BOL

The bioinformatics centre at Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) completed 10 years, this month. Established in 2004, the centre has been widely used by numerous researchers across the globe and has an ultimate aim of making personalised drugs depending on the composition of a human body.

When biological data is processed using computer science, statistics, mathematics and engineering, it constitutes bioinformatics. The technological advancements are bringing new dimensions to the understanding of molecular basis of living organisms. There is immense data generated due to computing, but storage and analysis of this data is becoming a challenge, therefore there is an urgent need of supercomputers.

The C-DAC will launch Param Bio Blaze, a supercomputing facility, to address the challenges in bioinformatics on Tuesday at a three-day symposium, titled: 'Accelerating biology: Computing life'. The supercomputing facility will be inaugurated on Tuesday by Ramakrishna Ramaswamy, vice-chancellor, Central University of Hyderabad at the Yashada. The new C-DAC's facility will have a capacity of 10 teraflop and will be able to analyse human cells and its functions.

Param Bio Blaze will help have a larger storage space and better computing facility for the bioinformatics sector. The facility will help capture the movement of molecules and also interaction between two molecules and the effects.

Applications of Param BioBlaze

- Collaboration with National Centre for Cell Science for research on Malaria and understanding how the disease spreads

- Collaborative work with Tata Memorial hospital on breast cancer and find out the difference between normal tissues and tissues from breast cancer patients

- Designing anti-cancer molecules, a collaborative research with the University of Pune

Reference:

Times of India

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