National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in

Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

Karnataka Karnataka (; ISO 15919, ISO: , , also known as Karunāḍu) is a States and union territories of India, state in the southwestern region of India. It was Unification of Karnataka, formed on 1 November 1956, with the passage of the States Reor ...

, is a research centre specialising in

biological Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary in ...

research. It is a part of the

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) is a public deemed research university located in Mumbai, India that is dedicated to basic research in mathematics and the sciences. It is a Deemed University and works under the umbrella of the ...

(TIFR) under the

Department of Atomic Energy The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) (IAST: ''Paramāṇu Ūrjā Vibhāga'') is a department with headquarters in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. DAE was established in 1954 by a Presidential Order. DAE has been engaged in the development of nuc ...

of the

Government of India The Government of India ( ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, ...

. The mandate of NCBS is basic and interdisciplinary research in the frontier areas of biology. The research interests of the faculty are in four broad areas ranging from the study of single molecules to systems biology. Obaid Siddiqi FRS (7 January 1932 – 26 July 2013) was an Indian National Research Professor and the Founder-Director of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) National Center for Biological Sciences. He made seminal contributions to the field of behavioural neurogenetics using the genetics and neurobiology of Drosophila.

Research areas

NCBS focuses on fundamental research from diverse fields of biology including

biochemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...

biophysics Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations. ...

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combi ...

neurobiology Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system (the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system), its functions and disorders. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, developme ...

, cellular organization and signalling,

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar work ...

and

development Development or developing may refer to: Arts *Development hell, when a project is stuck in development *Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting *Development (music), the process thematic material is reshaped * Photograph ...

, theory and modelling of biological systems,

ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overl ...

and

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

etc. NCBS offers PhD, Integrated PhD and M.Sc. by Research in these areas. It also offeres M.Sc. in Wildlife Biology and Conservation every alternative year. Till 2016, it has produced over 182 PhD holders and 65 M.Sc. degree holders in Wildlife Biology and Conservation.

Centres and programs

In addition to various research labs, NCBS hosts following research centres or programs: * The Simons Centre for the study of Living Machines * NCBS-Max Planck Lipid Center * Chemical Ecology * Accelerator program for Discovery in Brain disorders using Stem cells * Masters in Wildlife Biology & Conservation

Bangalore bio-cluster

NCBS engages in a number of collaborative initiatives, such as Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine (inStem) and the

Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (C-CAMP) is an initiative of the Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science, Technology and Earth Sciences, Govt. of India. Established in 2009 with a mandate to enable cutting edge Life S ...

(C-CAMP). Together these three institutions serve as part of the Bangalore bio-cluster, bringing together fundamental research, translational studies, and technology development.

Controversies and allegations

in 2020–2021, multiple allegations appeared in

PubPeer PubPeer is a website that allows users to discuss and review scientific research after publication, i.e. post-publication peer review. The site has served as a whistleblowing platform, in that it highlighted shortcomings in several high-profile ...

, where some faculties at NCBS were alleged to be involved in data manipulation in their publications and lead to internal investigation and retraction from journal.

References

External links