Bio Saga Blog - A Chronicle of Life Sciences & Informatics

Three separate research projects have pinpointed genetic flaws linked to schizophrenia. One of these, reported in the journal Nature, could mean a fifteen-fold increase in risk.However, one of the researchers warned that schizophrenia is so complex genes alone will only ever partially explain the illness at best. Scientists have suggested that an individual's risk of schizophrenia is roughly half dictated by their genetic make-up, and half by other factors during their lives. However, on both sides of this equation, much has still to be revealed about the precise causes. The three large-scale projects have taken a step towards unravelling the genetic picture of schizophrenia. Do you want to know more? Be a part of the XTractor community. XTractor is the first of its kind - Literature alert service , that provides manually curated and annotated sentences for the Keywords of user preference. XTractor maps the extracted entities (genes, processes, drugs, diseases etc) to multiple...

A Subject Tracer™ Information Blog developed and created by Internet expert, author, keynote speaker and consultant Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. for monitoring biological informatics (health informatics, neuroinformatics, biodiversity informatics and biomolecular informatics resources and sites on the Internet. This blog page has a good, comprehensive listing of very handy useful bio web resource sites, the blog is divided into the following categories: BIOLOGICAL INFORMATICS HEALTH INFORMATICS (Medical Informatics) NEUROINFORMATICS (NI) BIODIVERSITY INFORMATICS (BDI) BIOMOLECULAR INFORMATICS (BioInformatics) Online Tools and Web Applications Current Subject Tracer™ Information Blogs Be a part of the XTractor community. XTractor is the first of its kind - Literature alert service , that provides manually curated and annotated sentences for the Keywords of user preference. XTractor maps the extracted entities (genes, processes, drugs, diseases etc) to multiple ontologies and en...

Trials of the drug, known as Rember, in 321 patients showed an 81% difference in rate of mental decline compared with those not taking the treatment. The Aberdeen University researchers said the drug targeted the build-up of a specific protein in the brain. Alzheimer's experts were optimistic about the results, but said larger trials were now needed. Presenting the results at the International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease, Professor Claude Wischik said the drug may be on the market by 2012. Do you want to know more? Be a part of the XTractor community. XTractor is the first of its kind - Literature alert service , that provides manually curated and annotated sentences for the Keywords of user preference. XTractor maps the extracted entities (genes, processes, drugs, diseases etc) to multiple ontologies and enables customized report generation. With XTractor the sentences are categorized into biological significant relationships and it also provides the user with th...

A research team from the University of Maastricht, The Netherlands , found biomarkers to detect the presence of ruptured atherosclerotic plaques. They observed that the blood of individuals with ruptured atherosclerotic plaques contained antibodies reactive against two peptides, E1 and E12. The presence of these antibodies was detected extremely early after the onset of symptoms of a heart attack, according to the investigators. They caution, though, that further studies on additional patients are needed before this work can be translated into the clinic. Be a part of the XTractor community. XTractor is the first of its kind - Literature alert service , that provides manually curated and annotated sentences for the Keywords of user preference. XTractor maps the extracted entities (genes, processes, drugs, diseases etc) to multiple ontologies and enables customized report generation. With XTractor the sentences are categorized into biological significant relationships and it also ...

Molecular Connections , a life sciences informatics major, is now looking at acquiring small and medium-sized companies as part of its inorganic growth strategy. "The acquisition will depend on good technology fit and domain expertise that could plug into our products and services,'' Jignesh Bhate, CEO, Molecular Connections Pvt Ltd told Pharmabiz . "We are aggressively scouting for companies both in India and abroad. If we lay our hands on an international company, we will have access to their customers. In the case of an Indian company, we are essentially looking at a synergy in content and database,'' Bhate said. To facilitate these acquisitions, Molecular Connections has identified three options to raise funds: internal accruals, foreign loans and venture funds. The mode of raising capital will depend on the size of the deal and the company is in talks with foreign banks. Around $2 million was raised from Barings Private Equity in 2006 for expansion. Early...

