Online Certificate Course in collaboration with Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

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Posted 3 years ago Comments

The Department of Biosciences, Union Christian College (UCC), Aluva, India signed a MOU with Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), PA 15705, USA for academic collaboration and student exchange from March 2021 onwards.

As a apart of the collaboration, the College of Natural Sciences & Mathematics and Department of Biology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, offered an Online Certificate Course on “Gene Editing Tools in Medicine & Biotechnology” under the mentorship of Dr. N. Bharathan, Chairperson & Professor, Biology Department for the post graduate students, faculty and research scholars of Biosciences Department of U C College and a limited number of outside students and research faculty.

The virtual classes were held from 23rd October to 19th December, 2021. Dr. N. Bharathan, Chair, Biology (IUP) took classes for 2 – 3 hours every Saturday & Sunday through Zoom platform. Dr. Susan Eapen was the Program Advisor and Dr. Sareen Sarah John, the Course Co-ordinator of the program.

As per the teaching model, two exams were conducted to assess the knowledge gained by each participant. After the completion of the course on Gene Editing the students were able to understand the fundamental principles of different types of genome editing methods/tools and their molecular mechanisms, Restriction enzyme digestion. Zinc finger nucleases, TALENs gene editing and CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing including the applications of CRISPR-Cas9 in genome engineering of prokaryotes, plants, animals and humans as well as the role it plays to study genes, cellular function, disease progression and therapeutic approaches.

After successful completion of the course, the forty four participants (38 belonging to UCC and 6 from outside) were awarded a certificate jointly signed by the Faculty Instructor from Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), USA and the Principal, Union Christian College, Aluva, Kerala. The certificates were distributed in the valedictory function conducted on 7th March 2022 at TB Ninan Hall, Union Christian College.