LAHORE: The Government College University (GCU) will establish a chair in the name of its alumni Har Gobind Khorana, who won the 1968 Nobel Prize for medicine.

Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Asghar Zaidi announced this at ceremony to celebrate the 98th birth anniversary of one of its most eminent alumni, Prof Khorana.

Prof Khorana, an American-Indian, won the Nobel Prize in 1968 for unraveling the nucleotide sequence of RNA and deciphering the genetic code. He died in 2011.

Prof Zaidi said the GCU would soon establish a Research Chair at its Chemistry Department in the name Prof Khorana.

Talking about the fascinating story of Prof Khorana, he said: “A child born in small Raipur village in Multan in 1922 became the world’s top biochemist and shared the 1968 Nobel Prize for Medicine with Marshall W Nirenberg and Robert W Holley for research that showed the order of nucleotides in nucleic acids, which carry the genetic code of the cell and control the cell’s synthesis of proteins.”

Later, Dr Asghar along with other academic and administrative heads cut the Prof Khorana’s birth anniversary cake.

VU: Federal Minister for Information Technology (IT) and Telecom Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqi laid the foundation stone of Pakistan’s first ever Centre for Genomics and Proteomics at the Virtual University of Pakistan, Kala Shah Kaku Campus, on Thursday.

He said the research and development sector in industries and academia in Pakistan was very weak.

“Strengthening of this sector can contribute to development of skilled labour, better products and a contribution in the economy. Within life sciences, techniques have been advanced to the stage where genes are the key factors in treatment of diseases, specialised medicine, and healthcare. Therefore, it is the need of the hour to channelise our resources towards research in this segment.”

PU: The Punjab University Centre for South Asian Studies organised a seminar on “Kashmir Today, Options for India and Pakistan” here on Thursday.

Retired Brig Imran Malik was the guest speaker. Director Prof Dr Umbreen Javaid, faculty members and MPhil/PhD scholars of the centre participated in the seminar.

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2020