Prafullachandra Vishnu Sane

Prafullachandra Vishnu Sane (born 1937) is an Indian molecular biologist and plant physiologist, known for his pioneering studies on photosynthesis. He is a former director of National Botanical Research Institute and an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Sciences, India, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Maharashtra Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, in 1981, for his contributions to biological sciences.

Biography Prafullachandra Vishnu Sane, born on the Christmas Eve of 1937 at Chiplun, in Ratnagiri district in the Indian state of Maharashtra to Vishnu Jagannath Sane and Indira, did his schooling at New English High School, Nagpur and college studies at Agriculture College of Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth from where he graduated in 1958. After obtaining his master's degree in agriculture from Nagpur University in 1960, he started his career at Bureau of Indian Standards in 1961 and continued there till 1964 when he moved to the University of Alberta, Edmonton for his doctoral studies to secure a PhD in 1968. Basing his studies on a mutant of Gateway Barley, he did an elaborate biochemical analysis of carbon assimilation and reactions of Ch1 biosynthesis. Associating with Roderic Park, he developed a new method for the isolation of PS-I and PS-II, without the use of detergents and propounded a model for distributing the two photosystems in the chloroplast lamellae. Their findings were published in an article, Distribution of Function and Structure in Chloroplast Lamellae, which eventually became a citation classic. Later, he also made pioneering studies on tobacco transgenic plants and sorghum. ResearchGate, an online repository of scientific papers, has listed 87 of them. It was during his tenure as the director of National Botanical Research Institute, the Centre for Plant Molecular Biology was established at the institute. He is a former president and an adviser to the International Society of Environmental Botanists (ISEB), a Lucknow-based non-profit, non-governmental organisation promoting coordinated research on plants and environmental pollution and served as a member of the council of the Indian National Science Academy from 1996 to 1998. He has also mentored 20 scholars in their doctoral studies. the same year as he became an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences. The year 1991 brought him the Bharat Jyoti Best Scientist of the Year Award as well as fellowships of the Indian National Science Academy and the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Sane, who is also a fellow of the Maharashtra Academy of Sciences and a life member of the Society for Plant Physiology and Biochemistry and the Indian Photobiology Society, received the Birbal Sahni Medal of the Indian Botanical Society in 1994.

Selected bibliography