Participants of this Division are currently involved in investigating different fundamental problems of plant biology and emphasis has also been given to identify the key proteins and genomic components coding for desirable phenotypes through genetic and molecular approaches. Recently initiatives have also been undertaken to understand epigenetic, transcriptional and post transcriptional regulations of selected key genes.  The effective use of these novel genes and regulatory elements in crop improvement programme by functional genomic and proteomic approaches has been undertaken with a view to improve the plant performance.

The activities of the Department centre around both basic and applied areas of research which include biotransformation of organic compounds, biological nitrogen fixation, microbe-mineral interaction, industrial microbiology, medical microbiology, molecular microbiology, immunology and signal transduction.

The activities of the Department also involved in understanding the molecular basis in biology using computational tools, data mining, database management, statistical analysis, etc. Topics encompass evolutionary bioinformatics, stem cell bioinformatics and regulatory RNAs, oncogenomics, proteomics, drug design, structural bioinformatics and macromolecular dynamics. The Division was originally established in 1988 as one of the Distributed Information Centers, funded by Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India. In 2004 it was recognised by DBT as a “Centre of Excellence” in Bioinformatics.  The activities of the Division maintain a balance between the fundamental as well as the translational research. The fundamental research includes the evolutionary biology, structural bioinformatics, macromolecular dynamics, etc.   On the translational side, the centre is focusing the activities to bring benefits in the sector of healthcare like the systematic discovery of biomarkers of different prevalent diseases in India like asthma, designing genomics-based diagnostic tools for predicting cancer susceptibility and computational design of lead compounds etc.  The bioinformatics resources (bioinformatics tools for NGS data analysis, database, prediction servers etc.) have also been developed at this Center, which has initiated collaborations with clinicians and other scientists in India as well as abroad. The Center has a decent setup of high-performance computing and routinely conducts training and workshops for students in order to spread scientific and technical skills in bioinformatics.