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The Biotechnology think tank:

Knowledge increases by sharing. Communities strengthen by caring.

As a member of the community, it is a duty of all to help each other out in times of need. Since NIH India is a group of researchers, of Indian origin, in biological sciences working at NIH, one of the foremost institutes in the world, it is but natural that we would like to share our expertise with everyone, particularly our comptriots. The Biotechnology Think Tank is a step in that direction. Given below is the list of scientists with great experience in various arts of biotechnology. We are willing to share our knowledge with any one in need.

Name	email	Expert in
Mukesh Kumar	mukeshmaryland@yahoo.com	Molecular virologist and clinical product development. I am an expert in rafts (membrane microdomains), growing viruses in tissue culture or eggs, tissue culture, virus-derived gene transfer vectors, viral fusion assays, sucrose gradient centrifugation and western, southern and northern blotting, TLC. In addition I am an expert in the US regulatory affairs, human clinical trials and technology transfer
Ruchika NIjhara	nijhararuchika@yahoo.com	Technology transfer, translational research and many technical expertise specially Amaxa nucleoporation, immunology, lymphocyte purification from blood, Scanning EM, fluorescence microscopy and FACS
Kapil Bharti	kapilbharti@mail.nih.gov	Transcription, developmental biologist. Specializing in eye and neural crest derived melanocyte development in mouse. Anything regarding transcription, chromatin, reporter assays, promoter stuff, eye/neural crest development, transgenic constructs (especially Recombineering technique), mouse genetics. Evolution is my hot-favorite.
Lakshminarayan Iyer	lakshmin@mail.nih.gov	Evolutionary biologist. Expert in Protein sequence and structure analysis, protein classification.
Ravi Kumar Gutti	gutter@mail.nih.gov	Molecular Biologist. Even though my basic degree is in Plant Biotechnology, I specialize in Cloning, South Blotting, Western Blotting, Apoptosis and Cell signaling in Cancer and reproductive cells and RACE PCR.
Saurabh Joshi	saurabhj@mail.nih.gov	Monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies (immunologically poor antigens for making antibodies) and propagating them both in vitro and in vivo as ascites. I have expertise in screening cDNA libraries using antibodies as probe. Protein expression in bacterial system, and purification. Special skill is dissecting mouse and rat embryos (up to e 12.5) at their different stages of development to get the reproductive and urinary tract.
Debaditya Mukhopadhyay	mailto:saurabhj@mail.nih.gov	Immunological techniques, especially monoclonal antibodies generation. I am good at general protein work and have experience with glycosylated proteins.
Moloy Goswami	goswamim@mail.nih.gov	developmental neurobiology field with zebrafish as model system. Cell-transplantation, mRNA-insitus, embryo injections are some of the other things that I know in addition to standard molecular biology. I consider myself good in pcr related issues. I have fair grooming in gene regulation studies with transcriptional regulation in eukaryotes (promoter regulation) as focus.
Prafullakumar Tailor	tailorp@mail.nih.gov	I am a microbiologist; my Ph.D. work concentrated on understanding linkage b/w human herpesviruses and immunosuppression. Current passion is to understand mice dendritic cell development and functions with respect to transcription factors. I am fairly good at DC cultures from mice bone marrow and spleen; enrichment of DC subclasses using MACS and real time PCR using Syber green mix.
Madhan Masilamani	mmasilamani@mail.nih.gov	Immunology and Cell Biology. Specifically, I am good at immunostainings, confocal microscopy, FACS, MACS, and Lipid raft isolation.
Sanita Bharti	sanitab@mail.nih.gov	Cell culture, generating stable cell lines, culturing MEFs, cloning and protein purification, in vivo and in vitro assays for protein interactions.
Kailas Sonawane	sonawank@mail.nih.gov	I am a Chemist; I do molecular modeling of membrane proteins, molecular dynamics simulations.
