Web Based Platform and analysis tools for data intensive discovery

In this era of data intensive research, web-based tools  and  platforms  are  crucial  for enhancing its translational potential. In this context, MitoLSDB and MtSNPscore will be discussed which were designed to systematically compile and analyze the role of human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variation in diseases, respectively.  MtSNPscore is a combined evidence approach for assessing cumulative impact of mitochondrial variations in disease. It is a comprehensive weighted scoring system for identification of mtDNA variation that can impact pathogenicity and would likely be disease-associated. Our  analysis  of  ataxia  and  other  publicly  available data  indicated that  rare  variants comprise  the  largest  part  of  disease-associated  variations,  which  is  contrary  to  the otherwise popular common variant hypothesis.  During the analysis of datasets through MtSNPscore, it was realized that there is no central database of mtDNA variations with standard data ontology and format.  This lead to the creation of MitoLSDB, a database encompassing information from 5231 individuals, 675 populations and 27 phenotypes. This provides a comprehensive resource to study genotype to phenotype correlations. The  main  goal  of  MitoLSDB  is  to  provide  a  central  platform  for  direct  submissions  of novel variants that can be curated by the Mitochondrial Research Community. MitoLSDB houses information on all 37 genes in each population amounting to 132397 variants, 5147 unique variants.

The  last part  of  the  talk  will  provide  a  very  brief  overview  of  the  Open  Source  Drug Discovery (OSDD) project, an alternative innovation model for drug discovery. Launched in September 2008,  funded by the Government of India, OSDD is a Council of Scientific and  Industrial  Research  (CSIR)  lead initiative  towards  developing  drugs  for  neglected diseases with global  partnerships.  Its first target disease is Tuberculosis (TB) and has now been extended to Malaria. OSDD  is  a  global  community  of  7600  registered  users from  over  a  130  countries. The  major  goal of  OSDD  is  to  facilitate  access  of  new drugs/combinations  to  Indian  TB  patients  by  paving  way  for  their  availability  by conducting clinical  trials in  India. The talk will give a brief on how crowdsourcing has been used as a way to solve complex challenging problems in drug discovery specifically focusing on systems biology models of Mycobacterium-tuberculosis towards prediction of potential drug targets.