ANNUAL REPORT - Department of Biotechnology

predictive control might lie in the ability of human
brain to estimate the time it takes to cancel a
response. In collaboration with AIIMS it is has been
shown that Parkinson's disease patients have
impaired inhibitory control and current experiments
are testing their ability to detect and correct errors.
These future studies may help in better diagnose and
evaluation of the efficacy of treatment of Parkinson's
disease.
Speech is a timed motor response and requires the
processing of auditory information at different time
scales. The knowledge of speech development is
extremely limited and it is important to obtain an
accurate picture of the development of speech in
normal children, since this could have implications in
the understanding of disorders that disrupt speech in
pediatric populations. The speech and language
laboratory (SALLY) at NBRC uses digital signal
processing to study the development of various
language features in children. The project is aimed at
investigating the development of speech in a
population of normal children in the age group 4-8
years. A repetition task and a picture-naming task for
obtaining utterances for various words, vowels and
phrases are used. Analysis shows that as children
get older they exhibit more power in features
associated with shorter time scales, thereby also
demonstrating fine motor control. Interestingly,
between 4-8 years we observe the achievement of a
specific feature at a particular age in the population.
Since features associated with different time scales
are believed to be associated with various speech
and language disorders, this study could be useful
for development of language features in children with
communication disorders. The use of stochastic
activation is being explored for increasing the
efficiency of brain imaging and therapy. An MRIbased
non-invasive approach is being formulated
that can be used to automatically grade brain
tumours. This procedure minimizes sample errors
that arise in small tissue sampling in directed biopsy
or spectroscopy. The application of ependymal and
CSF flow patterning to differentiate neurological
disorders as Alzheimer's disease, normal pressure
hydrocephalus, and obstructive hydrocephalus is
being examined. This involves the use of
thermodynamics and tensor imaging to track
abnormal information flow and electrical connectivity
in the brain. The novel methodology of generalized
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tensor imaging has been delineated, especially the
modality of electrical and thermal conductivity tensor
imaging of the brain, which respectively provides
more accurate targeting in surgical management of
epilepsy and in hyperthermic treatment of glioma.
National Centre for Plant Genome Research
(NCPGR), New Delhi
The Centre moved to its new campus after its formal
inauguration by His Excellency, the President of
India. With space no longer a constraint and addition
of many sophisticated instruments to the common
equipment facility, the Centre now is on the road to
grow and substantialize its contribution. During the
year, the Centre has made good progress in several
areas of plant genomics. The following are the
highlights of its progress:
A) Nutritional Genomics
1) AmA 1 protein rich food crops: Protein rich AmA1
GM potato with high nutritional value, which is also
found to be non-toxic and non-allergenic in the
laboratory animals, has successfully completed
multilocational trials in collaboration with Central
Potato Research Institute (CPRI). Expression of
AmA1 in transgenic potato tuber led to the increase
in the total protein content up to 60%. In addition,
concentration of several amino acids was increased
by a factor of 2-3. Shortly, the pre-release approval
from GEAC would be sought for large-scale
production of GM potato lines. Transformation of
indica rice cultivars, sweet potato and cassava with
AmA1 gene is currently under progress.
2) Development of low oxalate fungal tolerant
vegetable and grain crops using OXDC gene:
Management of oxalate in vegetable and grain crops
is one of the important areas in Nutritional Genomics.
Towards this, the low oxalate OXDC tomato varieties
earlier developed have successfully completed the
restricted plot trial. The field performance of the
transgenic tomato lines was found to be consistent
over the years. Very recently, the food value and food
safety analyses of these GM tomatoes have been
initiated and OXDC GM Lathyrus lines have been
developed.
Autonomous Institutions