CSIR NET life Science Syllabus 2026 : Notification, Exam Details, Preparation Tips

Part B: 50 questions (Life Sciences) – Answer any 35

Part C: 75 questions (Life Sciences, analytical) – Answer any 25

• Cell wall

• Physical structure of membranes in prokaryotes & eukaryotes

• Lipid bilayer, membrane proteins

• Diffusion, osmosis, ion channels

• Active transport, membrane pumps

• Sorting & regulation of intracellular transport

• Electrical properties of membranes

• Nucleus: organization & dynamics

• Mitochondria, Golgi bodies, lysosomes

• Endoplasmic reticulum, peroxisomes, plastids

• Vacuoles, chloroplasts

• Cytoskeleton: structure & function, role in motility

• Operon

• Unique & repetitive DNA

• Interrupted genes

• Gene families

• Chromatin structure

• Heterochromatin & euchromatin

• Transposons

• Mitosis & meiosis

• Regulation of cell division

• Steps of cell cycle

• Regulation & control of cell cycle

• Apoptosis, necrosis, autophagy

• Growth kinetics

• Strategies of cell division

• Stress response

• Antimicrobial resistance (AMR)

• Unit of replication

• Enzymes involved

• Replication origin & replication fork

• Fidelity of replication

• Extrachromosomal replicons

• DNA damage & repair mechanisms

• Homologous & site-specific recombination

• Mechanism & regulation of transcription

• Transcriptional inhibitors

• Transcription factors & machinery

• Activators & repressors

• RNA polymerases

• Capping, RNA processing, editing, splicing, polyadenylation

• Types of RNA: structure & functions

• RNA transport

• Ribozyme, riboswitches, non-coding RNAs

• Ribosome

• Mechanism & regulation of translation

• Translational inhibitors

• Post-translational modification

• Protein trafficking & transport

• Protein degradation

• Gene regulation in phages, viruses, prokaryotes & eukaryotes

• Role of chromatin in gene expression & silencing

• Epigenetic regulation

• Hormones & their receptors

• Cell surface receptors

• G-protein coupled receptor (GPCR) signaling

• Signal transduction pathways

• Second messengers

• Regulation of signaling pathways

• Bacterial & plant two-component systems

• Light signaling in plants

• Bacterial chemotaxis & quorum sensing

• General principles of cell communication

• Cell adhesion & adhesion molecules

• Gap junctions

• Extracellular matrix (ECM)

• Integrins

• Neurotransmission & its regulation

• Regulation of haematopoiesis

• Cells & molecules of innate/adaptive immunity

• Antigens, antigenicity, immunogenicity

• B & T cell epitopes

• Antibody: structure & function

• Antibody diversity, monoclonal antibodies, antibody engineering

• Antigen–antibody interactions

• MHC molecules: antigen processing & presentation

• Activation/differentiation of B & T cells

• BCR & TCR

• Humoral & cell-mediated responses

• Primary & secondary immune modulation

• Complement system

• Toll-like receptors

• Cell-mediated effector functions

• Inflammation, hypersensitivity, autoimmunity

• Immune response in bacterial, parasitic & viral infections

• Congenital & acquired immunodeficiencies

• Vaccines

• Recognition & entry of pathogens (bacteria, viruses) into plant/animal cells

• Alteration of host behaviour by pathogens

• Virus-induced cell transformation

• Pathogen-induced diseases in plants & animals

• Cell–cell fusion in normal & abnormal cells

• Genetic rearrangements in progenitor cells

• Oncogenes & tumor suppressor genes

• Cancer & the cell cycle

• Virus-induced cancers

• Metastasis

• Interaction of cancer cells with normal cells

• Therapeutic interventions for uncontrolled cell growth

• Potency, commitment, specification, induction, competence

• Determination & differentiation

• Morphogenetic gradients

• Cell fate & lineages

• Stem cells

• Genomic equivalence, cytoplasmic determinants

• Imprinting

• Use of mutants & transgenics in developmental studies

• Production of gametes

• Sperm–egg recognition (cell surface molecules)

• Zygote formation, cleavage, blastula formation

• Embryonic fields, gastrulation, germ layer formation (animals)

• Male gametophyte development (plants)

• Embryo sac development, double fertilization

• Plant embryogenesis

• Establishment of symmetry in plants

• Seed formation, embryo & endosperm development

• Seed germination

• Cell aggregation & differentiation (Dictyostelium)

