Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, University of Chittagong

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BMB CU Silver Jubilee Celebration 2026! 🎉
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📅 10 April 2026
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Welcoming the 27th Batch of BMB, CU! Let's extend a warm welcome to the newest members of our BMB family.

According to a cluster randomized trial, mask can save you from COVID-19 pandemic!

A widely mask-distribution project and randomized trial was being performed by some Bangladeshi Scientists and their team which showed satisfactory results of using mask. The mask distribution project and trial took place in 600 villages and among more than 3 lakh people from November 2020 to April 2021. The result of the trial is published in reknown "Science" Journal which shows mask can reduce the SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Details can be found here:

Impact of community masking on COVID-19: A cluster-randomized trial in Bangladesh We conducted a cluster-randomized trial to measure the effect of community-level mask distribution and promotion on symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections in rural Bangladesh from November 2020 to April...

Researchers have found out a new class of widespread programmable enzymes that are thought to be evolutionary ancestors of the Cas9 enzyme. These enzymes have been hiding under the noses and scientists predict that there would be more programmable system that can be used to furnish the CRISPR/Cas technology to solve many biological problems without any hassle. This study is carried out by scientists from MIT and published in the renowned Science journal.

Details can be found below:

1. https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/researchers-uncover-new-families-of-gene-editing-enzymes-69189

2. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj6856

Researchers Uncover New Families of Gene-Editing Enzymes The results reveal evolutionary relatives of the Cas9 enzyme now used extensively in biotechnology.

WHO have renamed corona virus variant by greek alphabets. Now on,
UK variant will be called "Alpha"
SA variant "Beta",
Brazil' will be "Gamma"
and, in Indian variant will be called "Delta" variant.

Source: WHO announces Greek alphabet naming scheme for coronavirus variants

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-57308592

New news from human gut: Scientists have found more than 140,000 virus species from the gut!!!!

Human gut is still a mystery to scientists. Microbes create an environment there that directly influences human's health and mood. Previously many researchers focused on only gut bacteria as they are easy to find but recently a study have conducted by scientists from Wellcome Sanger Institute and EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) on 28,000 human gut microbiome samples which are collected from different parts of the world. They have indentified more than 140,000 species of the virus in the samples. Among these viruses,most of them infect bacteria, means they are bacteriophage but half of these virus species is still unknown and their impact on human is still mystery.

For details, check on below:

https://www.sanger.ac.uk/news_item/scientists-identify-over-140000-virus-species-in-the-human-gut-half-of-which-are-new-to-science/

Massive expansion of human gut bacteriophage diversity By mining human gut metagenomes and gut bacteria isolates, Camarillo-Guerrero et al. compile high-quality gut bacteriophage genomes into the Gut Phage Database (GPD) and analyze the diversity and worldwide distribution of phage.

মঙ্গলপৃষ্ঠে ভার্চুয়াল অভিযাত্রা!!

MARS Virtual Tour - What's Mars surface looks like to you?
NASA’s Perseverance Navcams 360° photo (edited by Hugh Hou )

How to experience this in your Oculus VR headset:
1. Save this post (Add this to your “Saved Items”)
2. Save it on a list
3. Put on your Oculus Quest 2 / Quest 1 VR headset. On the left side of your Oculus homepage menu, click on “Saved”
4. You should be able to see your saved Mars 360 photo
5. Click on “Watch” and it will open an Oculus Browser
6. The 360 photo will load
7. On the top left corner of the photo, you will see the “Enter VR” button
8. Click “Enter VR” and it will go into a full immersive view of the Mars 360 photo
Alternatively, you can copy the Facebook post’s URL and open your Oculus Browser on your Quest 1 or Quest 2 VR headset, and view it directly.
I hope you can enjoy this unique experience in immersive virtual reality!

From NASA - This panorama, taken on Feb. 20, 2021, by the Navigation Cameras, or Navcams, aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, was stitched together from six individual images after they were sent back to Earth.

Disclaimer: the original photo does not have the full sky, I edited the sky to have a full 360 experience inside a VR headset like Oculus Quest 2. The sky does not represent the real sky from Mars.

Credit
NASA/JPL-Caltech NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover

আন্তর্জাতিক মাতৃভাষা দিবসে চট্টগ্রাম বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়ের শহীদ মিনারে প্রাণ রসায়ন ও অনুপ্রাণ বিজ্ঞান বিভাগের পক্ষ থেকে পুষ্পস্তবক অর্পণের মাধ্যমে ভাষা শহীদদের প্রতি শ্রদ্ধা নিবেদন করা হয়। এ সময় বিভাগের সম্মানিত চেয়ারম্যান ড. মোহাম্মদ আতিয়ার রহমানসহ বিভাগের শিক্ষক-শিক্ষিকাবৃন্দ এবং সকল বর্ষের শিক্ষার্থীরা উপস্থিত ছিলেন।

New findings about our gut microbiota!!
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Scientists at NIAID Microbiom Program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provide evidence that gut microbiota build resistance against pathogen which infected the host earlier. They found that an amino acid named taurine could enhance the resistance of microbiom. This findings can help to find better alternative to antibiotics as day-by-day antibiotics resistance becoming a great concern for all.

For details read these:

https://www.genengnews.com/news/taurine-enhances-the-microbiomes-resistance-to-future-pathogens/

https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)31681-0?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0092867420316810%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

Taurine Enhances the Microbiome’s Resistance to Future Pathogens The amino acid taurine could help explain why bacteria in the gut microbiota of hosts who had previous infections have enhanced resistance to infection.