Prof. Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty: The Superbug Superhero!
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OBITUARY
Prof. Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty: The Superbug Superhero! Piyush Pandey1 · Naveen Kumar Arora2
© Society for Environmental Sustainability 2020
(1938–2020) Anand Mohan Chakrabarty was a distinguished Indianborn American microbiologist and scientist who became famous for his notable contribution in the field of genetic engineering. With his extraordinary work he has inspired millions of researchers to experiment with microbial genes to utilize them in various fields, bringing in new dimensions to biotechnological aspects of microorganisms. The life of Prof. Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty will always remain an inspiring tale of challenges, and scientific breakthroughs for the coming generations of environmental microbiologists. Prof. Chakraborty is no more amongst us, as he left for heavenly abode on 10th July 2020. Nandipur (now Sainthia) had been a little-known place in Birbhum district, West Bengal, India, until Prof. Chakrabarty was born there on 4th day of April 1938, to Shri Satya * Piyush Pandey [email protected]; [email protected] * Naveen Kumar Arora [email protected] 1
Soil and Environmental Microbiology Lab, Department of Microbiology, Assam University, Silchar, India
Department of Environmental Science, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow, India
2
Dos and Smt. Sasthi Bala (Mukherjee) Chakrabarty. He was born in a middle class family and was the youngest among seven children. He completed his schooling at Sainthia High School and Ramakrishna Mission Vidyamandira. Prof. Chakrabarty completed his B. Sc. Degree from St. Xavier’s College in 1958, and M. Sc. from Calcutta University, India in 1960. He completed his Ph D. from the Calcutta University itself in 1965. Soon after his Ph D., he moved to University of Illinois for research assignment (1965–1971); and later joined General Electric Research and Development Center, Schenectady, United States (1971–1979). He was appointed as Professor at the Department of Microbiology, University of Illinois, Chicago in 1979, and continued to serve the same department as Distinguished Professor up to 1989 (Douglas 2015; Renneberg et al. 2017). In 1971, Prof. Chakrabarty got notable recognition for development of a genetically engineered Pseudomonas, “an oil eating bacteria” also known as “superbug” while working at General Electric Research and Development Center. He invented a method of genetic cross-linking to transfer genes required for degradation of oil using plasmid transfer technique and as a result produced a new stable bacterial species (now known as Pseudomonas putida). He called it as a “multi-plasmid hydrocarbon-degrading Pseudomonas” which was capable of digesting two thirds of hydrocarbons found in typical oil spill and that too faster (about one or two orders of magnitudes) than previously existing strains of oil-eating microbes (https://alliedacademies.com/profile/ AC, https://rootsofindian.wordpress.com/2017/07/15/anand a-mohan-chakrabarty-indian-who-opened-the-floodgates -for-life-patenting/). This dis
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