GATE BT Syllabus (2027)

The GATE 2027 Biotechnology (BT) syllabus, published by the organizing institute (IIT Madras), broken into three levels: section → topic → item. Each item is numbered (section.topic.item) so it can be used as a standalone tag when categorizing past-paper questions — tag a question with its item number, then roll counts up to topic or section to see which regions score best.

1. Engineering Mathematics#

1.1 Linear Algebra#

• 1.1.1 Matrices and determinants
• 1.1.2 Systems of linear equations
• 1.1.3 Eigenvalues and eigenvectors

1.2 Calculus#

• 1.2.1 Multivariable calculus: limits, continuity, and differentiability
• 1.2.2 Partial derivatives, maxima and minima
• 1.2.3 Sequences and series
• 1.2.4 Test for convergence
• 1.2.5 Multivariable calculus: gradient, divergence, and curl (applications in fluid mechanics, transport processes)

1.3 Differential Equations#

• 1.3.1 Linear and nonlinear first-order ODEs
• 1.3.2 Higher-order ODEs with constant coefficients
• 1.3.3 Cauchy's and Euler's equations
• 1.3.4 Laplace transforms

1.4 Probability and Statistics#

• 1.4.1 Mean, median, mode, and standard deviation
• 1.4.2 Random variables
• 1.4.3 Poisson, normal, and binomial distributions
• 1.4.4 Correlation and regression analysis
• 1.4.5 Bayesian statistics

1.5 Numerical Methods#

• 1.5.1 Solution of linear and nonlinear algebraic equations
• 1.5.2 Integration by trapezoidal and Simpson's rule
• 1.5.3 Single-step methods for differential equations

2. General Biology#

2.1 Biochemistry#

• 2.1.1 Biomolecules — structure and function
• 2.1.2 Biological membranes — structure, membrane channels and pumps, molecular motors, action potential, transport processes
• 2.1.3 Basic concepts and regulation of metabolism of carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids, and nucleic acids
• 2.1.4 Metabolism: detailed pathways — glycolysis, citric acid cycle, fatty acid oxidation
• 2.1.5 Photosynthesis, respiration, and electron transport chain
• 2.1.6 Enzymes — classification, catalytic and regulatory strategies
• 2.1.7 Enzyme kinetics — Michaelis-Menten equation
• 2.1.8 Enzyme inhibition — competitive, non-competitive, and uncompetitive

2.2 Microbiology#

• 2.2.1 History of microbiology
• 2.2.2 Bacterial classification and diversity
• 2.2.3 Bacterial cell wall composition; Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria; Archaea
• 2.2.4 Methods in microbiology
• 2.2.5 Microbial growth and nutrition
• 2.2.6 Operons — Lac, Trp, and Ara operon; nitrogen fixation
• 2.2.7 Microbial diseases and host-pathogen interactions
• 2.2.8 Antibiotics and antimicrobial resistance
• 2.2.9 Two-component system (TCS), bacterial communication
• 2.2.10 Viruses — structure and classification

2.3 Immunology#

• 2.3.1 Primary and secondary lymphoid organs
• 2.3.2 Innate immunity and inflammation
• 2.3.3 Cytokines and chemokines
• 2.3.4 Complement system
• 2.3.5 Effector responses — cellular and humoral immunity
• 2.3.6 Molecular basis of antibody diversity and function
• 2.3.7 Polyclonal and monoclonal antibodies
• 2.3.8 T-cell and B-cell development
• 2.3.9 Memory responses
• 2.3.10 Major histocompatibility complex (MHC)
• 2.3.11 Antigen processing and presentation
• 2.3.12 Regulation of immune responses
• 2.3.13 Immune tolerance
• 2.3.14 Hypersensitivity
• 2.3.15 Autoimmunity and immunodeficiency
• 2.3.16 Graft vs. host disease
• 2.3.17 Immunization and vaccines