Malancha Ta	malanchat@mail.nih.gov	Molecular biologist who studied the interaction of RNA viruses with host cellular proteins using gel shift assays, super-shift and northwestern blotting in Ph.D. Currently working on in vitro pancreatic islet cultures and their gene expression profile using RT-PCR and immunostaining.
Sarat Yenisetti	yenisets@mail.nih.gov	I work on DJ-1 related Parkinson's disease using Drosophila model.
Akanksha Chaturvedi	achaturvedi@mail.nih.gov	Immunologist, expert in lymphocyte purification, Raft isolation, radio-labeling of lipids, kinase assays, multicolor FACS, Confocal microscopy, western blotting, Adoptive transfers in mice, Immunohistochemistry on spleens and lymph node sections.
Praveen Arany	aranyp@mail.nih.gov	I am a Oral & Maxillofacial Pathologist (specialize in pathology of head & neck region) and am broadly interested in signaling events in wound healing, radiation–laser biology, cell transformation & metastasis. I used to work with patients but am now working with cell-tissue cultures & mice. My present lab focuses on TGF beta and my work is centered on its role in the various process described previously.
Soma Ghosh	ghoshsom@mail.nih.gov	Replication initiation and cell cycle, parasite and mammalian replication initiation studies. Expert in parasite and mammalian cell culture and cell cycle manipulations, neutral/neutral and neutral/alkaline two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (for analyzing replication intermediates), usual mol-bio techniques like PCR, RT-PCR, site-directed mutagenesis, primer extension, southern, northern blotting, etc. transfections, protein expression, purification, western blotting, FACS analysis and ubiquitination assays.
Devyani Haldar	haldard@mail.nih.gov	protein expression in bacteria and yeast, protein purification by FPLC and classical chromatography. Fission yeast genetics
Ujjini H. Manjunatha	uhmanjunatha@mail.nih.gov	Microbiologist and Molecular biologist. I am an expert in cloning, expression and characterization of genes mainly from Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In our lab we routinely use techniques like DNA microarrays, lipid analysis, gene replacement, Protein expression, and western blotting. My previous experience is in generation monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies, ScFv cloning, protein biochemistry and DNA-Protein interactions.
Sunil Gangadharan	gangadhs@mail.nih.gov	Yeast genetics, molecular biology, protein expression purification, FPLC, monoclonal antibodies, Rat pituitary dissection, cell culture
Himani Bisht	hbisht@mail.nih.gov	Molecular Biologist. Have expertise in gene expression & protein purification in bacteria, yeast & insect cell system, affinity, gel exclusion chromatography, sedimentation analysis, peptide mapping, protein trafficking & animal protection studies. Cell & virus culture, construction of recombinant virus, cell fusion assays, slot-blot hybridization, RT-PCR, northern, southern, western blotting, immunofluorescence and plaque reduction neutralization assays.
Rohini Rao	raorohini2000@yahoo.com	Regulatory affairs related to clinical research database management
Anil Shanker	shankera@mail.nih.gov	Tumor immunology; mechanisms of tumor cell destruction; role of T lymphocytes and NK cells in anti-tumor response; antigen presentation; T cell development, tolerance and homeostatic proliferation; expertise on TCR transgenic, RAG knock-out, Pfp knock-out, lpr/lpr, and gld/gld mice
Geetha P. Bansal	GBansal@niaid.nih.gov	Human clinical trials, scientific review administration, Patents, immunology, biochemistry, vaccines and immunotherapeutics for cancer, immune disorders and infectious diseases, human and humanized antibody based immunotherapeutics
Vainav Patel	vpatel@ncifcrf.gov	HIV Pathogenesis with special emphasis on cell mediated immunity and cytokine networks. Areas of Expertise: Multi-colour Flow Cytometry, Immunological techniques (ELISA, ELISPOT, etc) and Molecular Biology. I also have Clinical Research Training and extensive scientific editing experience.