“How is informatics relevant to Biology?” A talk delivered by honorable vice chancellor Prof. B. J. Rao, University of Hyderabad, at a 3-days workshop on Microbiome Genome Analysis (http://sls.uohyd.ac.in/new/dbtcmi/events/ws_jul2023/) organized by the Department of Biotechnology-Center for Microbial Informatics (DBT-CMI) at Centre for Modelling, Simulation & Dynamics. “Informatics, synthetic biology, artificial intelligence along with appropriate delivery system will change the landscape of human health” said Prof. B. J. Rao during his talk stressing the indispensable need for Informatics in Biology. The workshop was attended by 40 participants from across India where participants were given intensive hands-on training on microbial genome data analysis serving one of the major aims of the center i.e., to generate trained microbial informaticians.
DBT-CMI (http://sls.uohyd.ac.in/new/dbtcmi/) is a newly formed center at the School of Life Sciences, the University of Hyderabad established in April 2022 with a funding support of Rs 175 Lakhs from DBT for 5 years. The center and its activities are coordinated by Prof. H. A. Nagarajarm, Head, Department of Systems and Computational Biology and co-PIs Prof. Appa Rao Podile, Prof. S Dayananda, Prof. Ch Venkata Ramana, Dr Vivek, Dr Manjari Kiran, Dr Pankaj Singh, research scientist Dr. Anwesh Maile and staffs.
The center aims to create a stable and sustainable bioinformatics platform for storing, accessing, and analyzing microbiological information found in diverse habitats (Indian environments such as soil, rhizosphere, lakes, river beds, marine, industrial effluent sites, etc across India; human gut microbiota) with a driving motto “Serve the nation through microbiological information.”