IPW Rocks!!

Today the IPW Team was delighted to see the Mtb Network on a POSTER that they have generated in past few days. There was a lot of enthusiasm and excitement. Prabhakar tried his best to pin up the poster with help from the team, and Samik and Yukiko providing full support to them. The Project Director, Zakir Thomas, was also a part of this activity and the Volunteers captured the Team with their Network :)

Look forward for more from this dynamic and talented members of IPW..

Building strong India

The exciting science journey on second day at JNU started with presentation by Kiran katoch on "The Problem of TB in India, A Clinicians Perspective". Her speech gave us a clear view about problems in diagnosing TB as well as the current methods and the developing methods in diagnosing TB. After her speech we were gathering information regarding the importance of computational technology in life sciences. Presentation by GPS Raghava, Samik Ghosh and Hiroaki Kitano on bioinformatics threw limelight on computational biology.After having a good lunch, our journey continued with the presentation of work done by IPW team. To get ourselves refreshed IPW team got game for us using cell designer software (sow & grow). Science requires collaboration of information from various disciplines and this was exemplified yesterday. We as TBGOs learnt the basics of cell designer which can be used for our future strategy.

After a number of serious lectures, we had an enjoyable interaction with our PI, our team members and ZT sir. We all got to know about each other and shared our experiences.We had a good dinner and went to YVK eagerly waiting for the dawn to continue our journey.

JNU day of C2D '10

After an interesting first day of the C2D '10 conference, with a rocking TBGO team's drama performance, IPW's funny video, the annotators looked forward to a normal day at JNU.

Kiran Kotoch talked about the problems of TB in India in a Clinicians' perspective. Some of the clinical difficulties encountered are early diagnosis of the disease, multi-system involvement, Co-infections, latent tuberculosis, Dormant infection, etc., and the prevention of the disease and vaccines administration is a challenge. It is interesting that no new drugs has been administered for the last 20 yrs.!!!
Some of the methods under program to diagnose the disease are sputum smear microscopy, radiology to a limited extent, culture diagnosis, line probe assays / PCR or biopsy, FNAC, specimen from affected organ. Sputum microscopy is relatively faster and the resports are available in 24 hours. But this can be done only when there are atleast 10000 baccilli. Moreover a dead bacilli and a live one cannot be differentiated. Other tests that are used are gamma interferon assay, chromatography – mycolic acid patterns by HPLC, macrophage based methods – viability of mycobacterium but low sensitivity, patch test with TB MPB 64 (– not evaluated in endemic countries).

GPS Raghava introduced to us the drugPedia and MycoTB which is an In silico approach. MycoTBis an open source software for managing Mysobacterium tuberculosis data exclusively. Samik Ghosh and Matsuaka Yukiko taught the participants of the conference about the software, Cell Designer. After lunch the members of the IPW team helped the other members from the Glycomics, Gene Ontology Annotation team, Protein structure/Fold Annotation team, Glycomics of Mtb team and Immunome of Mtb team. They were patient to teach all the participants even when being asked again and again.

At dinner time, the TBGO team had a round of introduction . The team leaders shared their experiences with the members and they taught the members the mistakes that they see in the members' annotated sheets. Members was recognized by their E-mail id.s rather than their names!!! Most of the members belong to the Hanger's group and he was on cloud nine whenever his name or his team members talk aloud!!! Fellow annotators thanking Swathi Gandhi's helping character, Chotu re-enacting his piece of drama, VS answering the questions from the annotators were some of the interesting happenings of the discussion. ZT joined the team later in the discussion and enquired the annotators about their experience. Most of the students agreed that their motivational factor was the thought that their work would help save millions of Tb patients across the globe!!! One of the annotators Hemant expressed his view on the Indian educational system and suggested that students shouldn't be evaluated by the marks given, but by their hardwork, innovation, intellect and commitment.

After a nice dinner, the participants returned to Vishwa Yuva Kendra for a good night sleep!

