In an announcement made on Sunday India''s Open Source Drug Discovery (OSDD) initiative released the succesful results of "Connect 2 Decode" project.The aim of this project was to succesful deannotate the genomic information and biological signalling processs linked to M.tuberculosis genome.
The verified results of the comprehensive mapping of M.tuberculosis gene will be made publlicly available. Most drug companies treat their data as highly classified because it can lead to patents. Open source drug discovery reverses that model, making genome data publicly available.
The visual map of tuberculosis gene will now be freely available to the research scientists involved in the ongoing quest to develop more effective treatments against tuberculosis.
Tuberculosis is a major killer disease in many parts of the world.Tuberculosis can affect people from all economic backgrounds but the incidence of the disease and associated death rate is high among the poor probably due to poor living conditions, delayed diagnosis and immediate access to the proper health care facilities.
So far the conventional treatment available to Tuberculosis is based on multidrug therapy targeting various components of bacterial replication.The emergence of multidrug resistant bacterial strains have challenged the conventional therapy available leading to increased mortality worldwide.
The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research(CSIR) in India coordinated the efforts as hundreds of scientists combed through all the available scientific data about the TB genome and succesfully manged to assemble it into a visual map that shows how the bacteria’s different parts interact.
Under the Connect 2 Decode project, researchers and students pooled their time and skills using online tools to provide insights into 4000 genes of the deadly pathogen.The researchers also mapped the genes as they relate to functional interactions and pathways.
The mapping of the M.tuberculosis gene will lead to better understanding of bacterial replication process and genomic resistance.This will soon lead to development of much more effective sub- species specific antituberculosis drugs.
