There is one paper of three hours duration divided into two parts. Part 1 (20 marks) consists of compulsory short answer questions, testing knowledge, application and skills relating to elementary or fundamental aspects of the entire syllabus.
Part 2 (50 marks) consists of eight questions out of which the candidates will be required to answer five questions. Each question in this part carries 10 marks.
1. Molecular Biology
(i) Nucleic acids and their estimation: an understanding of nucleic acids, their biochemical structure.
(ii) Protein Synthesis: synthesis of different RNAs, and the complete mechanism of polypeptide chain formation.
(iii) Gene regulation in prokaryotes
2. Genetic Engineering
(i) Introduction to gene cloning and genetic engineering: concept of cloning and vectors.
(ii) Innovations in Biotechnology: produced by using modern biotechnological tools.
(iii) Gene analysis techniques: various techniques involved in recombinant DNA technology.
3. Cell Culture Technology
A brief idea of tools and techniques involved in cell culture technology and their applications in microbial, plant tissue and animal cell cultures respectively.
(i) General tools and techniques used in cell culture technology
(ii) Microbial culture and its application
(iii) Plant tissue culture and its application
(iv) Animal cell culture and its application
4. Bioinformatics
(i) Introduction to bioinformatics; global bioinformatics databases and data retrieval tools; genomics, different types of sequences, types of sequence analysis.
(ii) Genomics: Definition, introduction, tools used in Genomics and its applications.
(iii) Proteomics: definition, introduction and databases.