TBGOs day

Most awaited day " C2D conference " started with warm welcome by Zakir Thomas follwed by introduction of OSDD theme and the potentials of this program by our SKB.we had speakers from various parts of the world. We had an interactive session with the cheif guest hon'ble ministry of science. After a very long serious session, we the TBGO team breaked this seriousness by a comic skit (TBGO annatation club) which made everyone to sit straight. TBGO rocked the first day. TBGO GOing..........
The TBGO team after the conference went to India Gate and had very nice time with our friends.After having our dinner, we went to sleep dreaming about tomorrow's exciting science journey.

BUILDING STRONG INDIA

INDIA stands unique among other countries for its" UNITY IN DIVERSITY" and I experience it now. Number of people with different age groups, languages,custom have joined here to build a strong INDIA-FREE from poverty, disease through science. The young minds are ready for science journey to build a strong INDIA through "C2D".This will serve as a starting point for the indian economic progress with experienced minds guiding he enthusuastic young minds

TBGO Rocked.........

Woww...What a start!!!!!!
TBGO team rocked C2D...
Three Cheers for all the students. 9 Team leaders joined us almost a week before the conference. After long working sessions of curations, they practiced whole night to prepare a skit which they executed very very well on the stage.
They recieved great applause!!!! Guys the skit was in high demand and we performed the skit again.... a special screening for SKB :)
After a long, tiring day, students got to enjoy a lot at the INDIA GATE.
Ubuntu Chris, DiponLove, The Moderator, Sleeper Deeper, SS, Silent peacemakers accomapanied by other members and the managers with our very own Ekta.
But we won't stop here. There are many goals yet to be accomplished.

Higher and Higher!!

One of the Historic moments in the course of Science where all the ideas that prevailed, will change forever. The concept of Science which was considered to be closed Science will not be close anymore after this historic moment, and that was only possible because of a eminent person who came up with this brilliant idea, and he was none other than SKB. It is great to be a part of this programme. The students got very much motivated under the presence of our beloved SKB. The students are all now charged up and are ready to walk the path that our beloved sir shown us and nothing seems to be possible in the course of Science.

At last the wait is over!!! The students arrived VYK with face full of smiles and excitement.. They met their team members. They were much more excited by the surprise gifts..

In this Pleasant morning, the OSDD c2d programme started off with a welcome by ZT and the students are awaiting the most awaited moment, the Speech of the Minister of Science and Technology Dr.Prithviraj Chavan. SKB introduced the chief guest to the gathering.

Yesterday was another day of curation work. Filtering all the wrong entries was a troubling experience but we were happy about the quality of the entries that we have achieved. Though it was a long serious day, we had some laughs too. Chotu declared that he had 7 hours of sleep (which made the other members mad, as they had less than 5 hours of sleep) but added after a pause that it was for the last 3 days together, which made the team roar with laughter. Its proud to say that Chotu Lumbu has polished his linguistic skills that he is almost a tamilian in his talk (But he is from Delhi). Ubuntu also tried her speech in Hindi, only to say Bhoot (Ghost) instead of Bhookh (Hunger). We tried some telugu, kashmiri and bengali too. The day was filled with Krazzy activities, with everyone laughing at each other (there were LOTS of reasons for us to laugh). We were tweeting all the day, with some new designations (Eg. Moderator turned to Room keeper when she was trying to change the temp. of Air Conditioner and being the door-man(woman). She was also bugging the bugger bhaiya toooo much.) We even discovered that Bugger Baiya has a good talent of story telling which we enjoyed late at night. With the last day of curation work to look forward, we went to sleep.

Today, it was a lazy start (being the last day of work). We completed our curation work, had some snaps together. But altogether it was a fast day that we had to rush through. Our friends have already arrived and Bugger Baiya was having constant calls which made all of us to look forward to meet our friends!!!