• Axes & pattern formation: Drosophila, amphibians, chick

• Organogenesis: vulva formation (C. elegans), eye lens induction

• Limb development & regeneration (vertebrates)

• Neuronal differentiation

• Post-embryonic development: larval stages, metamorphosis

• Environmental regulation of development

• Sex determination

• Shoot & root apical meristem organization

• Shoot & root development

• Leaf development & phyllotaxy

• Transition to flowering

• Floral meristems, floral organogenesis & development

• PCD in animals & plants

• Aging mechanisms

• Senescence processes in animals & plants

• Light harvesting complexes

• Electron transport mechanisms

• Photoprotective mechanisms

• CO₂ fixation pathways: C3, C4, CAM

• Citric acid cycle

• Plant mitochondrial electron transport & ATP synthesis

• Alternate oxidase

• Photorespiratory pathway

• Nitrate & ammonium assimilation

• Amino acid biosynthesis

• Biological nitrogen fixation

• Hormone biosynthesis, storage, breakdown & transport

• Physiological effects

• Mechanisms of hormone action

• Light perception mechanisms

• Phytochromes, cryptochromes, phototropins: structure & function

• Stomatal movement

• Photoperiodism

• Biological clock

• Uptake & movement of water, ions, solutes, macromolecules

• Transport across membranes

• Xylem and phloem transport

• Transpiration

• Loading & unloading of photoassimilates

• Biosynthesis of terpenes, phenolics, alkaloids, phenylpropanoids, nitrogenous compounds

• Roles of secondary metabolites

• Metabolic engineering in plants

• Plant responses to biotic & abiotic stresses

• Physiological & molecular adaptations

• Plant innate immunity

• Blood corpuscles

• Haemopoiesis, formed elements

• Plasma function

• Blood volume & regulation

• Blood groups

• Haemoglobin

• Immunity

• Haemostasis

• Comparative heart anatomy

• Myogenic heart

• Specialized cardiac tissues

• ECG: principle & significance

• Cardiac cycle

• Heart as a pump

• Blood pressure

• Neural & chemical regulation

• Respiration in different species

• Anatomical adaptations

• Gas transport & exchange

• Waste elimination

• Neural & chemical regulation

• Neurons

• Action potential

• Neuroanatomy: brain & spinal cord

• CNS & PNS

• Neural control of muscle tone & posture

• Vision

• Hearing

• Tactile responses

• Comparative excretion physiology

• Kidney structure & function

• Urine formation & concentration

• Micturition

• Water balance, blood volume & BP regulation

• Electrolyte & acid–base balance

• Comfort zone

• Body temperature regulation: physical, chemical, neural

• Acclimatization

• Digestion & absorption

• Energy balance

• Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

• Endocrine glands

• Hormone action mechanisms

• Hormones & related diseases

• Reproductive processes

• Gametogenesis

• Ovulation

• Neuroendocrine regulation

• Gut microbiome in physiology

• Gut microbiome research methods

• Germ-free animals

• Gut–brain axis

• Dysbiosis & disease

• Metabolic health

• Metabolic disorders

• Mendelian principles

• Codominance & incomplete dominance

• Penetrance & expressivity

• Gene interactions, pleiotropy

• Genomic imprinting

• Linkage & crossing over

• Sex-linked inheritance

• Mitochondrial & chloroplast inheritance

• Maternal inheritance

• Alleles, multiple alleles, pseudoalleles

• Complementation tests

• Types of mutations & their causes

• Detection of mutations

• Lethal, conditional, biochemical mutants

• Loss-of-function, gain-of-function, dominant-negative mutations

• Germinal vs somatic mutations

• Linkage maps

• Molecular marker mapping (plants/animals/bacteria)

• Tetrad analysis

• Gene transfer in bacteria: transformation, conjugation, transduction, sex-duction

