MEETING REPORT

COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY *

The 27th National Seminar was held recently at the Pondicherry University,
Puducherry. The theme of the event was to popularize and create awareness about
Computational Biology and its related fields amongst students and researchers. The
seminar brought about 15 eminent personalities from sophisticated institutes from all
over the country to present their research thoughts to their counterparts and younger
generation. The welcome note was delivered by Prof. P.P.Mathur (Centre Head, Centre
of Excellence in Bioinformatics, Pondicherry University). He discussed the issues that
lay in the intersection areas of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. He also
informed about the launching of M.Sc. in Computational Biology Network Program. The
centre proudly announces to run the first ever Network Teaching Program in India, that
will offer a stipend of Rs.5000/- p.m each student. Dr. Gulshan Wadhwa (Principle
Scientific Officer, Dept. of Biotechnology, Govt of India, New Delhi) in his inaugural
address presented the ‘Initiatives taken by Biotechnology Information System Network
(BTISnet)’ for the development of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology in the
country. He praised the activity of the Centre for becoming the largest in the country.
Prof. P. Gautham (Chairman, Faculty of Technology, Dept of Biotechnology,
Anna University, Chennai) in his keynote address emphasized the fundamentals of
Molecular Modeling along with the involvement of Molecular Simulation and Dynamics
in predicting the lipase activity in varying environments. Dr. G. Narhari Sastry (scientist,
Molecular Modeling Group, Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad)
stressed upon rational Drug Designing and ‘Molecular modeling approaches in inhibitor
design towards Phosphodiesterases and P38 Kinase’ by subtype selectivity . He also
discussed about the issues involved in drug design. Thereafter, Dr. Wadhwa presented the
points underlining the ‘Computational thinking for biology and Sequence Analysis’ in
which he differentiated Computational Biology from Bioinformatics. Dr. S. Parthasarthy
(Dept. of Bioinformatics, Bharthidasan University, Thiruchirapalli) addressed ‘Protein
fold recognition server for the annotation for twilight zone sequences known as
PredictFold-PSS-3D1D’, which is an improvement over 3D1D profile method defined
earlier. In comparison to 3D1D, the PSS-3D1D shows a maximum of 11% improvement
in predicting correctly the all α and α+β classes of folds from the sequences with twilight
zone level of identity. Dr. V. Subramanian (Centre Leather Reaseach Institute, Chennai)
emphasized the perspectives for ‘non-covalent functionalization of Single Walled Carbon
Nano Tubes (SWCNT)’. He talked about the SWCNT that are separated using the non
covalent binding mode such as van der waal’s and hydrophobic interactions but their
properties remain unaltered. Dr. R.Amutha (Centre for Excellence in Bioinformatics,
Pondicherry University) presented the ‘Coarse Grained dynamics of biomolecules’ that
involves complementary methods for all action simulation to handle large
macromolecular interactions.
Dr. Shrish Tiwari (Scientist, Centre for Cell and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad)
gave ‘An Introduction to Systems Biology’, in which he briefed the kinds of challenges
already being addressed and those ready to be faced in the field of Systems Biology.
Dr. Mukesh Doble (Dept. of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology Madras,
Chennai) talked about ‘Modeling of Parkinson’s Disease’. He described Parkinson’s
disease as the second most common neurodegenerative disorder, more precisely loss of
dopaminergic neurons in substantia negra pars compacta in basal ganglia of brain. In his
research exhibited, a part of the pathway i.e. from dopamine to cell death was modeled
and simulations were compared with experimental data available for PC12 neuronal cell
line. Dr. Shrish Tiwari in his presentation entitled ‘Adaptive control in resource
management model’ explored a simple model of an ecological system, where the ideas of
chaos theory and control were applied to suggest a solution in the sustainable harvesting
of renewable resources. This talk was succeeded by Dr. Ruchi Anand (Dept. of
Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai) who discussed about the
‘Structure-based Drug Design of mammalian sterile20 (Ste20) kinases’. She presented
crystallographic data of one of the Ste20 kinase family member, Tao2, bound with the
ruthenium half sandwich inhibitor. based on the comparative studies by their research
group, they framed various strategies to improve inhibitor potency and specificity. The
seminar moved on with Dr. Sandhya Sankaran’s (Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian
Institute of Science, Banglore) talk on ‘Hard nuts to crack; Methods in remote homology
detection’. She described search techniques that can be applied for large scale protein
remote homology detection and their implications in protein function annotations.
‘Identification of selective and specific inhibitors of aldolase reductase(ALR2): A
Computational approach’ was the topic of talk by Dr. M. Elizabeth Sobhia (Asst. Prof.
pharmacoinformatics division, NIPER, Punjab). She basically in her talk, dealt with the
problems faced in drug design for diabetes due to high similarity within the ALR family
and potential of designed drugs for selective inhibition of ALR2.

*The seminar on computational biology was organized by Centre for Excellence in

Bioinformatics from September 15-17, 2010 sponsored by Dept. of Information
Technology, Govt. of India and Pondicherry University.