Journal d'informatique et de biologie des systèmes

Bioinformatics is the application of information technology to the field of molecular biology. In formal education, a curriculum is the set of courses, and their content, offered at a school or university. Curriculum design should take into account intentions and outcomes. It should encourage students to make choices and explore their consequences. Hence, the need arises for developing a new method for curriculum development for a course in Bioinformatics (which is a truly interdisciplinary in nature). Systems Biology Approach is a biology-based inter- disciplinary study field that focuses on the systematic study of complex interactions in biological systems, thus using a new perspective (holism instead of reduction) to study them. We have evolved a new curriculum design using the System Biology Approach (SRU Model) for the M.Sc. bioinformatics course in the Department of Bioinformatics in Sri Ramachandra University, India. The curriculum is designed to follow the three tier architecture model. The results have been very encouraging and this Curriculum Design model is portable for any other courses.and the details are discussed.

Proteins constitute the important constituent of the cellular machinery. The comparative analysis of non-membrane proteins (nMPs) between prokaryotes and eukaryotes carried out to determine the biasedness in amino acid distribution. On comparison, the results revealed that ‘Ala’ is the dominant amino acid in prokaryotic nMPs while ‘Lys, Ser and Cys’ are the dominant amino acids in eukaryotic nMPs.

There is not yet a precise understanding of why flashing lights could be used to induce photosensitive migraine and epilepsy or why flashing lights could be used with therapeutic effect. Most Proteins and enzymes are activated by light. The chemiluminescence arising from protein- substrate reactions influences visual perception which can measured. This can be adapted diagnostically. Each protein-substrate reaction releases biophotons of light, commonly known as autofluorescence or chemiluminescence, the colour being unique to each protein-substrate reaction and the intensity being a measure of the rate of reaction. The degree of activation or deactivation of such reactions is dependent upon the prevailing reaction conditions i.e. the influence of systemic parameters (pH, temperature, levels of minerals, etc). Knowledge of the nature and structure of the physiological systems enables a wider understanding of systemic dysfunction and pathology(s). Specific neural (EEG) frequencies can be associated with visual perception. This can be adapted therapeutically i.e. to photostimulate inhibited protein-substrate reactions thereby regulating the function of each physiological system. By such biofeedback technique(s) it may be possible to treat, in a person-specific manner, the dysfunction associated with specific physiological and psychological disorders.

Microsatellites are the small DNA sequences with a tandem repetition of a particular motif of size 1-6. Microsatellites are found in all known genomes and play a significant role in many fields including DNA Fingerprinting, Population Studies, Forensics, Paternity Studies, Gene Regulation, Genetic Disorder Studies, and Evolution of Genomes. They are extensively used as genetic markers for identifying pathogenic bacteria and viruses. More over, they are found to be associated with the plasticity, adaptation and virulence of bacteria and viruses. Insilico analysis of microsatellites in various viruses would reveal many interesting facts about their evolution and adaptation. To the best of our knowledge, there is no comprehensive and exclusive database of all viral microsatellites that extracts all types of microsatellites with flexible extraction options. In this paper, we describe the details of a relational database named Viral Microsatellite Database (VMD). VMD currently hosts microsatellites of around 3500 viral genomes along with their alignments, locus information, imperfection info, protein info etc. The database can be accessed and downloaded for free for academic / research purposes from http://www.mcr.org.in/vmd.