A three-day national symposium "Current trends in cellular, medical and environmental physiology" was kicked up here on Monday with the aim to bring closer the scientists, providing them a platform to share their knowledge and experience.
The symposium was organised by Department of Animal Sciences of Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU) aimed at providing best forum to discuss current issues in pure physiology and the impact of environment as related to health and disease. It would also help highlight health related problems, diseases, basic physiological mechanisms at biochemical level and to draw attention towards devising state-of-the-art strategies to deal with these problems.
Addressing the symposium, Chairman Department of Animal Sciences, Professor Dr M. Shahab said that in recent times, physiology emerged as a multidisciplinary subject and has become more important due to new discoveries at gene level. He said issues related to the functioning of organs and organs' link with the environment have further broadened the science of physiology with respect to the impact of environmental insults on the physiological functioning of human and animal bodies.
"On one hand research in physiological systems at cellular and tissue level increases our knowledge of normal working of the cells and their interaction with each other while on the other, it facilitates us to understand the path of physiology of disease," he said. Shahab said that scientific research could better help devise effective therapeutic and pharmacologic designs to counter the devastating diseases like hepatitis, AIDS and Cancer.
QAU Vice Chancellor Professor Dr Masoom Yasinzai while addressing the symposium said that since its birth in 1973, Quaid-e-Azam University has been a leading research and educational institution in the country as it provides a good ground to scientists, scholars, researchers, technocrats, and social scientists due to its foundations laid in dedication and hard work, besides, providing bold advice to governmental authorities on core national issues through papers, talks, presentations and publications.
He said physiology and anatomy are considered to be the mother sciences in understanding the structure and function of animal and human bodies, saying that it is due to the breathtaking advancement at gene and protein level, the science of physiology has now crossed its boundaries from simple studying the functions of organs systems to cell-signalling and elucidating the interactive mechanisms.