National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) Cellular Organisation and Signalling Group is now studying the chemical and physical processes of cell biology.

“The research is on new insights into regulated cell surface organisation and membrane dynamics. It is necessary to understand the self-organisation and trafficking of membrane molecules in living cells and the signalling between cells,” said Prof Satyajit Mayor, professor, Cellular Organisation and Signalling Group, and Dean, NCBS.

Prof. Mayor was the winner of the prestigious Infosys Prize for Lifesciences for 2012 which he received recently. His work has helped in understanding the cell’s function of being able to control and remodel the processes that happen inside it. This is fundamental to any understanding of the cell in medicine or biotechnology.

“This research on the mechanisms of cells are important for both healthy and diseased or perturbed states of cells. So, by appreciating the findings, we have made certain observations which will turn out to be important in understanding how different diseases affect the cell and its consequences with respect to perturbation of these mechanisms,” Prof. Mayor told Pharmabiz.

The research has been going on for the last 15 years and we need to learn more about how the cells go about creating such an out of equilibrium association, he said.

Further, the research findings were published recently in the journal ‘Cell’ titled as ‘Active Remodelling of Cortical Actin Regulates Spatiotemporal Organization of Cell Surface Molecules’ authored by Prof. Mayor along with his team Kripa Gowrishankar, Subhasri Ghosh, Suvrajit Saha, Rumamol C and Madan Rao.

The Infosys Prizes, awarded annually in six categories and providing cash prizes of Rs.50 lakh each, are highly regarded within the research community. The jury panel is chaired by six internationally acclaimed academics, and in 2012 it included the Nobel laureate, Amartya Sen.

In 2009, Pharmabiz had reported on Prof. Mayor and his team’s efforts for designing a DNA nano-device, called I-switch which could potentially be used in diagnostics for early disease detection. The device functions as a fluorescent pH sensor inside living cells.