The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Madurai-Kamaraj varsity bioinformatics centre to be upgraded

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 16, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Madurai-Kamaraj varsity bioinformatics centre to be upgraded

By S. Annamalai

MADURAI, APRIL 15. The Bioinformatics Centre of the Madurai-Kamaraj University has been elevated Centre of Excellence (CoE) by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India.

According to the Vice-Chancellor, P. K. Ponnuswamy, the MK University is among the five centres in the country to get this status.

The department will provide Rs. 2.92 crores to the centre during the 10th Plan period. The other centres to be upgraded are the Bose Institute, Kolkata; the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore; the University of Pune, Pune, and the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The Vice-Chancellor said the elevation would enable the centre to enhance its interaction and linkages with industries and international organisations.

It was established under the Biotechnology Information Systems of the Department of Biotechnology as a distributed information centre in 1986. It was specialising in genetic engineering and structural bioinformatics.

The elevation, K. Dharmalingam, professor and head, said would improve the centre's research and manpower development as well as services in genomics, proteomics, software development and molecular modelling. Though adequate infrastructure and funds were available in the country to conduct research and develop programmes and software in bioinformatics, there was a shortage of manpower to run the systems. The centre would focus on development of skilled manpower. Besides taking up research in the frontier areas of bioinformatics and computational biology, it would develop world-class human resource.

Prof. Dharmalingam said the objectives of the CoE included establishing an effective academia-industry interface and promoting cooperation with leading institutions and organisations in the world. It would attempt at creating world-class platforms for technology development, transfer and commercialisation.

He said the focus of research would be on genomics, proteomics and structural bioinformatics of selected regulatory systems; validation and annotation of databases of select organisms and computational and experimental analysis. The centre, which was now offering an advanced diploma course in bioinformatics apart from a certificate course in bioinformatics (in association with Amrutanjan Biotech), would involve itself in construction of databases and development of software.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu