Staff Members

The Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH) is a premier research institution in the Indian subcontinent. In true justification of our name, we are dedicated to carry out integrated research in classical as well as emerging areas of microbiology. Our aim is to obtain fundamental scientific insights, and also to develop novel technologies from these. While browsing through our website, you will find that our researchers have achieved both national and international recognition for their accomplishments.

We hope that you will find the information provided on our web pages useful. For more information please feel free to contact us.

Head

Dr. Suresh Korpole

Yeasts and Patent Depositary

: Head.mtcc@imtech.res.in : 01726665705

Scientist

Dr. P. Anil Kumar

Senior Scientist: Bacteria/ Phototrophic bacteria

: Apinnaka@imtech.res.in : 01726665728

Dr.V.Venkata Ramana

Senior Scientist

: Venkat@imtech.res.in : 01726665749

Dr. S. Krishnamurthi

Scientist: Fungi

Write-up of research and development interests/focus, past and present goals:

The lab is engaged in research work related to understanding structure of microbial communities in different marine habitats of the country as systematic sampling of these sites is lacking and diversity data pertaining to these ecosystems are scanty. One of the aims is to understand bacterial diversity from Western Ghats that are one of the major biodiversity hot spots of the world. We aim to focus on sampling selected niches from coastal part of the state Goa and attempt to cultivate hitherto “uncultivated and/or difficult to culture” bacteria. One of our targets is to utilize this overwhelmingly complex bacterial diversity for discovering novel biomolecules with applications in clinical and/or pharmaceutical industry with the premise that “marine habitats offer an increased opportunity for discovering novel biomolecules in lieu of the unique selective pressures of the marine ecosystem where chemical and physical conditions differ significantly from the terrestrial environment that have resulted in production of novel compounds to aid in their survival”.

The emphasis of the research group is also concentrated on detailing the abundant bacterial fraction from various environmental habitats using molecular tools such as FISH and CARD-FISH in collaboration Max Planck Institute of Marine Microbiology, Bremen. These techniques are free from biases of PCR based methodologies and can help detect the uncultivable and/or viable but not culturable bacterial cells from phylum to genus level depending on the specificity of the probes.

Significant recognition: Awards, fellowships, international funding of distinction, technologies transferred/licensed etc.:

Awarded the Max Planck Group (MPG)-DST visiting fellowship for the year 2011

Selected list of Publications and Patents:

Krishnamurthi S, Spring S, Anil Kumar P, Mayilraj S, Klenk H-P & Suresh K & Chakrabarti T (2013): Desulfotomaculum defluvii sp. nov., a sulphate reducing bacterium isolated from the subsurface environment of a landfill- Int. J. Syst. Evol. Microbiol (In Press). http://dx.doi.org.10.1099/ijs.0.047662-0.

Krishnamurthi & Chakrabarti (2013): Diversity of Bacteria and Archaea from a landfill in Chandigarh, India as revealed by culture-dependent and culture-independent molecular approaches- Syst. Appl. Microbiol 36, 56-68.

Krishnamurthi S, Bhattacharya A, Schumann P & Chakrabarti T (2012): Microbacterium immunditiarum sp. nov., a novel actinobacterium isolated from a landfill surface soil.- Int. J. Syst. Evol. Microbiol 62, 2187-2193.

Kumar N R, Gomez-Gil B, Spröer C, Kumar N D, Krishnamurthi S, Nair S, Roque A (2011): Vibrio plantisponsor sp. nov., a diazotrophic bacterium isolated from a mangrove associated wild rice (Porteresia coarctata Tateoka)- Syst Appl Microbiol, 34: 487-493.

Krishnamurthi S, Ruckmani A and Chakrabarti T (2010): Psychrobacillus gen. nov. and proposal for reclassification of Bacillus insolitus Larkin & Stokes, 1967, B. psychrotolerans Abd-El Rahman et al., 2002 and B. psychrodurans Abd-El Rahman et al., 2002 as Psychrobacillus insolitus comb. nov. Psychrobacillus psychrotolerans comb. nov. and Psychrobacillus psychrodurans comb. nov. - Syst Appl Microbiol, 33: 367-373.

Vaishampayan P, Probst A, Krishnamurthi S, Ghosh S, Osman S, McDowall A, Mayilraj S & Venkateswaran K (2010): Bacillus horneckiae sp. nov., isolated from a clean room where the Phoenix spacecraft was assembled - Int. J. Syst. Evol. Microbiol, 60: 1031-1037.

Present group members:

Ashish Verma: JRF

Poonam Mual: Project Assistant

Anup Kumar Jha: Project Assistant

: Kmurthi@imtech.res.in : 01726665157

Technical Staff

Dr. Dhan Prakash

Senior Technical Officer (Molecular Characterization : Bacteria, Yeast & Fungi)

: Dhan@imtech.res.in : 01726665730

Dr. S Muthukrishnan

Senior Technical Officer (Bioinformatics/Data Center)

Publications:

1. Muthukrishnan, S* and MunishPuri*.(2018). Harnessing the evolutionary information on Oxygen binding proteins through Support Vector Machines based module. BMC Research Notes 11:290
2. Muthukrishnan, S*. (2018). Using Chou's general PseAAC to analyze the evolutionary relationship of receptor associated proteins (RAP) with various folding patterns of protein domains. Journal of Theoretical Biology 445, 62-74.
3. Muthukrishnan, S*.(2016) Classify vertebrate hemoglobin proteins by incorporating the evolutionary information into the general PseAAC with the hybrid approach. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 409, 27-37.
4. MuthuKrishnan, S, Munish Puri, Kanak L. Dikshit, and Christophe Lefevre. (2016) “BacHbpred: Support Vector Machine Methods for the Prediction of Bacterial Hemoglobin-Like Proteins,” Advances in Bioinformatics, vol. 2016.
5. MuthuKrishnan, S, Puri, M*., & Lefevre, C. (2014). Support vector machine (SVM) based multiclass prediction with basic statistical analysis of plasminogen activators. BMC Research Notes, 7(1), 63.
6. Muthukrishnan, S., Puri, M*., & Lefevre, C. (2013). Analysis and Prediction of Major Blood Proteins Based on Their Amino Acid and Dipeptide Composition. International Journal of Bioinformatics Research, 5(1), 285-288.
7. Muthukrishnan, S., Aarti Garg, and G. P. S. Raghava. (2007). "Oxypred: Prediction and Classification of Oxygen-Binding Proteins." Genomics, Proteomics & Bioinformatics 5.3: 250-252.