ANNUAL REPORT - Department of Biotechnology

Establishment of New Sub-DICs:
During this year, two new centres at the level of Sub-
DICs have been established under the BTISnet.
These centres have been established at 1) NCPGR,
New Delhi and 2) IIAR, Gandhi Nagar, Gujarat.
R & D Programs in Bioinformatics:
The department has started receiving good quality
research projects proposals in the area of
bioinformatics. During this year 10 R&D projects
have been supported, with specific applications
towards medical biotechnology like design of
inhibitors for cholera toxin and proteomics with
special reference to hepatitis, plant sciences,
algorithm design for sequence classification and elearning
in bioiformatics. The department is now
focusing on multi-institutional consortium projects to
address specific problems through bioinformatics
approach. Bioinformatics and experimental biology
collaborative projects are being considered so as to
improve the contribution of bioinformatics in wet lab
biotechnology research. Demand analysis of
particular information resources will be the important
criteria for supporting database and software
development projects.
Human Resource Development
Bioinformatics is an emerging interdisciplinary area
of science and technology encompassing systematic
development and application of IT solutions to
handle biological research problems. The area
requires highly trained human resource to
understand molecular biology issues vis-a-vis
application of computer and software tools. The
present crisis is non availability of sufficient
manpower for teaching as well as for perusing R&D
activities in bioinformatics in combination with
Experimental Biology. The department had realized
this problem and therefore introduced several longterm
and short term educational activities to address
this gap. The details are as follows.
Up gradation of Bioinformatics courses:
Five Universities namely 1) JNU, 2) Pune University,
3) Calcutta University, 4) Pondicherry University, and
5) MKU are running an one year advanced post
DBT Annual Report 2006-07
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graduate diploma course in Bioinformatics. A total of
100 candidates are being produced per annum
through these courses. The first two universities
mentioned above namely JNU and University of
Pune have upgraded their diploma courses as Post
graduate courses namely M.Tech. in computational
and systematic biology and M.Sc. in Bioinformatics
respectively. The candidates for these courses are
being selected through entrance examination carried
out by the respective universities. The MKU and
Ponidicharry University along with Anna University
are also planning to start M.Sc in Bioinformatics
through consortium basis so as to share the faculty
and resources through video Conferencing and
virtual class room approaches.
Ph.D. Programs in Bioinformatics
The COEs of BTISnet including the super computing
facilities are running Ph.D. programs in
Bioinformatics since the demand for skilled human
resource is very high. The first batch of Ph.D.
students of JNU and Pune University shall be coming
out this year.
Workshop on Bioinformatics for college teachers
Short Term Training Programs:
It is important for the researchers, faculty and
students to have an exposure about Bioinformatics
tools and resources so that they can be better
equipped for their professional activities. The DBT
organized 85 short-term training programs at various
institutions of BTISnet and over 2000 personal have
been trained during this year.