The lab has received a VIT SEED Grant (RGEMS) under the Multidisciplinary Research Grant scheme, with Bharat Manna as PI. The project, “Biomedical waste disposal sites as potential reservoirs of antibiotic resistance in Indian soils”, is funded at ₹6,00,000 and is now underway.
Biomedical waste disposal sites are an understudied link in the environmental cycle of antibiotic resistance. Antibiotics, resistant bacteria, and heavy metals accumulate at these sites and can move into agricultural soils and rivers through runoff, then back to human populations via the soil and food chain. This project asks how much these sites contribute to the resistance burden in surrounding soils.
See the Grants page for details.