Satyabrata Sarkar

Satyabrata Sarkar ( Bengali : সত্যব্রত সরকার Satyabrata Sarakār ; born April 22, 1928 in Uttarpara, Hugli District , British India ) is an Indian biologist, he was professor of virology and bacteriology at the University of Hohenheim . Since 1999 he has been teaching Bengali language and literature at the Indological Institute of the University of Tübingen .

Live and act

After graduating from Uttarpara Government High School near Calcutta in 1944 , he studied natural sciences at Ripon College (new name Surendranath College). He then studied botany, chemistry and physiology at the Presidency College in Calcutta with a Bachelor of Science degree in botany (1948). He received his Master of Science degree from the University of Calcutta in botany with plant physiology (1950). After a scientific activity at the Bose Research Institute in Calcutta, where he dealt with the nutritional requirements of plant tissue under aseptic culture conditions, Sakar moved to the Max Planck Institute for Biology in Tübingen as an assistant and doctoral student of Prof. Georg Melchers . There he worked on the mechanisms of flower formation in plants and received his doctorate in 1957. rer. nat. After two years of research in Calcutta, he returned to the Max Planck Institute in Tübingen in 1959 and worked on the structure and function of plant viruses. In 1969 he completed his habilitation in biology at the University of Tübingen, where he was promoted to adjunct professor in 1976. In 1977 he was offered a professorship in virology and bacteriology at the University of Hohenheim in the Phytomedicine Institute .

After his retirement (1993) he worked for two years with a project of the German Research Foundation and in cooperation with the Agricultural University of Beijing in China. From 1999 he started teaching Indology at the University of Tübingen. Satyabrata Sarkar comes from a relatively poor family. He was able to finance his studies up to university thanks to ongoing scholarships. In 1954 he came to Germany with a grant from the “Indo-German Cooperation Scheme”. He was married to Ursula geb. Engelmann (1927–2012), the couple has a daughter and two sons.

other qualifications

• Application of Isotopes in Biology (1961) at the Nuclear Research Center, Karlsruhe,
• Genetics of bacteriophages (1962) at the Institute for Genetics of the University of Cologne,
• Structure of ribosomes (1970) at the EMBO workshop at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin.

Main research areas

• Viral and bacterial diseases of plants
• Diagnosis and characterization of viruses
• Electron microscopy of the subcellular structures of the virus-infected cells
• Infection mechanisms of single cells and protoplasts
• Isotope research; Molecular biology and bacterial infestation in cultivated plants

Focus in teaching

• Viral and bacterial diseases of plants worldwide
• Structure of viruses and metabolism of the diseased host cells
• Immunological and biochemical diagnostic methods for viral diseases
• Since 1999 honorary lecturer at the University of Tübingen, Faculty of Cultural Studies, seminar for Indology

Scientific merit

His studies on the physiological basis of flower formation in higher plants demonstrated an interaction between vernalization and the effect of the plant hormone gibberellic acid. He worked u. a. with two lines of Arabidopsis thaliana, a plant that has proven to be indispensable for modern molecular-biological research. Electrophoretic studies with purified proteins of some mutants of the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) provided the first experimental evidence for a "trimer structure" of the so-called A protein (Sarkar 1960, Caspar 1963). From a TMV mutant with a defective coat protein, he isolated a spontaneous mutant that had no coat protein at all and consisted only of the free nucleic acid (RNA) (1981). This virus RNA prevented the spread of related TMV mutants in vivo - a phenomenon that can be regarded as a first example of “gene silencing”. The RNA of this rare mutant could be artificially reconstituted with TMV envelope protein in the laboratory and it was shown that the mutant can spread systemically in vivo in a transgenic tobacco line which in turn expressed the TMV protein (Osbourn et al. 1990).

Cell wall-free protoplasts from plants (mainly from tobacco and Chinese cabbage) were infected with viruses or with viral nucleic acid with high efficiency and used for physiological studies.

Synergism between Potato Virus-X and Potato Virus-Y was demonstrated both in vivo according to classical methods and by electron microscopic studies.