3. Genetics, Cellular and Molecular Biology#

3.1 Genetics and Evolutionary Biology#

• 3.1.1 Mendelian inheritance
• 3.1.2 Gene interaction
• 3.1.3 Complementation
• 3.1.4 Linkage, recombination, and chromosome mapping
• 3.1.5 Extra-chromosomal inheritance
• 3.1.6 Microbial genetics — transformation, transduction, and conjugation
• 3.1.7 Bacterial gene mapping
• 3.1.8 Horizontal gene transfer and transposable elements
• 3.1.9 Chromosomal variation
• 3.1.10 Sex determination
• 3.1.11 Genetic disorders
• 3.1.12 Population genetics
• 3.1.13 Epigenetics
• 3.1.14 Selection and inheritance
• 3.1.15 Adaptive and neutral evolution
• 3.1.16 Genetic drift
• 3.1.17 Species and speciation

3.2 Cell Biology#

• 3.2.1 Eukaryotic cell structure
• 3.2.2 Cell cycle and cell growth control
• 3.2.3 Cell-cell communication
• 3.2.4 Cell signalling and signal transduction
• 3.2.5 Non-cell-autonomous cell signalling
• 3.2.6 Post-translational modifications
• 3.2.7 Protein trafficking
• 3.2.8 Cell death and autophagy
• 3.2.9 Extracellular matrix

3.3 Molecular Biology#

• 3.3.1 Molecular structure of genes and chromosomes
• 3.3.2 Mutations and mutagenesis
• 3.3.3 Regulation of gene expression
• 3.3.4 Nucleic acid: replication, transcription, splicing, translation, and their regulatory mechanisms
• 3.3.5 Non-coding and micro RNA
• 3.3.6 RNA interference
• 3.3.7 DNA damage and repair

4. Fundamentals of Biological Engineering#

4.1 Bioreaction Engineering#

• 4.1.1 Rate law, zero- and first-order kinetics
• 4.1.2 Michaelis-Menten kinetics for enzyme reactions
• 4.1.3 Inhibition kinetics — competitive, non-competitive, and uncompetitive
• 4.1.4 Ideal reactors — batch, mixed flow, and plug flow
• 4.1.5 Enzyme immobilization and diffusion effects — Thiele modulus, effectiveness factor, Damköhler number
• 4.1.6 Kinetics of cell growth, substrate utilization, and product formation
• 4.1.7 Structured and unstructured models
• 4.1.8 Batch, fed-batch, and continuous processes
• 4.1.9 Microbial and enzyme reactors
• 4.1.10 Optimization and scale-up: design and operation of microbial and enzyme reactors
• 4.1.11 Case studies: microbial reactors in large-scale production (antibiotics, biofuels)

4.2 Upstream and Downstream Processing#

• 4.2.1 Media formulation and optimization
• 4.2.2 Sterilization of air and media
• 4.2.3 Filtration — membrane filtration, ultrafiltration
• 4.2.4 Centrifugation — high-speed and ultra
• 4.2.5 Cell disruption
• 4.2.6 Principles of chromatography — ion exchange, gel filtration, hydrophobic interaction, affinity, GC, HPLC, FPLC
• 4.2.7 Extraction, adsorption, and drying
• 4.2.8 Measurement devices; valves
• 4.2.9 First-order and second-order systems
• 4.2.10 Feedback and feedforward control
• 4.2.11 Types of controllers — proportional, derivative, and integral
• 4.2.12 Tuning of controllers

5. Plant, Animal and Microbial Biotechnology#

5.1 Plants#

• 5.1.1 Totipotency
• 5.1.2 Cell fate transition; direct and indirect organogenesis; regeneration of plants
• 5.1.3 Plant growth regulators and elicitors
• 5.1.4 Tissue culture and cell suspension culture systems — methodology, kinetics of growth, nutrient optimization
• 5.1.5 Production of secondary metabolites
• 5.1.6 Hairy root culture
• 5.1.7 Plant products of industrial importance
• 5.1.8 Artificial seeds
• 5.1.9 Somaclonal variation
• 5.1.10 Protoplast and protoplast fusion — somatic hybrid and cybrid
• 5.1.11 Transgenic plants — direct and indirect gene transfer techniques
• 5.1.12 Selection markers and reporter genes
• 5.1.13 Plastid transformation

5.2 Animals#

• 5.2.1 Culture media composition and growth conditions
• 5.2.2 Animal cell and tissue preservation
• 5.2.3 Anchorage- and non-anchorage-dependent cell culture
• 5.2.4 Kinetics of cell growth
• 5.2.5 Micro- and macro-carrier culture
• 5.2.6 Hybridoma technology
• 5.2.7 Stem cell technology
• 5.2.8 Animal cloning
• 5.2.9 Transgenic animals
• 5.2.10 Knock-out and knock-in animals

