Scientists at Raiganj University have discovered a new bacterial species and named it Micromonospora shyamaprasadii sp. nov. in honour of Syama Prasad Mookerjee on his 125th birth anniversary.

The bacterium, isolated from the mulberry rhizosp-here the active soil zone around mulberry roots has been officially registe red with SeqCode, the global Code of Nomenclature of Prokaryotes Described from Sequence Data.

The discovery was made by a multidisciplinary team The bacterium has been isolated from the mulberry rhizosphere the active soil zone around mulberry roots

led by Amit Kumar Mandal, associate professor in the de-partment of sericulture and head of the university's Che-mical Biology Laboratory. The team included Pankaj Mandal, Rittick Mondal Shubhajit Shaw, Dipanjan Das, Rohini Thapa and Sag-nick Guha, with contribu-tions from Debnirmalya Gangopadhyay, Abdul Sadat, Tanmay Chowdhury and Pra-deep Kumar Das Mohapatra.

According to the univer-sity, the decision to dedicate the discovery to Mookerjee was guided by vice-chancel-lor Arnab Sen as a tribute on his 125th birth anniversary

Researchers said the mul-berry rhizosphere was cho-sen not only for its scientific value but also for its symbo-lic association with Bengal, where Mookerjee spent much of his public life.

The genus Micromono-spora is known for produ-cing bioactive compounds, including antibiotics and in-dustrially important enzy-mes. Researchers believe the newly identified species co-uld open new avenues for chemical biology and bio-technology research at the university.

With its registration in the global SeqCode registry, Micromonospora shyama-prasadii sp. nov. has become part of the international sci-entific record, marking a sig-nificant milestone for Rai-ganj University's microbio-logy research.