Memberships

• German Phytomedical Society
• Society for Virology, Germany
• Indian Virological Society, Fellow and Life Member
• Indian Science Congress Association, Life Member
• Indian Phytopathological Society

Publications (selection)

• Sarkar, S .: Attempts on the physiology of vernalization. Biol. Zentralblatt 77, 1958. 1-49
• Sarkar, S .: Interaction and mixed aggregation of proteins from tobacco mosaic virus strains. Magazine Nature research. 15b, 1960. 778-786. (See also Caspar, DLD: Assembly and stability of the tobacco mosaic virus particle. Adv. In Protein Chemistry 18, 1963. 37-121)
• Sarkar, S .: Relative infectivity of tobacco mosaic virus and its nucleic acid. Virology 20, 1963. 185-193.
• Sarkar, S .: Assay of infectivity of nucleic acids. In METHODS IN VIROLOGY (Maramorosch and Koprowski eds.) Vol. 2, 1967. 607-644, Academic Press, New York
• Sarkar, S. & Schilde-Rentschler, L .: Interaction of TMV proteins during electrophoretic separation in polyacrylamide gels. Molec. Gene. Genetics 103, 1968. 244-247
• Sarkar, S .: Use of protoplasts for plant virus studies. In METHODS IN VIROLOGY (Maramorosch and Koprowski eds.) Vol. 6, 1977. 435-456, Academic Press, New York
• Matthews, REF & Sarkar, S .: A light-induced structural change in chloroplasts of Chinese cabbage cells infected with turnip yellow mosaic virus. Jour. Gene. Virol. 33, 1976. 435-446
• Sarkar, S. & Smitamana, P .: A truly coat-protein-free mutant of tobacco mosaic virus. Natural Sciences 68, 1981. 145-147
• Sarkar, S. & Smitamana, P .: A proteinless mutant of tobacco mosaic virus: Evidence against the role of a viral coat protein for interference. Molec. Gene. Genetics 184, 1981. 158-159
• Blessing, J. & Sarkar, S .: Isolation and morphological characterization of the potato leaf roll virus (PLRV). Magazine Naturforschung 36c, 1981. 884-887
• Mayee, CD & Sarkar, S .: The infrastructure of Nicotiana tabacum cells infected with potato virus X and potato virus Y. Jour. Ultrastructure Res. 81, 1982. 124-131
• Sarkar, S .: Tobacco mosaic virus: Mutants and strains. In THE PLANT VIRUSES (MHV van Regenmortel and H. Fraenkel-Conrat eds.) Vol. 2, 1986. 59-77, Plenum Publ. Corp., New York & London
• Gerber, M. & Sarkar, S .: The coat protein of tobacco mosaic virus does not play a significant role for cross-protection. Jour. Phytopathol. 124, 1989. 323-331
• Osbourn, JK, Sarkar, S. & Wilson, TMA: Complementation of coat protein-defective mutants in transgenic tobacco plants expressing TMV coat protein. Virology 179, 1990. 921-925

Books

• Satyabrata Sarkar: I'm learning Bengali, part 1. Verlag Grauer; Beuren, Stuttgart, 2002. ISBN 3-86186-403-7 ; Part 2. Ibid. ISBN 3-86186-480-0
• Satyabrata Sarkar: German Prabesika (Textbook of German). Ananda Publishers Private Ltd., Calcutta, 2011. ISBN 978-93-5040-038-8
• Sarkar, S .: The sun of the day. Poems and lyrics by Rabindranath Tagore translated from Bengali into German. Knirsch-Verlag Kirchentellinsfurt, Germany. 2012. ISBN 978-3-927091-89-4

Web links

• Department of Phytopathology at the University of Hohenheim
• Department of Indology at the University of Tübingen

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Satyabrata Sarkar in: Ulrich Fellmeth , Kathrin Quast ( arrangement ): The academic teachers at the University of Hohenheim 1968–2005. Scripta-Mercaturae-Verlag, Stuttgart 2008, p. 136f. (online at: uni-hohenheim.de )
2. ^ Department of Indology at the University of Tübingen