Can reduce costs, speed up drug discoveries and reduce the cost of medicines for the common manBangalore – Tuesday 05th February 2013: One day 2 of Bangalore India Bio 2013 (BIB 2013) – India’s premier Biotech Show organised by the department of Information Technology, Bio-Technology and Science & Technology, Government of Karnataka and the Vision Group on Biotechnology, featured another TRACK ON MOLECULAR BIOTECHNOLOGY & BIO INFORMATICS. The session’s topic was “showcasing BIO – IT and Leveraging IT power to make affordable medicines.”
The session was chaired by Dr. Kshitish Acharya – Faculty Scientist, Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB) & Founder & Director, Shodhaka Life Sciences Private Limited and the Presenting Scientists were Mr. Darshan S C – Research Scholar, IBAB, Mr. Ananth P – Research Scholar, IBAB, Ms. Meeta S – Research Scholar, IBAB, Mr. Saurabh G – Research Scholar, GanitLab, IBAB and Mr. Prakhar G – Research Scholar, GanitLab, IBAB.
Dr. Kshitish Acharya, said “data is exploding in the field of biotechnology in the present day. So here comes a great need and hence demand for analyzing them. Thus creating a huge opportunity.”
Mr. Ananth P, said, “The role of IT in biological research is of paramount importance. IT is leveraged in biological researches as a technical advancement. It has influenced biotechnology and bridge the void to help us come-up with the solutions for data storage and analysis. Bio-IT is widely used in diagnosis. The detailing we were missing in diagnosis using classical methods can be corrected using it. Algorithms can be used to check genes that may be switched on or switched off. Protein interactions can be studied better, Cure for a particular disease can be found out in less amount of time.”
In fact the the pharmaceutical industries also use it extensively. Speaking on his current research, he said, “System biology is used to identify micro molecules in type 2 diabetes and its progression into other complications and computational structural biology is the other area.”
“In the case of cholera, the proteins and RNA come into the picture. Algorithms are used to analyze protein sequences to predict and visualize their 3d structure. Proteins help in the search of structure and function.” she added.
Here he tells the story where people were trying to figure out the structure of an elephant by studying the different parts separately. They failed to figure out the actual structure of the elephant by this process. Same is applicable for structure of proteins. He studied the organism ‘Vibio Cholerae’ to find out the complete and correct structure of a particular protein.
He went to tell that 38% of proteosome are uncharacterized i.e. of unknown function. Experimental techniques are costly. This is where IT comes to play its role for Sequence database, PFAM database, Evolutionary information of domains and 3D structure of proteins.
“A lot of information can be dealt within a short span of life. Which has enabled me to find out the protein that helps Vibrio cholera to colonize the intestine.” he concluded.
Ms. Meeta S, said, “As a botanist, the objective is mainly using plants to solve nutritional problems for the poor. By sequencing lysine rich dicot Amaranthus hypochondriacus, which is an an essential amino acid. It means that this amino acid has to be taken externally through food and is not produced in our body. Deficiency of lysine in our body leads to protein energy malnutrition in toddlers i.e. kwashiorkor. Amaranthus she says has high yield.”
“Many edible species of Caryophyllales are also sequenced. DNA is processed and sequenced and its textual form is derived. Next comes quality control followed by assemblers and then re –constructed genome after deleting overlaps are received. Last process comes is downstream analysis using languages like LINUX.” she said.
“Similarities with other plants like Arabidopsis thalianaIis need laboratory validation for each case. Through her research she successfully prepared graft genome of the plant. She also characterized 16812 genes and even spoke of lysine biosynthesis. Her main concern is to give protein rich (mainly lysine) diet for poorer people of Asia & Africa who often fail to get dairy supplements to their child.” she added.
Mr. Saurabh G, speaking on the NEXT GENERATION in BIOINFORMATICS said, The need for bioinformatics is primarily because of the Large data, Microarray, Dissimilation studies, Large amount of samples to Handle, manage, store & share. It is integration of IT with biological research. The next generation of sequencing will consists of raw data is of several terabytes in size, from a single week from a single machine, so it is impossible to store it laptops and personal computer and here comes the need for a database. Data explosion may occur which can be solved by statistics. He went on saying that nowadays sequencing is not that costly but analyzing the sequenced data is. Currently analyzing NGS data for discovering cancer specific genetic variants. The project involved Analyse NGS data, Filter down variants, Filter down cancer variants, Predict damaged variants using statistical analysis and algorithm and Validating the variant by performing experiments.
For more informationon Bangalore INDIA BIO 2013,visit http://www.bangaloreindiabio.in