Hyderabad: The Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT)’s Mol Bank is the largest molecular repository in the country.
Dr S. Chandrasekhar, the IICT director, says that it houses around 40,000 natural and non-natural molecules. “The molecular bank has the potential to store 1.5 million compounds. Molecules are stored under cryogenic conditions and screened in France, depending on their use. The facility enables researchers working in the fields of medicinal chemistry and chemical biology to probe into aspects of proteins and genes through the use of molecular libraries. We are now assisting France in the development of a similar molecular bank,” Dr Chandrasekhar says.
The Institute of Chemical Sciences in Rennes, with which IICT has been working, has a depository which houses the Des Abbayes collection of lichens and secondary metabolites extracted from the lichens. Indian scientists, from places like Dehradun, use samples from this depository in their research.
Dr Rene Gree, the research director of CNRS from France, says, “The joint lab is an extended arm of selected Indian and French scientists who are designing projects to optimise the cross-fertilization of knowledge between specialists in interdisciplinary areas. It will involve 53 scientists – 33 from the French side, and 20 from the Indian side.”