5.3 Microbes#

• 5.3.1 Production of biomass and primary/secondary metabolites — biofuels, bioplastics, industrial enzymes, antibiotics
• 5.3.2 Large-scale production and purification of recombinant proteins and metabolites
• 5.3.3 Clinical, food, and industrial microbiology
• 5.3.4 Screening strategies for new products

6. Recombinant DNA Technology and Other Tools in Biotechnology#

6.1 Recombinant DNA Technology#

• 6.1.1 Restriction and modification enzymes
• 6.1.2 Vectors — plasmids, bacteriophage and other viral vectors, cosmids, Ti plasmid, bacterial and yeast artificial chromosomes
• 6.1.3 Expression vectors
• 6.1.4 cDNA and genomic DNA libraries
• 6.1.5 Gene isolation and cloning; strategies for production of recombinant proteins
• 6.1.6 Transposons and gene targeting
• 6.1.7 Recombination-based gene cloning

6.2 Molecular Tools#

• 6.2.1 Polymerase chain reaction (PCR)
• 6.2.2 DNA/RNA labelling; Sanger and next-generation sequencing
• 6.2.3 Southern and northern blotting
• 6.2.4 In-situ hybridization
• 6.2.5 DNA fingerprinting, RAPD, RFLP
• 6.2.6 Site-directed mutagenesis
• 6.2.7 CRISPR-Cas
• 6.2.8 Biosensing and biosensors
• 6.2.9 DNA-protein and protein-protein interaction tools
• 6.2.10 Genomics and proteomics-based approaches

6.3 Analytical Tools#

• 6.3.1 Principles of microscopy — light, electron, fluorescence, confocal
• 6.3.2 Principles of spectroscopy — UV, visible, fluorescence, CD, IR, FT-IR, MS, NMR
• 6.3.3 Electrophoresis
• 6.3.4 Micro-arrays
• 6.3.5 Enzymatic assays
• 6.3.6 Immunoassays — ELISA, RIA, immunohistochemistry
• 6.3.7 Immunoblotting
• 6.3.8 Flow cytometry
• 6.3.9 Whole genome and ChIP sequencing

6.4 Computational Tools#

• 6.4.1 Bioinformatics resources and search tools
• 6.4.2 Sequence and structure databases
• 6.4.3 Sequence analysis — file formats, scoring matrices, alignment, phylogeny
• 6.4.4 Genomics, proteomics, metabolomics
• 6.4.5 Gene prediction
• 6.4.6 Functional annotation
• 6.4.7 Secondary structure and 3D structure prediction
• 6.4.8 Knowledge discovery in biochemical databases
• 6.4.9 Metagenomics
• 6.4.10 Metabolic engineering and systems biology

Book coverage#

Reference books checked against this syllabus, one table per book. Coverage is judged at topic level (Full, Partial, None), not item — a table of contents can tell you a chapter exists, not that it hits every item inside a syllabus topic. Read a Full as "plausible from the chapter titles," not "verified against the actual pages."

