The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh / Hyderabad News : CSIR award for CCMB

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Sep 24, 2008
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh - Hyderabad

CSIR award for CCMB

HYDERABAD: The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) has bagged the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Technology Award for Life Sciences -2008.

The award has been given for the ‘novel universal technique to establish the identity of enormous number of animal species for forensic applications,’ developed by Lalji Singh, Director CCMB and S.K. Verma, a scientist.

The award will be presented on CSIR Foundation Day ceremony on September 26 at Delhi and carries a cash prize of Rs. 2 lakh, a plaque and a citation.

According to a CCMB press release, Dr. Singh and Dr. Verma developed the novel technique which would help in revealing whether the source of a confiscated biological sample was human or animal, including the species. The identification of species in such samples would help in detecting wildlife crime accurately.

The release said that a national wildlife forensic cell was established to carry out Wildlife Forensics in CCMB’s Laboratory for the Conservation of Endangered Species ( LaCONES).

So far, about 300 cases pertaining to the wildlife crime that were referred to LaCONES were solved using the technique. CCMB was also receiving enquiries from European countries on wildlife management.

Data base

CCMB has a database of signatures of about 2,000 animal species. It has also entered into collaboration with a city-based company for automation and enhancement of database through a software, called Wildlife Tracing Net for Species Signature (WITNESS) developed by it.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Andhra Pradesh