WE ARE COMMITED TO

On the occasion of the Bangalore Tech Summit 2020 (Nov 19-21), a new e-book featuring the journey of IBAB, titled “IBAB – Idea to Achievement”, was released by the Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka, Dr. CN Ashwath Narayan and other dignitaries. A video showcasing IBAB’s accomplishments over the past 20 years and its surrounding academic and industrial ecosystem within the Bangalore Helix Biotech Park was also shown to the attendees (available here: https://youtu.be/AUUPC7Xee_Q ). 

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. AV Ramana Reddy, IAS, Additional Chief Secretary to Government of Karnataka, Department of Electronics, IT, Bt & S&T, said that “IBAB is very dear to me… I was there along with Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw at the establishment of IBAB in 2001… it was the first institute of bioinformatics in the country… the institute has made commendable progress… I congratulate IBAB…” 

In addition, Dr. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Chairman of the Vision Group of Biotech, Government of Karnataka, and Director, Biocon reiterated, “Today is a very important day… 20 years since the start of IBAB and CHG, institutes founded on ideas much ahead of their times… Bangalore Tech Summit is an example of how to converge biosciences with information sciences and is a testament to the foresightedness of the GoK, which created two  unique centres of excellence: IBAB is one of them. It is one of the premier institutes for genomics, bioinformatics and applied biotech in the country…”
Press coverage = uniindia.com, healthysoch.com, thehawk.in, thehansindia.com, healthcareradius.in and pharmabiz.com

Dr. Thiyagarajan has published a second study about in silico drug discovery against SARS-CoV-2 in the Journal of Biomolecular Structure & Dynamics titled “Traditional medicinal plants against replication, maturation and transmission targets of SARS- CoV-2: computational investigation”. Collaborating with researchers from CFTRI, Mysore & MAHE, Manipal, Dr. Thiyaga has established that the phytochemical ‘taraxerol’, a triterpenoid compound which is a common ingredient of many herbal and edible plants, can potentially inhibit SARS-Cov-2 main protease (MPro) enzyme as well as the human ACE2 enzyme. In Dr. Thiyaga’s words: “IBAB’s venture to find potential COVID-19 drugs is still on and let us send our good wishes to the scientists engaged in finding a cheap and effective cure against this disease.” The full article is available here: bit.ly/ST_JBSD

In a tour de force, Dr. Subhashini Srinivasan, Dr. Bibha Choudhary and several IBAB researchers report a chromosome-level assembly of the highly nutritious grain Amaranthus (A.) hypochondriacus A.hyp_K_white (AhKP) using low-coverage PacBio reads, contigs from the 2014-reported draft genome of A.hyp_K_white, raw HiC data and the reference genome of the Plainsman strain (A.hyp.V.2.1). Their study is published in Frontiers in Plant Science with the title, “Classification of Grain Amaranths Using Chromosome-Level Genome Assembly of Ramdana, A. hypochondriacus“. The full article is available here: 
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2020.579529/full