Pathfinder Biotechnology — A Problem Approach#

Code	Topic	Coverage	Notes
1.1	Linear Algebra	None	Ch. 1–10 are pure biology; no matrices, determinants, or eigenvalues anywhere in the contents.
1.2	Calculus	None	No multivariable calculus, partial derivatives, or series in the contents.
1.3	Differential Equations	None	No ODEs or Laplace transforms anywhere.
1.4	Probability and Statistics	None	No distributions, correlation, or Bayesian content.
1.5	Numerical Methods	None	No root-finding, quadrature, or ODE-solving methods.
2.1	Biochemistry	Full	Ch. 1 (water, pH, buffers, bioenergetics) and Ch. 2.1–2.12 (amino acids, nucleic acids, carbohydrates, lipids, enzyme kinetics and inhibition), plus Ch. 3 (glycolysis, TCA cycle, oxidative phosphorylation, photosynthesis), cover every item and then some.
2.2	Microbiology	Full	Ch. 5 (cell structure, genome, growth, culture media, horizontal gene transfer, taxonomy, toxins) matches nearly every item; "history of microbiology" isn't a separate heading, likely folded into the chapter intro.
2.3	Immunology	Full	Ch. 6 tracks the syllabus almost item-for-item: innate/adaptive immunity, MHC, antibody structure and diversity, hybridoma technology, T cells, complement, hypersensitivity, transplantation, vaccines.
3.1	Genetics and Evolutionary Biology	Full	Ch. 7.1–7.11 and 7.17–7.23 cover Mendelian genetics, gene interaction, linkage and mapping, extranuclear inheritance, cytogenetics, population genetics, and evolution; bacterial genetics is cross-referenced from Ch. 5.5.
3.2	Cell Biology	Full	Ch. 4 covers membranes, transport, organelles, cytoskeleton, protein targeting, cell signalling, the cell cycle, and apoptosis in more detail than the syllabus asks for.
3.3	Molecular Biology	Partial	RNA interference (7.13), epigenetics (7.14), the genetic code and translation (7.15–7.16), and mutation (7.17) are covered — but the contents page has an unexplained gap between 7.11 (p. 711) and 7.13 (p. 838), with 7.12's subsections carrying no page numbers at all. Replication, transcription, and DNA repair likely sit in that gap but can't be confirmed from the contents alone.
4.1	Bioreaction Engineering	Partial	Ch. 9.2–9.5 cover energy balance, bioreactor types, mass balances, scale-up, and enzyme technology conceptually, but the syllabus's quantitative side — Thiele modulus, effectiveness factor, Damköhler number, structured growth models, reactor sizing — isn't reflected in the headings across the chapter's ~25 pages.
4.2	Upstream and Downstream Processing	Partial	Ch. 9.6–9.7 name the same unit operations (filtration, centrifugation, chromatography, extraction), but there's no process-control content at all — no controllers, tuning, or first/second-order response, which is roughly a third of this syllabus item.
5.1	Plants	Full	Ch. 8.16–8.17 cover transgenic plants, tissue culture, totipotency, somaclonal variation, and somatic hybridization; hairy root culture and artificial seeds aren't separate headings but likely sit under "applications" (8.17.6).
5.2	Animals	Full	Ch. 8.13, 8.14, and 8.18 cover culture media, cell lines, transgenesis, knockouts, nuclear transfer, and cloning; hybridoma technology is covered instead in Ch. 6.12. Stem cell technology and knock-in animals aren't explicit headings.
5.3	Microbes	Partial	Nothing in the contents is framed as industrial or clinical microbiology; Ch. 9's bioprocess chapter covers the general "how" of production but has no dedicated treatment of screening strategies or product classes like biofuels, bioplastics, or industrial enzymes.
6.1	Recombinant DNA Technology	Full	Ch. 8.1–8.12 match closely: enzymes, vectors by host, DNA delivery, selection markers, expression vectors, DNA libraries, genome mapping, DNA profiling. Transposon-based gene targeting and recombination-based cloning aren't separate headings.
6.2	Molecular Tools	None	PCR, blotting, in-situ hybridization, DNA fingerprinting, site-directed mutagenesis, CRISPR-Cas, and biosensors don't appear anywhere in the contents. "8.1 DNA cloning" might touch some of this, but its page number was illegible in the copy checked, so its contents are unconfirmed.
6.3	Analytical Tools	None	No microscopy, spectroscopy, electrophoresis, immunoassay, or flow cytometry heading anywhere. "2.4 Protein analysis" is the closest match, and it's a single subsection inside the biomolecules chapter, not a methods treatment.
6.4	Computational Tools	Partial	Ch. 10 (15 pages, p. 1043–1057) covers sequence analysis, genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics at survey level, but gene prediction, functional annotation, structure prediction, and metagenomics aren't itemized, and the chapter is too short to expect real depth.

Strong on Sections 2 and 3 — biochemistry, microbiology, immunology, genetics, and cell biology are covered as thoroughly as the syllabus needs, sometimes more. Section 1 (engineering mathematics) gets zero coverage, which is expected from a biology text but still needs a separate source. The real gaps are inside Section 6: molecular tools (PCR, blotting, CRISPR, fingerprinting) and analytical tools (microscopy, spectroscopy, immunoassays, flow cytometry) have no dedicated treatment at all, and Section 4's process-control content is entirely absent. On its own, this book is not adequate coverage — pair it with a lab-techniques reference for Section 6.2–6.3 and a bioprocess/reactor-design text for the quantitative half of Section 4.