B. Ahinaya of class 12 of Sri Sankara Senior Sec. School, Adyar won the Bio Asia Young Minds award at Bio Asia 2009 held at Hyderabad from Feb. 2 to 4.
Her project of marine actinomycetes won her a cash prize of Rs. 50000 besides laurels for her findings which will help in formulating new drugs for fighting specific infections.
Bio Asia Global Business forum (http://www.bioasia.in) holds this contest every year to promote investigative spirit in young school children particularly in the field of Biotechnology and Life sciences.
Abinaya first isolated marine actinomycetes from the sea bed. She studied them carefully and said the study about them was fascinating because they are transient – show both the characteristics of bacteria and fungi. Having isolated one species from the lot she characterised them.
Finally it was identified that they have an antibiotic property, especially against the bacteria ‘stephalococcus’ which causes skin diseases / infection. She did all the experiments and further study at the school’s biotech laboratory for a month.
The principal Subala Ananthanarayanan, vice principal B. Meenakshi and the biotech teachers Lakshmi Prabhu and Sunanda encouraged and helped Ahinaya in the project.