Lab equipment: Our laboratory at RGCB is equipped with all the essential equipment for routine molecular biology and biochemistry experiments. Newer (and bigger) machines have been added through the institutional one-stop Central Instrumentation Facility for Recombinant Protein Production, Purification, and Crystallization, right next to our laboratory. The facility houses a New Brunswick Innova 44R shaker incubator, a Thermo Lynx 4000 centrifuge, a Constant Multi-cycle Cell Disruptor, a Cytiva AKTA Pure 25M protein purification system, a Bio-Rad NGC Quest 10 protein purification system, and an SPT LabTech Mosquito Xtal3 crystallization robot, along with eleven other smaller equipment. Moreover, the institute has a TEM facility that houses a 200 kV Thermo Talos F200i microscope with a cryo sample holder, an advanced Thermo Vitrobot system, and a PELCO easiGlow Glow Discharge system. This serves our requirement of optimizing samples through negative staining TEM and preliminary cryo-EM experiments. The final cryo-EM data are expected to be collected at one of the facilities, like the ANRF-funded National Facility for Cryo-Electron Microscopy at IIT Madras, for which BRIC-RGCB is a partner institution.
X-ray diffraction and SAXS experiments: For a while, we depended on facilities with friendly crystallographers elsewhere in the country for our X-ray diffraction experiments. Now, the in-house XRD facility at BRIC-ILS Bhubaneswar, which our laboratory established in the past, serves the purpose. We conduct in-house SAXS experiments at the CSIR-IMTECH, Chandigarh (Dr. Ashish Ganguly’s laboratory) and the CSIR-CDRI, Lucknow (Dr. Ravishankar R. and Dr. J. Venkatesh Pratap’s laboratories). As for a Synchrotron source, the beamlines of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) located at Grenoble (France) were being used on a routine basis through the support of the ESRF Access Program of DBT for both SAXS and XRD. This funding support from DBT did not continue beyond 2024. Currently, we use the XRD2 beamline at the Elettra Synchrotron in Trieste, Italy, through a DST-funded scheme. Moreover, we have been regular users of the Protein Crystallography beamline (BL-21) of Indus-2, RRCAT, Indore (the Indian synchrotron light source).
Cryo-EM experiments: We have started with cryo-EM work for some of our protein complexes. Our first cryo-EM experiments were carried out at NTU, Singapore, with help from Dr. Sandip Basak’s laboratory. Future experiments are expected to be carried out at the national facility in IIT Madras.
Funding status: We got started at RGCB with incredible institutional support. Soon enough, we got an extramural project funded by ANRF and another from DBT! We have an ongoing collaborative grant with Dr. Rajesh Chandramohanadas’ group at RGCB, funded by ANRF. Our DBT MK Bhan Fellow, Dr. Dharma Rao Tompa’s funding also adds to the lab. The i3C BRIC PhD student support grant from DBT is the most recent addition.
DVasu Lab 