ROURKELA: National Institute of Technology-Rourkela (NIT-R) is all set to launch its Centre for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (CBCB) which will help develop novel disease biomarkers and therapeutic strategies using big data analysis.
Sanctioned by the Department of Biotechnology under the Ministry of Science and Technology, the CBCB project with a focus on animal bioinformatics will be a big help for livestock farmers.
The centre aims to develop novel tools and techniques for the analysis of transcriptome, proteome, secretome and microbiome data of mammary gland and reproductive tissue to help formulate disease biomarkers and therapeutic strategies. It is in process of acquiring high configuration servers, workstations with GPU, cloud network storage as well as manpower.
Principal Investigator and Coordinator of the project Prof Mukesh Kumar Gupta said, mammary gland disease mastitis affects the quantity and quality of milk among the cattle population. By addressing mastitis, the quality and quantity of milk can be enhanced to ensure income growth of cattle farmers and improved milk quality would also have good implications on human health.
Other focus areas will be addressing male infertility and extensive research on male germline stem cells to improve breeding and value-addition of livestock. The transcriptome data will be generated using the latest third generation genome sequencer and computationally analysed all biomarker discoveries and drug designing.
The CBCB will tie-up with veterinary institutions in Jammu and Ludhiana for sharing of data and samples. It is likely to be fully functional in a month. The institute plans to collaborate with the Odisha University of Agriculture Technology in future, Prof Gupta said. Dr Pankaj Kumar Sa and Prof Sambit Bakshi, both from Computer Science and Engineering Department, are the co-principal investigators.