Mangaluru: The department of post-graduate studies and research in biotechnology, St Aloysius College (autonomous), will be organising a one day workshop on basic confocal microscopy techniques. The workshop is scheduled to be held on Thursday March 23 from 9.15 am.

The confocal microscopy workshop will elucidate the basic principle of confocal microscopy including image acquisition and processing. The expected participants are academicians, scientists and research scholars in the region who are interested in using a confocal microscope for research purposes.

Interested participants may contact the organisers of the workshop Dr Jiji George, jijiplathottam@gmail.com, mobile number 7760231210 or Sreejesh P C mobile number 9946546888, pc.sreejesh@gmail.com/ and register their names at the earliest at nominal fees.

Venue: Loyola Centre for Research and Innovation (LCRI) of St Aloysius College (autonomous) in the city.

Confocal microscopy

Confocal microscopy provides a significant improvement over conventional widefield optical microscopy imaging, including the ability to control the depth of field,  elimination of background information and the capability to collect serial optical sections from thick specimens to reconstruct the 3-D image of a specimen, improved immunofluorescence studies, observation of subcellular organelles etc. Confocal microscopy is performed on tissue sections on fixed cultured cells or even with living cells containing an appropriate fluorescence label.

Biotech facility at St Aloysius College 

The department is equipped with a confocal microscope, Nikon Eclipse 80i (costing Rs one crore) donated by Monsanto India Limited.

This facility helps to advance cutting-edge research, expanding training opportunities for students and building the infrastructure that is critical to a thriving scientific community.

St Aloysius College ventured into the field of biotechnology as the first college in Dakshina Kannada District to start an undergraduate course in the year 2001 and the post graduate course in the year 2002. The Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, New Delhi, has conferred the College, with the prestigious 'Star Status'. The college is one among only 17 colleges in India to get this status. This is the highest award given by DBT to any college that has shown outstanding progress.

The post graduate department of biotechnology is a recognised centre for research in biotechnology for the PhD programme under Mangalore University. It has a strong research base with 6 PhDs on the staff. Members of the faculty have a number of completed/ongoing major and minor research projects sponsored by UGC, DBT, DST, VGST and other funding agencies and various publications in national and international journals. The department was chosen by the department of IT, BT and S & T, Government of Karnataka to offer the 'Biotechnology Finishing School' (BTFS) as one of the twelve institutions in Karnataka. BTFS was a unique initiative of Government of Karnataka supported by DBT and has enhanced placement opportunities in biotech sector. The department is also under the evaluation process of starting a new venture in Biotechnology skill Enhancement Programme (BiSEP), supported by Karnataka Biotechnology and Information Technology Services (KBITS) Government of Karnataka.