The fundamental unity in the vast diversity of living organisms have made biological molecules increasingly relevant for understanding life. Molecular Biology has thus emerged as an all embracing discipline. Recent advances have provided an impressive array of tools to engineer the biological systems for specific applications in industry, agriculture and medicine. However, research in interdisciplinary areas calls for a close cooperation between scientists with radically different backgrounds in pursuit of common objectives. Keeping this in view, a Department of Biosciences and Biotechnology was started at the University of Roorkee in year 1980, first as a small centre which blossomed later into a full fledged academic department of the University.