DNA is pretty straight forward. With its simple composition and linear structure, it easily lends itself to mathematical models. Not so with proteins. In fact, proteins are an order of magnitude more complex than DNA. It is proteins, not DNA, that carry out the cell's heavy lifting. However, with their intricately folded three-dimensional shapes determining a seemingly endless range of possible functions and their manifold interactions with other proteins and with DNA, the leg-work required to mathematically capture the protein universe seems absurd. That is why a team of Harvard Medical School researchers have decided to attack this issue from an entirely new angle. Rather than build a mountain range of proteomic data one grain of dirt at a time, they have developed a computer program that can take on the responsibility of assembling such a gargantuan model. "Through incorporating principles of engineering, we've developed a language that can describe biology in the same ...

Bioinformatics Courses in India A List of Bioinformatics Courses and Degrees Worldwide Wiley - Bioinformatics - Courses Bioinformatics Programs and Bioinformatics Courses Bioinformatics Degrees Be a part of the XTractor community. XTractor is the first of its kind - Literature alert service , that provides manually curated and annotated sentences for the Keywords of user preference. XTractor maps the extracted entities (genes, processes, drugs, diseases etc) to multiple ontologies and enables customized report generation. With XTractor the sentences are categorized into biological significant relationships and it also provides the user with the ability to create his own database for a set of Key terms. Also the user could change the Keywords of preference from time to time, with changing research needs. The categorized sentences could then be tagged and shared across multiple users. Thus XTractor proves to be a platform for getting real-time highly accurate data along with the abi...

Previously blogging about Smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research discussed about the latest trends in literature abstraction, alert services and analysis tools. This time as a sequel check out one of the finest alert service using the web 2.0 technology. It is absolutely FREE! It is very simple, just visit the site www.xtractor.in and register. Almost immediately you are provided with a user-name and pw to access the alert service. Smart tools to track, analyze and visualize research II Talking about the development in the field of literature and scientific publication search. Looking beyond NLP some of the advancements and service models based on NLP and other advanced methods. Today to the user's delight there are quite a few companies and organization that provide services that absolutely make a scientist life easy! These services revolve around customized alert services for selected search terms, specific research area of interest even more so pertaining to a ...

18 Ways to Improve your PubMed searches Be a part of the XTractor community. XTractor is the first of its kind - Literature alert service , that provides manually curated and annotated sentences for the Keywords of user preference. XTractor maps the extracted entities (genes, processes, drugs, diseases etc) to multiple ontologies and enables customized report generation. With XTractor the sentences are categorized into biological significant relationships and it also provides the user with the ability to create his own database for a set of Key terms. Also the user could change the Keywords of preference from time to time, with changing research needs. The categorized sentences could then be tagged and shared across multiple users. Thus XTractor proves to be a platform for getting real-time highly accurate data along with the ability to Share and collaborate. Sign up it's free, and takes less than a minute. Just click here: www.xtractor.in .

Bioinformatics firm Biosof said today that it is working with IBM to provide a server platform for its PredictProtein product for analyzing protein structure and function. The collaboration will enable Biosof’s customers to use ProteinPredict through a virtual private network or on-site installation while running IBM’s high-performance computing hardware, New York-based Biosof said in a statement. “Working with IBM provides our customers the unique opportunity to combine a secure infrastructure and cutting-edge hardware needed to run our highly resource-intensive algorithms,” said Burkhardt Rost, a manager of Biosof. Be a part of the XTractor community. XTractor is the first of its kind - Literature alert service , that provides manually curated and annotated sentences for the Keywords of user preference. XTractor maps the extracted entities (genes, processes, drugs, diseases etc) to multiple ontologies and enables customized report generation. With XTractor the sentences are ...

Bangalore, India — Indian Life Sciences Informatics Company, Molecular Connections announced today, the release of XTractor™, a first of its kind manually curated literature alert service. XTractor™ can be accessed free of charge by the scientific community world wide. XTractor™ acts as a literature alert service, which provides scientists with manually annotated scientific facts from literature. It enables researchers to be up-to-date with the latest scientific publications in the STM arena, as and when they are published. Once registered the scientists have the freedom to choose their keywords of choice and also set the frequency at which they wish to receive these alerts. Mining scientific literature to retrieve accurate hits or extract entity relationship has always been a long-standing problem in research. It is a daunting task to identify the right gene name or the right drug name and extract relations/association with diseases, processes; pathways etc accurately ...