• Fine structure mapping

• Mapping population development in plants

• Pedigree analysis

• LOD score for linkage

• Karyotypes

• Genetic disorders

• Population genetics

• Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium

• Polygenic inheritance

• Heritability & measurement

• Molecular mapping

• Recombination

• Deletion, duplication, inversion, translocation

• Ploidy (polyploidy, aneuploidy) & genetic consequences

• Evolution of cellular structures, functions & multicellularity

• Mechanisms of evolution: natural selection, genetic drift, gene flow, mutation

• Mechanisms of speciation

• Extinction events & their impact on biodiversity

• Adaptive radiation & convergent evolution

• Coevolution & evolutionary arms races

• Human evolution

• Biological nomenclature

• Classical methods of taxonomy

• Quantitative taxonomy of plants, animals & microorganisms

• Viruses: structure, replication, effects on life

• Economically & medically important microbes

• Protozoa

• Slime molds & water molds

• Ecological roles of protists

• Important plant & human fungal pathogens

• Plant morphology & anatomy

• Plant reproduction

• Key characteristics of major animal groups

• Abiotic & biotic ecological factors

• Ecological adaptations

• Density-dependent & density-independent factors

• Life tables & survivorship curves

• Age structure, sex ratio, r- & K-strategies

• Metapopulations: fragmentation, connectivity & extinction risk

• Species interactions: competition, predation, mutualism, parasitism

• Succession: primary & secondary succession; community stability

• Biogeochemical cycles: carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, water

• Ecosystem services & human impacts

• Climate change & pollution

• Invasive species & anthropogenic pressures

• Threats to biodiversity

• IUCN threat categories

• Conservation genetics & PVA

• Ex-situ & in-situ conservation

• Community-based conservation & indigenous knowledge

• National & international conservation policies

• Agricultural biodiversity

• International Treaty on PGRFA

• Conservation strategies for seed gene banks

• Climate change & plant genetic resources

• PPVFR & Biodiversity Act strategies

• Foraging behaviour & communication

• Conflict, aggression & territory

• Migration, dispersal & navigation

• Social behaviour

• Sexual selection & mating systems

• Parental care

• Gene expression databases

• 3D structure databases

• Pattern & sequence motif databases

• BLAST, FASTA

• Sequence identity vs similarity

• Homologues, orthologues, paralogues

• Repeat finding

• Scoring matrices (PAM, BLOSUM)

• Pairwise sequence alignment

• Multiple Sequence Alignment (MSA)

• Applications in taxonomy & phylogeny

• Comparative genomics

• Genetic variation: polymorphisms, deleterious mutations

• Phylogenetics

• Molecular modeling basics

• Molecular mechanics & simulations

• Force fields (AMBER, CHARMM etc.)

• Hierarchical structure (primary → quaternary)

• Secondary & tertiary structure prediction

• Homology/comparative modeling

• Fold-recognition & threading

• Ab initio structure prediction

• AI-based prediction (AlphaFold, others)

• Receptor–ligand interactions

• Structure-based drug design (SBDD)

• Ligand-based drug design (LBDD)

• SAR, QSAR & pharmacophores

• In-silico prediction of drug activity & ADMET properties

• Mathematical modelling of metabolic pathways & diseases

• Digital health

• Personalized medicine

• Ordinary differential equations

• Higher-order differential equations

• Linear algebra basics

• Numerical methods

• Steady-state balances

• Properties of pure substances

• Transport phenomena basics

• Momentum transfer

• Heat & mass transfer

• Introduction to mass transfer equipment

• Biological systems as open, non-equilibrium systems

• Why classical thermodynamics fails for biological processes

• Thermodynamic flux & force concepts

• Entropy production

• Constitutive equations

• Thermodynamics of coupled biochemical reactions

• Oxidative phosphorylation—thermodynamic analysis

• Glycolytic oscillations & biological clocks

• Growth kinetics: batch, fed-batch, continuous

• Types of bioreactors: batch, fed-batch, plug-flow, continuous, enzyme reactors

• Sterilization principles

• Mass & energy balance in microbial processes

• Dissolved oxygen effects

• Oxygen mass transfer, aeration, agitation

• Fluid rheology

• Fermentation technology for: antibiotics, organic acids, alcohols, bioplastics, vitamins, enzymes

• Steroid biotransformation

• Process flow sheet & process economics

• Biocatalysts

• Enzyme engineering (random & rational design)

• Biocatalysis applications

• Immobilization of enzymes & whole cells

• Design & operation of immobilized enzyme reactors

• Kinetics of immobilized systems

• Diffusional resistance & Thiele modulus

• Precipitation (salts, solvents)

• Membrane-based purification

• Adsorption & chromatography

• Extraction: solvent, aqueous two-phase, supercritical

• Drying technologies

• Process flow sheet development

• Scale-up & scale-down considerations

• Scale-up of downstream processing

• Equipment selection & specifications

• Pathway optimization

• Synthetic gene circuits

• Genome editing approaches (CRISPR, etc.)

• Applications in industrial biotechnology

• Expression of recombinant proteins

• In vitro mutagenesis & deletion techniques

• Gene knockout in bacteria & eukaryotes

• Genome editing techniques (CRISPR, TALEN, ZFN etc.)

• Protein sequencing methods

• DNA sequencing methods

• Genome sequencing strategies

• Gene expression analysis methods

• Stem cell therapy

• Cell-based vaccines

Vaccines: Live, killed, attenuated, subunit, recombinant nucleic acid vaccines

• Diagnostics & adjuvants

• Cell therapy & immunotherapy

• Recombinant DNA–based therapy

• Antibody engineering, phage display libraries

• Tissue engineering

Stem Cell Technology: iPSCs, guided/directed differentiation, applications in drug screening & disease biology

Organoids: 3D stem-cell-based models

Neurobiology: Electrophysiology, behavioral tests

Medical Devices: Implants & biosensors

• Modern animal breeding techniques

• Germplasm conservation

• Genetic health monitoring

• Molecular medicine & surgery

• Molecular diagnosis of pathogens

• Cell cloning & selection

• Cell & tissue culture methods for biotechnological applications

• Molecular diagnostics & strain identification

• Plant genomics & applications

• EST (Expressed Sequence Tags) development

• Molecular markers for genotyping & germplasm analysis

• Marker-assisted breeding (MAB)

• Foreground & background selection

• Gene introgression & pyramiding

• Non-gel–based genotyping techniques

• Impact of GE (Genetically Engineered) crops on biodiversity

• Plant tissue & cell culture techniques

• Plantibodies

• Marine resource assessment

• Population studies & marine ecosystem protection

• Role of microbes in marine environments

• Microbial metabolites

• Seafood microbiology

• Marine pharmacology

• Biofouling, corrosion & marine biofilms

• Basics of oceanography

• Pollution control strategies

• Environment-friendly biotech solutions

• Biosurfactants, biofertilizers, biopesticides

• Microbially enhanced oil recovery (MEOR)

• Integrated waste management systems

• Biogas & biofuel production from waste

• Bioremediation & phytoremediation

• Chromatography (paper, TLC, HPLC, ion-exchange, affinity, gel filtration)

• Electrophoresis (agarose, PAGE, SDS-PAGE, IEF)

• Centrifugation (differential, density-gradient, ultracentrifugation)

• Molecular structure determination: X-ray diffraction, cryo-EM, NMR

• Light scattering methods

• Mass spectrometry types (MALDI-TOF, ESI, LC-MS/MS)

• Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR)

• Comparative genomics

• Global gene expression analysis

• Comparative & differential transcriptomics

• Protein–protein interaction mapping

• Targeted & untargeted metabolomics

• DNA fingerprinting, DNA barcoding

• Single-cell sequencing, single-cell omics

• Incorporation in tissues & cells

• Molecular imaging of radioactive material

• Radio-safety guidelines

• ELISA, RIA, Western blot

• Immunoprecipitation

• Flow cytometry

• Immunofluorescence microscopy

• Live-cell molecular detection

• In situ localization: FISH, GISH

• Advanced microscopy techniques

• Resolving power & resolution limits

• Microscopy of living cells

• SEM, TEM

• Sample preparation for microscopy

• Patch-clamp technique

• ECG

• Brain activity recording

• Brain lesion & stimulation techniques

• Pharmacological testing

• Imaging: PET, MRI, fMRI, CT/CAT

• Ranging patterns (direct, indirect, remote sensing)

• Behavioural sampling methods

• Habitat characterization (ground surveys, satellite/remote sensing)

• Central tendency & dispersion

• Probability distributions: Binomial, Poisson, Normal

• Sampling distribution

• Parametric vs non-parametric tests

• Confidence interval, errors, significance levels

• Regression & correlation

• t-test, ANOVA, Chi-square test

• Basics of multivariate statistics

• Patent databases

• Biosafety measures & levels (BSL-1 to BSL-4)

• Regulatory guidelines for biological work

• Animal ethics & research ethics

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