School of Natural Sciences
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Single-Molecule Protein Mechanics
Single-molecule techniques are novel approaches to understand the structure-stability-function relationship of proteins, especially force spectroscopy methods in studying mechanically relevant proteins. These techniques are also useful to drive chemical reactions and bond-breakage at single-molecule/bond level to understand the reaction mechanism and get the elusive ‘transition state’ properties....
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Chemistry driven by delocalized molecular motions
Chemical reactions are often conceptualized by making and breaking one bond at a time. The idea of localized bond alterations inhibits intuitive thinking about the structure as a whole. The Dasgupta group is focusing on creating a theme using collective motions existing in the molecular structure to drive selective and efficient chemistry...
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Turn-on Sensors for in vivo Imaging
The quest for unraveling fundamental biological pathways relies heavily upon the ability to precisely visualize strategic molecular players in vivo. Our group works at the interface of synthetic chemistry, molecular biology, and imaging, to develop molecular probes which give a specific ‘ON’ response only in presence of the bio-molecule of interest....
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Proteins and the Computational Microscope
Theoretical modeling along with high performance computational simulations of biomolecules are probing how thermal motions of atoms drive diverse molecular scale processes such as charge transfer, enzymatic catalysis, biomolecular aggregation…..
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Deciphering the Catalytic Activity of an Orphan P450 enzyme
A systematically screened several fatty acids (saturated and monounsaturated) for their potential as substrates for CYP175A1 shows that the wild type enzyme could catalyze the reaction of mono-unsaturated fatty acids but not of saturated fatty acids...
About the Department
Scientists at the DCS explore the link between living systems and the physical laws that govern nature. They study molecules ranging in size as small as water and as large as a virus. The laws that govern interaction in molecules are best studied in well-defined and isolated small molecules. This information becomes applicable to design novel materials with exotic properties, of value to chemical and solar energy industries and to medical applications. To understand working of biological systems, studies are made on structure, dynamics and function of biological molecules. TIFR is a leader in state-of-the-art experimental techniques such as high field NMR, ultrafast lasers and single molecule methodologies.
News & events
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TIFR-Weizmann Interaction Meeting (Jan 15-17)
The Department of Chemical Sciences and the Department of Biological Sciences will be jointly hosting the TIFR-Weizmann Institute of Science Interaction Meeting (TWIM-2019) during January 15th to 17th 2019 in the Homi Bhabha Auditorium at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India.
TWIM meetings were initiated in the year 2006 to foster interactions between scientists from Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) and the Weizmann Institute of Science (WIS). Since then there have been a total of five editions of the biennial meeting held alternately in TIFR Mumbai and in WIS, Israel. The meetings have typically included around a dozen faculty members and similar number of students from the visiting institute. Due to its small size, the meeting provides an opportunity for scientists from both sides to have extensive discussions on their research questions and results. The themes of past meetings have spanned many areas of physics, chemistry, computer science, and biology, with the focus becoming more specific in the latter editions. TWIM-2019 will showcase research in chemistry, biology and interfacial areas.
The full program schedule can be found here
Please click here for the full program schedule.
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Pan-TIFR Chemistry Meet
This year the Department of Chemical Sciences (DCS) will showcase its research during the "Pan-TIFR Chemistry meet" event to be held at TIFR-Hyderabad during November 30th- Dec 2nd.
Faculty members from the department will present snippets of their research in short talks. Colleagues and students from TIFR-Hyderabad and TIFR-NCBS Bangalore will also participate.
The meeting will also feature student driven fun talks and Quiz contests.
Please click here for the full program schedule.
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Awards for Jyotishman Dasgupta's Research Group
Congratulations to Jyotishman Dasgupta and his group members for recognition of their research efforts!
1. Nita Ghosh won the best poster award in FCS2017 in IIT Guwahati for her poster titled:
"Towards tracking long-lived charge transfer dynamics in non-parallel stacks of donor and acceptor chromophores"
2. Arup Kundu won the best poster award in 2017 DCS annual meeting for his poster titled:
"Probing The Excited State Dynamics of all-trans-Lycopene Aggregates: A Transient Pump-Probe Spectroscopic Study"
3. Sunandita Paul won the inaugural Mihir Chowdhury Fellowship award and was adjuged the TOP poster presenter in FCS2018 held at JNU and IIT Delhi this November. As part of the award Sunandita received a Rs 1 lakh travel grant to attend conferences of her choice anywhere in the world. Her poster was titled: "Towards light-induced carbocation generation in a supramolecular cavity"
4. Arup Kundu won one of the 5 best poster awards at FCS2018 held at JNU and IIT Delhi this November. His poster was titled:"Probing The Excited State Dynamics of all-trans-Lycopene Aggregates: A Transient Pump-Probe Spectroscopic Study"
5. Jyotishman Dasgupta received the Best Young Investigator Award from the 2018 Chemistry of Materials meeting held in Kovalam Kerala.
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Awards for Vivek Polshettiwar`s research group
Mr. Rustam Singh received best poster award in 4th International Conference on Advanced Nanomaterial and Nanotechnology (ICANN-2015), one of the best nano-conference in India, organized by IIT, Guwahati during Dec 8-11, 2015.
Mr. Rustam Singh received best poster award in ICONSAT 2016 organized by IISER, Pune and DST, Nanomission. He presented his recent work on, "TiO2 coated KCC-1 for photocatalysis: Nanoparticle formation and quantum confinement".
Dr. Polshettiwar is recognized as one of the 'Emerging Investigators 2016' for Novel design strategies for new functional materials by Journal of Materials Chemistry A of Royal Society of Chemistry, UK.
Dr. Polshettiwar has been awarded prestigious "Bronze Medal" by Chemical Research Society of India (CRSI) for 2017.
Calendar
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March 5, 2019 at 2.30 pm in AG-69
M.Sc. Synopsis Seminar by Mr. Souvik Ghoshal
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February 21, 2019 at 12.15 pm in AG-69
DCS Special Colloquium by Prof. R. David Britt, Department of Chemistry, University of California, Davis, USA
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February 21, 2019 at 11:30 am in AG-69
DCS Special Colloquium by Prof. Christopher J. Chang Departments of Chemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, Berkeley, USA
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February 20, 2019 at 3.15 pm in AG-69
DCS Special Colloquium by Prof. Arvind M. Lali, DBT-ICT Centre for Energy Biosciences, Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai