ANNUAL REPORT - Department of Biotechnology

undertake the identification of skeletal remains from
a recently detected mass grave of alleged riot
victims. The case wise breakup of the matters
handled in the last reporting year is as follows:
On the Diagnostics service front, close to 3000 cases
were received for biochemical, cytogenetic, and
molecular investigations for proband diagnosis,
prenatal diagnosis, as well as carrier detection. Apart
from these established diagnostics tools, the Centre
Phase GNL3L-GFP
Nucleolar localization of GNL3L. Cos-7 cells were transfected
with GNL3L-GFP expression vector and the localization was
determined by fluorescence microscopy.
is also attempting to develop novel DNA-based
diagnostic markers for genetic disorders, infectious
diseases, and cancer. The Centre is also in the
process of creating a National Database for genetic
disease and disorders. The case wise breakup for
the diagnostic referrals handled by the centre during
the last reporting year is as follows:
Crystal structure of M.tuberculosis chorismate mutase monomer
183
CDFD started the world's first Centre of Excellence
(COE) in clinical bioinformatics in its Gandipet
campus, which is a joint venture between the CDFD,
M/s Sun Microsystems and the Government of
Andhra Pradesh. The CoE was inaugurated and
dedicated to the nation by His Excellency the
President of India, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. The
Gandipet bioinformatics facility is now fully
operational with high-speed servers and internet
connectivity. The COE environment offers scalability
from desktop to teraflop with binary compatibility
across architecture offering mainframe class like
availability and superior balanced performance. The
servers support features like fault isolated Dynamic
System Domains (Dynamic Hard partitions),
Dynamic reconfiguration, full Hardware redundancy
and hot CPU upgrades.
The COE has been organizing training and
brainstorming activities in bioinformatics,
computational biology and medical informatics. A
two-week's Training Programme in Bioinformatics
Applications for M.Sc (Biotechnology) students was
conducted at the SUN-COE campus. This program
covered the areas of biological database searching,
sequence analysis, homology modeling and
phylogenetic analysis applications under
Bioinformatics for the students.
The Bioinformatics and Sun-COE hosted the First
ASEAN-India Bioinformatics Workshop from 7-11
November 2005. This was attended by over 20
delegates from ASEAN countries. The workshop
showcased India's expertise in Bioinformatics to
ASEAN delegates, and included lectures from
leading Indian Bioinformatics experts and practical
demonstration of the TCS BioSuite - a bioinformatics
a.Micrographs of liver tissue section stained for GFP (green) nuclei
DAPI stained (blue)
b. Micrographs of liver tissues section stained for GEP (green),
albumin (red), and nuclear (blue)
c. Micrographs of liver tisue section stained for GFP (green), CK-18
(red), and nuclear (blue)
d. Merged photographs showing yellow color GFP* CELLS (MIDDLE)
AND GFP*CK-18* cells`
Autonomous Institutions