Sigma-Aldrich announced that its highly acclaimed chemistry review journal, Aldrichimica Acta, has again been ranked #1 by Impact Factor, out of 56 similar journals in the field of Organic Chemistry. In 2007, the latest year for which such rankings are available, the Acta achieved an Impact Factor of 11.929. The Acta was also ranked #1 in 2006 and 2005. These rankings appear annually in the Science Edition of Journal Citation Reports(R) (JCR), which is published by Thomson ISI(R). JCR, Science Edition, tracks close to 5,900 international science journals annually and offers quantifiable statistical data, which allows the systematic and objective ranking of journals by relative importance within their subject categories. The Aldrichimica Acta publishes in-depth reviews on topics of current interest to chemists. It is published four times a year and distributed at no charge to about 130,000 subscribers worldwide who are members of the scientific community.

14 July 2008 Molecular Connections bags the most coveted ‘The Small Enterprise of the Year’ award at the “Emerging India” Awards organized by ICICI-CNBC. Molecular Connections Private Ltd. (MC) – a pioneering life-sciences informatics company from India was adjudged the most promising company of the year by CNBC-ICICI for the Emerging India Awards out of more than 3,00,000 entries. The award was presented to Molecular Connections in a grand ceremony in London by the India’s Honorable Commerce Minister, Mr. Kamalnath, Steel Baron, Mr. L N Mittal and Mr. K. V Kamath the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of ICICI Bank. The Emerging India awards is the biggest business award in India and in this year was judged across 13 categories with more than 325,000 entries. Conveying his views while receiving the award, Mr. Jignesh Bhate, Founder and CEO, Molecular Connections said “I am proud to accept this award on behalf of the entire Molecular Connections Team. This award is a reflect...

Now this looks very interesting, three pharma big wigs getting together for something they have in common. The firm would cater to the niche requirement these pharmas have in the area of drug discovery. Enlight Biosciences will them the power to speed development of drug-discovery tools. The three pharmas and PureTech have ponied up a total of $39 million that Enlight will direct toward “breakthrough technologies that can fundamentally alter drug discovery and development.” Enlight is focused on “pre-competitive” technology that will “connect preclinical research, clinical development, and medical practice,” according to a company statement. The company noted that despite the recent emergence of “vital enabling technologies” such as PCR, PET, RNAi, and gene microarrays, “over the last few years most traditional life science investors have focused their funding on late-stage therapeutic programs.” As a result, Enlight said, “important technologies that could be of great strateg...

Scientists report a remarkable improvement in Alzheimer's transgenic mice following treatment with a new drug. The study provides the first demonstration that an ionophore, a compound that transports metal ions across cell membranes, can elicit rapid and pronounced improvement in neuropathology and cognitive function in mouse models of Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Recent research has implicated dysregulation of metal ions in the brain, particularly copper and zinc, in the pathogenesis of AD and the damaging accumulation of amyloid beta (Aβ) protein that is characteristic of this devastating disease. The ionophore clioquinol (CQ), an 8-hydroxyquinoline, has been shown to increase intracellular copper and zinc levels and decrease Aβ levels in cultured cells and in the brains of transgenic (Tg) AD mice. However, further studies in mice and humans demonstrated that brain entry of CQ was quite limited. This research is published by Cell Press in the July 10th issue of the journal Neur...

Molecular Connections bagged the ‘Small Enterprise of the Year’ title. It was also the winner of the non-retail trade category . CNBC-TV18's Emerging India Award recognised the achievements of those SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises), which dared to think global in a glittering function in London, on Tuesday. Microqual Techno - a company that provides microwave components to telecom operators walked away with ‘Best SME of the Year’ title. In the auto ancillary and engineering category, Shivalik Bimetal Controls walked away with the title. And in the FMCG, Food & Agri-business category, plant nutrient and insecticides manufacturer Aries Agro was the winner. The CNBC-TV18’s Emerging India Awards felicitated winners in 17 categories including the Woman Entrepreneur of the Year - which was bagged by Avanti Shah of Next Brick Solutions Ltd.

