PU student researchers awarded for contribution to genome project

Panjab University students Hemant Verma and Geetika Mehta are among the 114 ‘best annotators’ honoured by the CSIR.

They were awarded at a function in New Delhi on Sunday,which was held to release results of the ‘Connect 2 Decode’ (C2D) project,aimed at re-annotating the biological and genetic information of Mtb.

Hemant and Geetika,enrolled in M.Sc,are students of the Centre for Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering at the Institute for Emerging Areas in Science and Technology,PU.

Hemant learnt about the project in November 2009 while going through the CSIR website and informed Geetika about it.

Of the 800 volunteers from across the world who registered for the project,400 left after some time. From the remaining 400,114 were chosen as ‘best annotators’ by the CSIR.

While working on the project,these students put in two-three hours daily,painstakingly mapping the Mtb genes.

“There are approximately 4,000 genes of the deadly pathogen,and we were given weekly targets relating to their functional interactions and pathways,” Hemant,a resident of Sector-48,said. “It is for the first time in the country that the hierarchical research model was replaced with scientists and students worked together,using online tools to accomplish complex research tasks.”

Geetika,who lives in Sector 33,said gene-mapping was a valuable experience for them. The duo,who were given laptops by CSIR for their contribution,returned from Delhi on Monday.

Dr G P S Raghava,head of the Bioinformatics Centre at the Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH),Chandigarh,was one of the coordinators of the project.

“Our work is to identify genes that will be the right targets to administer the drug,and work on the chemicals that will effectively tackle mycobacterium tuberculosis,” Dr Raghava,a world-renowned scientist who has worked in the field of bio-informatics and chemo-informatics for about 15 years,said.

Two students of the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER),Mohali,were also among the 114 ‘best annotators’. Student researchers Gourja and Anup Shah are still in Delhi and could not be contacted.