Curriculum Vitae - Bharat Patel

• Screening of bacteria producing, and estimation of enzymes, (proteases, amylases, b-galactosidase), and fermentation products (penicillin, citric acid, acid, lactic acid, ethanol)
• Scale up for enzyme production from lab to 600 litres.
• Use of continuous flow and industrial sharples centrifuges.

Bacteriology including Anaerobic Bacteriology:

• Serology
• Isolation, cultivation and identification of pathogenic bacteria.
• Isolation and characterization of thermophilic aerobes.
• Isolation, identification and characterization of thermophilic carbohydrate fermenters, acetogens, sulfate-reducers and archae -bacteria (sulfur-metabolizing and methanogens).
• Electron microscopy (negative staining, thin sections).
• Developement of anaerobic culturing techiques.
• Setting up & use of GLC (TCD and FID), HPLC and FPLC to detect, identify and quantitate fermentation products. Packing of columns.
• Physiology of anaerobes.
• Continuous culture of carbohydrate fermenting anaerobes.

Virology, Immunology and Cell culture:

• Propogation and preservation of various cell lines (Hela, MDCK, MBCK, Hela 229, HEP-2, L3T3, NS1, SP2/0).
• Establishment of primary myoblast cultures from muscle of adult sheep.
• Preparation of polyclonal antibodies in rats, mice and rabbits.
• Production of viruses in cell cultures, suckling mice, and eggs.
• Purification of influenza viruses using CsCl and sucrose gradients and with controlled pore glass (CPG) chromatography.

Biochemical Techniques:

• Gel chromatography for protein purification.
• Gel electrophoresis of proteins and DNA.
• Estimation of proteins, sugars, DNA, RNA.
• Estimating skin and bacterial lipases using fluorometric methods.

Microbial Ecology:

• Radioactive tracer experiments to determine growth rates of thermophilic bacteria in situ.
• Use of immunofluorescence methods to determine microbial growth rates in situ.
• Isolation ot phage from thermal environments.
• Determination of sulfides and proteins in hot springs.
• Developement of EM methods to study bacterial morphotypes in situ.
• Molecular ecological studies using 16S rRNA as the target molecules.

Agricultural Microbiology:

• Sulfur and phosphate utilizing bacteria in soil and their importance in soil.
• Growth hormones and their effect on ovine primary myoblasts in vitro.

Molecular Biology and Microbial Biochemistry:

• Purification of DNA, G+C determination.
• Manipulating DNA of fungi (S. cerevisiae and Fusarium, bacteria (B. subtilis, E.coli, Sulfolobus, and T. aquaticus), animal cells and Lamda Phage DNA oligomers in agarose plugs.
• Use of CHEF, FIGE and OFAGE pulse field gel electrophoresis to separate large chromosome sized DNA.
• Application of newly developed monoclonal antibody methods to produce monoclonals to agricuturally important antigens. Monoclonals produced against fungal toxins, bacteria, virus, animal growth promotants and progesterone.
• Gel electrophoresis and purification of plasmids.
• DNA hybridization.
• Amplification, cloning & sequencing of 16S rRNA bacterial genes.
• Amplification, cloning & sequencing of 18S rRNA genes from anaerobic fungi.
• Enzymic studies including cloning of genes of polysaccharide degrading enzymes from thermophilic bacteria (CGTases, pullulanases, amylases, DNA polymerases, dextranases, xylanases, proteinases and restriction enzymes).
• DNA sequencing using the ABI system.

Use of computers in microbiology:

• Use of IBM PC and Sun for phylogenetic analysis. Some computer programing knowledge. Extensive use of packages such as GDE, clustalv, Phylip, Mega, Diplo, Treecon, various alignment editors etc.