Section 1: Engineering Mathematics

Calculus

• Limits, continuity and differentiability
• Sequences and series
• Partial derivatives, maxima and minima

Differential Equations

• Linear and nonlinear first-order ODEs
• Laplace transforms

Linear Algebra

• Matrices and determinants
• Eigen values and Eigen vectors

Numerical Methods

• Solution of linear and nonlinear algebraic equations

Probability and Statistics

• Mean, median, mode and standard deviation
• Poisson, normal and binomial distributions

Section 2: General Biology

Biochemistry

• Basic concepts and regulation of the metabolism of carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids and nucleic acids
• Photosynthesis, respiration and electron transport chain
• Biological membranes – structure, membrane channels and pumps, molecular motors, action potential and transport processes
• Biomolecules – structure and function
• Enzyme kinetics – Michaelis-Menten equation
• Enzyme inhibition – competitive, non-competitive and uncompetitive inhibition

Immunology

• ABO Blood Group
• Antibody structure and function
• Antigen processing and presentation
• Autoimmunity, Complement, Hypersensitivity, Immune tolerance
• Innate and adaptive immunity
• Major histocompatibility complex (MHC)
• Primary and secondary lymphoid organs
• Regulation of immune response

Microbiology

• Antibiotics and antimicrobial resistance
• Bacterial classification and diversity
• Microbial diseases and host-pathogen interactions
• Microbial growth and nutrition
• Nitrogen fixation
• Viruses – structure and classification

Section 3: Genetics, Cellular and Molecular Biology

Cell Biology

• Cell cycle and cell growth control
• Cell death and autophagy
• Cell signalling and signal transduction
• Prokaryotic and eukaryotic cell structure

Genetics and Evolutionary Biology

• Extra chromosomal inheritance
• Genetic disorders
• Horizontal gene transfer and transposable elements
• Linkage, recombination and chromosome mapping
• Mendelian inheritance
• Population genetics

Molecular Biology

• Molecular structure of genes and chromosomes
• Mutations and mutagenesis
• Non-coding and micro RNA
• Nucleic acid – replication, transcription, splicing, translation
• Regulation of gene expression
• Reverse Transcription
• RNA Interference

Section 4: Fundamentals of Biological Engineering

Classical thermodynamics and Bioenergetics

• Energetics of metabolic pathways
• Laws of thermodynamics
• Ligand binding; Membrane potential
• oxidation and reduction reactions
• Phase equilibria, reaction equilibria

Engineering principles

• Stoichiometry of growth and product formation
• Degree of reduction, electron balance, theoretical oxygen demand.

Transport Processes

• Conductive and convective heat transfer, LMTD, overall heat transfer coefficient
• Mixing in bioreactors, mixing time
• Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids
• overall heat transfer coefficient
• Oxygen transfer and uptake in bioreactor, kLa and its measurement

Section 5: Bioprocess Engineering and Process Biotechnology

Bioreaction engineering

• Kinetics of cell growth, substrate utilization and product formation
• Batch, fed-batch and continuous processes
• Enzyme immobilization, diffusion effects – Thiele modulus, effectiveness factor, Damkoehler number
• Optimization and scale-up

Instrumentation and Process Control

• Feedback and feed forward control
• Types of controllers
• Pressure, temperature and flow measurement devices

Upstream and Downstream Processing

• Centrifugation – high speed and ultra
• Extraction, Adsorption, Drying
• Filtration – membrane filtration, ultrafiltration
• Principles of chromatography – ion exchange, gel filtration, hydrophobic interaction, affinity, GC, HPLC and FPLC
• Sterilization of air and media

Section 6: Plant, Animal and Microbial Biotechnology

Animal Biotechnology

• Culture media composition and growth conditions
• Hybridoma technology
• Knock-out and knock-in animals
• Stem cell technology

Microbial Biotechnology

• Clinical-, food- and industrial- microbiology

Plant Biotechnology

• Plant growth regulators and elicitors
• Plant products of industrial importance
• Production of secondary metabolites
• Protoplast, protoplast fusion – somatic hybrid and cybrid;
• Transgenic plants – direct and indirect methods of gene transfer techniques

Section 7: Recombinant DNA technology and Other Tools in Biotechnology

Recombinant DNA technology

• Restriction and modification enzymes
• Vectors – plasmids, bacteriophage and other viral vectors, cosmids, Ti plasmid, bacterial and yeast artificial chromosomes

Analytical tools

• Electrophoresis
• Principles of microscopy – light, electron, fluorescent and confocal;
• Principles of spectroscopy – UV, visible, CD, IR, fluorescence, FT-IR, MS, NMR

Molecular tools

• DNA/RNA labelling and sequencing
• Gene transfer technologies
• Polymerase chain reaction
• Southern and northern blotting

Computational Tools

• Phylogeny
• Sequence analysis – sequence file formats, scoring matrices, alignment, phylogeny
• Sequence and structure databases;