作者：
Shekhar, ChandraMain Text
In the U.S. or Europe
India is often associated with information technology or service outsourcing not with scientific research. Nonetheless largely unnoticed by western media India has been making strides toward becoming a research powerhouse in the life sciences. Enjoying unique manpower and cost advantages this country now has several major universities and scientific institutions with active programs in this area. Spurred by supportive government agencies these institutions are producing an increasing number of publications patents and industry spin-offs. Consider Bangalore-based Institute of Bioinformatics (IOB) a relatively small 40 member outfit that has nonetheless become a major global player in proteomics research. In less than a decade of existence the institute has produced what is arguably the world's best curated protein database and is well on its way to replicating this success in cancer biomarkers proteogenomics and signaling pathways. “We undertake projects that most other labs would find extremely hard” says IOB's founder and director Akhilesh Pandey M.D. Ph.D. who is also a researcher at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “And we accomplish them in a time frame that would be virtually unthinkable elsewhere.”
Proteogenomics the use of proteomics to annotate genes is an area where IOB has carved out a niche for itself.
This is not a vain boast. Take for instance the Institute's Human Protein Reference Database an unprecedented online compendium of curated protein information. Containing information about more than 27000 proteins and 39000 protein-protein interactions the database is the fruit of several years of effort from curators who sifted through more than 2000000 research papers. Unlike most other protein databases IOB's creation encapsulates virtually every relevant feature of each protein—function sequence domains motifs interactions expression localization modifications disease associations—and includes results obtained w
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