Bangalore: To keep pace with the newest developments across the globe, any scientist will tell you, is the key to their work. Unfortunately, many scientific institutions have limited information to ongoing research in leading laboratories and little access to the work of top scientists. Now, lectures by some of the world's leading scientists will be at your fingertips.

iBioSeminars, a free online "library of seminars (akin to iTunes) from the world leaders in biological research" will be launched in June, and Bangalore's National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) will act as a host site. iBioSeminars is the brainchild of Ron Vale, Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and is sponsored by the American Society of Cell Biology and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

"NCBS will act as a test site and local gateway for India to disseminate the material and to monitor the success of these virtual seminars. Our own students will provide us with feedback which will help us develop the model further," says Satyajit Mayor, Associate Professor, NCBS, and one of the lecturers on board the seminar series.

The seminars, held by eminent scientists from around the world, will cover a range of areas in modern biology, from behavioural neuroscience to systems biology and stem-cell biology. The scientists have agreed to be available to students and to answer questions by email.

"Many bright students in science institutes and colleges in India do not always have access to the latest breakthroughs in research in the areas that they are interested in. An exposure to this information at an earlier stage, say at the B.Sc. level, will help students get a better grasp of their subject and make decisions about future study and work," says Prof. Mayor.

By June, 15 to 20 lectures will be up and running, and funding forthcoming, 50 lectures is the goal, with a "lifetime" of two years after which they will be archived and replaced by new sessions.

The sessions can be downloaded onto a computer in lower and higher resolution formats, or onto a video iPOD, and lecturers can then project the sessions in their classrooms.

Four lectures can already be viewed on the site http://www.ascb.org/dev/iBioSeminars. These lectures by Joe DeRisi, UCSF, on malaria; Toto Olivera, University of Utah, on cone snail toxins; Julie Theriot, Stanford, on actin-based motility; and Ron Vale on molecular motors have already received a large number of hits.

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