Here is another, quite interesting blog page with a list of Top 25 Indian Bioinformatics Companies by a fellow blogger Nabeel Basheer, while there is no actual criteria behind listing these 25 companies. It is a good handy list just in alphabetic order for all those job seekers. More so a good chronicle of the local informatics industry as well. 1. Accelrys Software Solution Pvt Ltd. 12th Floor, Discover, ITPL, White Field, Bangalore-65. www.accelrys.com 2. Apticraft Systems (P) Ltd. 142, Electronics Complex, Pardeshipura, Indore – 452010 (M.P.), India www.apticraft.com 3. Aptuit Informatics Plot No. 100-103, Export Promotion Industrial Park, White Field, Bangalore-560066 www.aptiuit.com 4. Bigtec J. K. Towers, 8th Block, Sangam Circle,46th Cross, Bangalore-560082. www.bigtec.org 5. Bijam Biosciences Private Limited Nagarjuna Hills, Hyderabad 500 082, India www.nagarjunagroup.com 6. Bio Base Databases India Pvt Ltd. Crescent Towers, 4th Floor, No : 32/1, Crescent Road, Bnagalore -...

Here is a abstract that i had submitted at the Plant & Animal Genomes XI Conference January 11-15, 2003 Town & Country Convention Center San Diego, CA. I do not know how relevant is the issue to this day. If any one is interested or if any one is working in these lines, do let me know also pour in your suggestions and comments if any. Fiber quality in cotton is one very vital trait demanding international focus in both scientific and commercial arena. Phytohormones play a major role in all cellular processes in plant development. We have focused our study on the influence of phytohormones in improving the staple length of cotton fiber. There are several pathways, which influence staple length in cotton, among which we have concentrated on the expression pattern of Lipid Transfer Protein3. A cotton fiber protein gene Ltp3, Lipid transfer protein3 (coding for a LTP3 protein), is specifically expressed in fibers at high levels, during the elongation stage. Its levels reach a maxim...

The problem with antibiotics is that, eventually, bacteria outsmart them and become resistant. But by targeting the gene that confers such resistance, a new drug may be able to finally outwit them. Rockefeller University scientists tested the new drug, called Ceftobiprole, against some of the deadliest strains of multidrug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria, which are responsible for the great majority of staphylococcal infections worldwide, both in hospitals and in the community. The research, to be published in the August 2008 issue of the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy , looked at how well Ceftobiprole worked against bacterial clones that had already developed resistance to other drugs. In every case, Ceftobiprole won. “It just knocked out the cells 100 percent,” says the study’s lead investigator, Alexander Tomasz, head of the Laboratory of Microbiology at Rockefeller. Previous research had already shown that — in general — Ceftobiprole was highly effect...

Two Texas A&M University researchers have developed a computational tool that will help scientists more accurately study complex units of clustered genes, called operons, in bacteria. The tool, which allows scientists to analyze many bacterial genomes at once, is more accurate than previous methods because it starts from experimentally validated data instead of from statistical predictions, they say. The researchers hope their tool will lead to a better understanding of the complex genetic mechanisms involved in a cell’s functioning. “Eventually, we want to try to improve our tool to make it better and more accurate,” Sze said. “Although our tool can analyze a lot of bacteria at the same time, it compares each bacterium to E. coli separately. So the ultimate goal would be to develop a tool that will analyze them all together.” Do you want to know more?

The country's leading drug makers, including Ranbaxy Laboratories, Cipla, Cadila Pharmaceuticals, Nicholas Piramal and Wockhardt, will soon withdraw about 60 drug combinations from the market. The voluntary move comes a little more than a year after the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), the central authority that approves new drugs for marketing, had asked the drug makers to withdraw the ‘combination drugs' as they are "unnecessary" and may pose health hazards. The Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) had banned 294 combination drugs sold under nearly 1,053 brand names from the market in June 2007. Since then, the pharma industry and the the drug authority have been locked in a legal battle. Do you want to know more?

The company provides database products to pharmaceutical companies for drug discovery and development. Betting big on the transition taking place in the global pharmaceutical industry, the company is now looking to grow through both inorganic and organic routes. Molecular Connections is a joint venture between Idea2solutions, a venture capital arm promoted by the founders of Dr Reddy's group and a bioinformatics research centre in Singapore. The mid-sized company has on its rolls about 200 employees with expertise in drug discovery, informatics and information technology. With a view to gain newer customers and market access in Europe and Japan, Molecular Connections , headquartered in Bangalore, is planning to acquire a firm in Europe. The European firm, employing around 200, is a provider of bioinformatics for customers mainly in Europe and Japan. The deal, involving 100 per cent buyout of the European firm, would cost about $10 million to Molecular Connections. Molecular Connec...