Section A
History of molecular biology: work of Chargaff, Watson and crick model of DNA,
Meselson and Stahl replication experiment; Hershey and Chase experiment,
Chromatin structure and gene expression, S. Benzer and gene concept.Kary Mullis and Polymerase chain reaction, Application of PCR technique, an overview of DNA fingerprinting and its use.
Section B
Central dogma , Reverse transcriptase and its application, Transcription in
eukaryotes, RNA processing, capping, splicing and polyadenylation, Translation,
initiation, elongation and termination. Jacob-Monod and Lac operon, Negative and
positive control, attenuation and antitermination, structure of promoter.
Section C
Biotechnology : Functional definition. Basic aspects of Plant tissue culture, basal
medium, media preparation and aseptic culture technique. Concept of cellular
totipotency.Differentiation and morphogenesis. Micropropagation and synthetic
seeds. Protoplast culture and somatic hybridization. Anther culture for androgenic
haploid. Ovule and embryo culture and their application.
Section D
Recombinant DNA technology: techniques used in rDNA technology. Restriction
enzymes. Vectors for gene transfer, Plasmids and cosmids, cDNA library, gene
amplification ;Transgenic plants.
