Bioinformatics Sub-DIC was established in November 1998 in the College of Basic Sciences & Humanities, G. B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar and since then it is an inherent part of the Pantnagar Biotechnology Programme and one of the first Sub-DIC in Uttarakhand. Every year bioinformatics courses are being offered by the centre to the postgraduate students of various disciplines including Biotechnology, Biochemistry, Biophysics, Plant Physiology, Plant Pathology, Plant Breeding and Genetics and dessiminate bioinformatics education through lot of emphasis on theoretical as well as on hand practical training. In addition to teaching of the university’s students, centre also actively imparts bioinformatics knowledge to students, researchers and academicians of other universities by timely conducting on-hand trainings and workshops both on wide and specific areas of bioinformatics and system biology with special reference to the applications in agricultural biotechnology. The center provides strong in silico support to the ongoing research activities in the University and Department of Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering. The centre has been actively involved in creating useful tools and databases which have been successfully integrated into the wet lab research. Nonetheless, the centre also provides support to the students of other universities to persue their research in various areas of bioinformatics and complete their dissertations.

Objectives

Provide software for simulation studies and scientific packages for sequence search & homology finding, annotation and protein structure inference.

Provide update list of publication and technologies in the areas of Molecular Diagnostics and Signal Transduction.

Introduce the post-graduate students with the paradigms of computational biology in relation to science of ‘Omics’ viz Genomics, Proteomics and regulomics etc.

Generation of manpower for the development of modeling software and databases.

Building Biological databases for analysis of High through put experimental data.

Mandate

Conducting research in various areas of Bioinformatics

Maintain an information repository in the area of biotic and abiotic stresses and molecular diagnostics in crop plants.

Provide a database for the signal transduction pathways and their components related to invoking of disease and disease resistance.

Develop training modules in the field of Bioinformatics giving knowledge of designing and function of the databases and modeling softwares for proteins and nucleic acids.

Develop public information resource and online educational, packages as well as databases (for aforesaid areas) for specific users.

Provide a network for linking crop biotechnology scientists.

Following are the facilities

Two servers and 40 computers operated in both WINDOWS and 2 LINUX environments.

Internet Connectivity, Xerox, Printing & around the clock internet connectivity facilities.

State of art Bioinformatics software packages such as DNASTAR, Exome, Hypercham, Shrodinger, Genocheck, Optgene, GENOCLUSTER, GCG, MOE, AMBER8 along with several free public database & tools are available.

Some of the available tools are: SWISS PDB VIEWER,VMD, Rasmol, MolMol, DNAMAN, MEGA, SPSS, PHYLIP, WINBOOT, WINGENE, WINPEP & MASQUIT

Main Thrust Areas

Information Dissemination in Biotechnology

Protein structure modeling & Drug design

Metabolic pathway modeling

Plant Molecular Biology

Signal Transduction

Biotic and abiotic stress

Molecular Diagnostics

Our Tools & Databases

Seed Pro-Nutra Care: Database for Seed Storage Protein

Phyto-Onco Therapeutic: Database for Anti-Cancerous & Anti-Oxidant Plants

Tripath: Database for three economically important fungal wheat pathogens

Phyto Diab Care: Phytoremedial Database for Antidiabetics

Cry-bt Identifier ( Database for Cry-bt gene )

Pathogenic Bacterial Genome Viewer

Seed storage Proteins in Rice

SIMPRIS: SIGNIFICANT MEDICINAL PLANT RESOURCE OF INDIAN SUBCONTINENT