Monday, January 29, 2001		Article

India may be frontrunner in bioinformatics
race, predict IT analysts
by Radhakrishna Rao

THE mid-2000 announcement of the first rough draft of the human genome — involving the sequences of the entire 3-billion letter human genetic structure — has provided researchers a veritable peep into the "book of life". In fact, the human genome project (HGP), which enabled this scientific breakthrough par excellence was given a big push by the enormous computing power and innovative software skill. In depth analysis and interpretation of various "gene sequences", however, holds the key to derive multifaceted benefits from the HGP. It is here that computer outfits are chipping in with their powerful hardware and smart programming packages. And out of this fusion of information technology (IT) and life sciences research has emerged the discipline of bioinformatics that is all set to dominate the scientific and technological landscape of the 21st century.

Not surprisingly, specialised bioinformatics companies are mushrooming in various parts of the world to provide tailor-made "computing solutions" to the problems of biotechnology and life-sciences research. For instance, the Chennai-based DSQ Biotech is already in the process of setting up a bioinformatics centre in the USA with the objective of supporting research and commercial activities in the areas of tissue culture and drug design. Because of the worldwide acute shortage of manpower conversant with bioinformatics, India can stand to derive enormous benefits from diversifying into this novel field of immense potential. What’s more, as pointed out by the IT business analysts, through proper and sustained groundwork, India can emerge out as a front-runner in the "bioinformatics race".

Essentially, bioinformatics makes use of the computing and data-base techniques to describe and analyse information on proteins and gene sequences. Moreover, it is also emerging as a cost-efficient tool in designing drugs. In particular, bioinformatics can be profitably exploited for three-dimensional molecular modelling of the drugs.

Dr Charles Cooney, Professor, chemical and biochemical engineering at Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT), points out that bioinformatics could reduce the time and efforts needed for the development of new drugs. Currently, it takes more than a decade and an investment running into millions of dollars to develop a drug acceptable to the medical community. While addressing the international symposium on bioinformatics held in Bangalore in January this year, he said, the challenge in bioinformatics is to "identify the nuggets of useful information against a very large background of noise." On a practical plane, bioinformatics could be imaginatively exploited to help researchers get clues about which experiments to perform. The ultimate objective is to make drug faster and better by identifying appropriate targets and right types of molecules.

According to Dr Mathew Woodwark, Global Coordinator for Informatics at Astrazeneca, the bioinformatics portal being operated by his company allowed researchers in any one of its centres to search 120 text databases and 160 sequences databases instantly and provide feedback. Woodwark expressed the opinion that the need for informatics and informaticians would grow rapidly in the years to come.

According to Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, chairman of the Bangalore-based biotech company, Biocon, and head of the Karnataka Biotechnology Task Force, India, is in a pre-eminent position in the field of bioinformatics. She said that with India’s strong IT base, it will provide an enormous opportunity for the Indian companies to make rapid strides in the emerging area of bioinformatics. As things stand now, managing and interpreting trillions of bits of data generated by the HGP is the biggest challenge facing life sciences researchers and a major business opportunities for the computing outfits. As such, both hardware and software companies are queuing up to serve the exploding bioinformatics market.

The computer giant IBM is in the meantime halfway through developing the most powerful computer ever "Blue Gene", designed to study protein folding sequences inside a human cell. This computer claimed to be many time powerful than the most powerful supercomputers now in use, takes at least one year to simulate the hundreds and thousands of sequences involved in protein folding.