BIOINFORMATICS

Bioinformatics is playing an increasingly important and central role in biological research. It is coming to occupy the central role of the "glue" that integrates together the many disparate bodies of data from different fields. Major research in this area in our Centre includes:

Bioinformatics approach for Hydrogen Production:
The objective of the project (sponsored by DIT) is to improve the productivity and processivity of microbial hydrogen production by using various bioinformatics tools and databases. The focus will be on a thorough study of the hydrogen-producing microbes in terms of their genomics, proteomics and metabolomics in turn the information will be used for augmenting hydrogen production.
Augmentation of Biotech (fermentation) products using bioinformatics:
Lovastatin and its analogs are inhibitors of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase, a rate-limiting enzyme of cholesterol biosynthesis and are used to lower elevated cholesterol levels in atherosclerosis. Bioinformatics and systems biology-based approaches are being profitably used to augment lovastatin productivity and processivity without incurring any additional infrastructure costs.

To facilitate the above work certain tools such as Functional Genomics Tools (FGT) and Microbial Comparative Genomics Tools (MCGT) are already developed and to be hosted. Previously, Lipase Database has been developed and hosted by us. Our work on hydrogen and lovastatin also include modeling of relevant metabolic pathways and analysis of metabolic flux.