regression analysis. |
| E |
Numerical Methods: Solution of linear and nonlinear algebraic equations; Integration by trapezoidal and Simpson's rule; Single step method for differential equations. |
| 2 |
General Biology |
| A |
Biochemistry: Biomolecules - structure and function; Biological membranes - structure, membrane channels and pumps, molecular motors, action potential and transport processes; Basic concepts
and regulation of metabolism of carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids and nucleic acids;
Photosynthesis, respiration and electron transport chain. Enzymes - Classification, catalytic and
regulatory strategies; Enzyme kinetics - Michaelis-Menten equation; Enzyme inhibition - competitive,
non-competitive and uncompetitive inhibition. |
| B |
Microbiology: Bacterial classification and diversity; Microbial Ecology - microbes in marine,
freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems; Microbial interactions; Viruses - structure and classification;
Methods in microbiology; Microbial growth and nutrition; Nitrogen fixation; Microbial diseases and
host-pathogen interactions; Antibiotics and antimicrobial resistance |
| C |
Immunology: Innate and adaptive immunity, humoral and cell mediated immunity; Antibody structure
and function; Molecular basis of antibody diversity; T cell and B cell development; Antigen-antibody
reaction; Complement; Primary and secondary lymphoid organs; Major histocompatibility complex
(MHC); Antigen processing and presentation; Polyclonal and monoclonal antibody; Regulation of
immune response; Immune tolerance; Hypersensitivity; Autoimmunity; Graft versus host reaction;
Immunization and vaccines. |
| 4 |
Fundamentals of Biological Engineering |
| A |
Engineering principles applied to biological systems: Material and energy balances for reactive and
non-reactive systems; Recycle, bypass and purge processes; Stoichiometry of growth and product
formation; Degree of reduction, electron balance, theoretical oxygen demand. |
| B |
Classical thermodynamics and Bioenergetics: Laws of thermodynamics; Solution thermodynamics;
Phase equilibria, reaction equilibria; Ligand binding; Membrane potential; Energetics of metabolic
pathways, oxidation and reduction reactions. |
| C |
Transport Processes: Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids, fluid flow - laminar and turbulent; Mixing
in bioreactors, mixing time; Molecular diffusion and film theory; Oxygen transfer and uptake in
bioreactor, kLa and its measurement; Conductive and convective heat transfer, LMTD, overall heat
transfer coefficient; Heat exchangers. |
| 5 |
Bioprocess Engineering and Process Biotechnology |
| A |
Bioreaction engineering: Rate law, zero and first order kinetics; Ideal reactors - batch, mixed flow
and plug flow; Enzyme immobilization, diffusion effects - Thiele modulus, effectiveness factor,
Damkoehler number; Kinetics of cell growth, substrate utilization and product formation; Structured
and unstructured models; Batch, fed-batch and continuous processes; Microbial and enzyme
reactors; Optimization and scale up. |
| B |
Upstream and Downstream Processing: Media formulation and optimization; Sterilization of air and
media; Filtration - membrane filtration, ultrafiltration; Centrifugation - high speed and ultra; Cell
disruption; Principles of chromatography - ion exchange, gel filtration, hydrophobic interaction,
affinity, GC, HPLC and FPLC; Extraction, adsorption and drying. |
| C |
Instrumentation and Process Control: Pressure, temperature and flow measurement devices;
Valves; First order and second order systems; Feedback and feed forward control; Types of
controllers - proportional, derivative and integral control, tuning of controllers. |
| 6 |
Plant, Animal and Microbial Biotechnology |
| A |
Plants: Totipotency; Regeneration of plants; Plant growth regulators and elicitors; Tissue culture
and cell suspension culture system - methodology, kinetics of growth and nutrient optimization;
Production of secondary metabolites; Hairy root culture; Plant products of industrial importance;
Artificial seeds; Somaclonal variation; Protoplast, protoplast fusion - somatic hybrid and cybrid;
Transgenic plants - direct and indirect methods of gene transfer techniques; Selection marker and
reporter gene; Plastid transformation. |
| B |
Animals: Culture media composition and growth conditions; Animal cell and tissue preservation;
Anchorage and non-anchorage dependent cell culture; Kinetics of cell growth; Micro & macro-carrier
culture; Hybridoma technology; Stem cell technology; Animal cloning; Transgenic animals; Knockout and knock-in animals |
| C |
Microbes: Production of biomass and primary/secondary metabolites - Biofuels, bioplastics,
industrial enzymes, antibiotics; Large scale production and purification of recombinant proteins and
metabolites; Clinical-, food- and industrial- microbiology; Screening strategies for new products. |
| 7 |
Recombinant DNA technology and Other Tools in Biotechnology |
| A |
Recombinant DNA technology: Restriction and modification enzymes; Vectors - plasmids,
bacteriophage and other viral vectors, cosmids, Ti plasmid, bacterial and yeast artificial
chromosomes; Expression vectors; cDNA and genomic DNA library; Gene isolation and cloning,
strategies for production of recombinant proteins; Transposons and gene targeting; |
| B |
Molecular tools: Polymerase chain reaction; DNA/RNA labelling and sequencing; Southern and
northern blotting; In-situ hybridization; DNA fingerprinting, RAPD, RFLP; Site-directed mutagenesis;
Gene transfer technologies; CRISPR-Cas; Biosensing and biosensors. |
| C |
Analytical tools: Principles of microscopy - light, electron, fluorescent and confocal; Principles of
spectroscopy - UV, visible, CD, IR, fluorescence, FT-IR, MS, NMR; Electrophoresis; Micro-arrays;
Enzymatic assays; Immunoassays - ELISA, RIA, immunohistochemistry; immunoblotting; Flow
cytometry; Whole genome and ChIP sequencing. |
| D |
Computational tools: Bioinformatics resources and search tools; Sequence and structure
databases; Sequence analysis - sequence file formats, scoring matrices, alignment, phylogeny;
Genomics, proteomics, metabolomics; Gene prediction; Functional annotation; Secondary structure
and 3D structure prediction; Knowledge discovery in biochemical databases; Metagenomics;
Metabolic engineering and systems biology. |