Fishing to Super-Computing

With a bright sunshine, we (TBGO team) took off a good start to another day of curation work. Though a regular day, it was filled with knowledge, wisdom, fun and frolic. Chotu Lumbu's crazy heights (especially at night), the Moderator's unsuccessful attempts of peace-making, SS's constant curation, Sleeper Deeper's snore filled work, the Hunger (Bugger Bhaiya) happy-GO-lucky work, Dancing Sangeetha and Rajeshwari's moves, the Coffee Freak (Ubuntu, taking two coffee cups at a time) really freaked out. The Hanger, were some of the day's fun moments. The Moderator took on the job of moderating the AC temperature control as well! The Silent Keepers (Sangeetha and Rajeshwari) were amazingly stay-put @ the silent zone.

We did some very very serious work as well!!! Rajender introduced us to his Zebra fishes (Fishes know him better than anyone). We even asked them (fishes) to eat well and drink lots of water. We got trapped at the Orbitrap Mass Spec room for a loooooong session (Anyway we learnt a lot from Rhishi). The buzzing sound of the printer confused us with the MassSpec (& also broke Ubuntu's sleep). Solexa Man (Ashok) explained about Solexa (The famous genome sequence analyser) and we were confused who was solexa, the Man or the machine?!! We had a session with Pandey ji and his TB (terabytes) supercomputers.

We spoke to SKB via Skype. He enquired about our work and our stay here at NDelhi. He encouraged us to keep up this good work.

After the hard work, we went to our welcoming bed at night only to dream about our GOids and literature papers!!!!

BIG network

The IPW Team is eagerly waiting for the BIG network of metabolic reactions which is being generated by Cell Designer at NIPER, Mohali. Anup, a core member of the IPW Team, is working online, with Kaveri, from NIPER and closely following this job which will finish in a couple of hours.

Anupam and Ahalyaa are working really hard to reach their targets for today. Aparna and Vijaychitra are focusing on some of the difficult to annotate proteins in their set, whereas Kausik works ONLY with difficult to annotate proteins. Another interesting Group is Akanksha and Prabhakar, trying their level best to understand PPEs and lipoproteins :)

Rohit is busy making presentations and having serious discussions with Anu, who has joined us from NCL yesterday. We also have with us Samik and Yukiko from SBI and they are really excited to meet the Team. Yasha and Gayathri from Group 4 are really exhausted with too many hypothetical proteins to annotate!! And finally there is Ashwini and Priti who sit quietly during the sessions to surprise the Team with a huge number of proteins that they annotate every hour!!

IPW is all about team work and the Team is on the lawn for the evening play session......more to come after this break!

Crazy "GO"ing !!!!!

Yet another Day..........So many curations left!!!!!!!

But hey guys....we won't let the day go just like that.........

With all the doubts (with lots of arguements and fighting: Dipon and Deepa) being cleared among the team leaders and lots of entries in the final sheet, TBGO has gone off to a flying start. Converting electronic annotations to manuel literature, formating the entries, drinking coffee and tea in between, discussions with VS, planning the work with Deeksha and Saakshi, made up most of the day. But hey, we did have some fun doubled with the added members Sangeetha and Rajeshwari.

Bored??? Bugger Bhaiya (DiponLOVE: he wants this in red... his fav colour..... but guys red is for wrong annotations and how come your whole sheet is red?????????????) will entertain us with his wit! Scribling on the white board, waiting for the hanger ubuntu to hang (so we can crack some jokes), calling each others by funny pet names, were some of our pass times. The Moderator (Sham) became the moderator between The Hanger (DiponLOVE) and Sleeper Deeper (Deepa), who finds the biggest challenge is to keep the air around them calm! Chotu Lambu (Vivek - Youngest and tallest), who unfortunately doesn't like his most dearest name, laughs like a mad man whenever he is curating his entries. His madness was at its highest, especially when he started banging his head and swirling in his chair :D :D Silent Suresh (SS) is the most silent worker of this group. Peacemaker Karthi is the right hand of Bugger Bhaiya. (Bhaiya has a left hand vacancy. Lets inform VS!) Ubuntu Chris is the proudest of all cause everyone loves to use ubuntu (:Ubuntu herself) which everyone find it difficult to use (: Dipon), as it gets hanged. Chris the Great Ubuntu resolves the problem of others with her great ubuntu features and accesories. The newcomers are trying to maintain their silent image (which is really hard to keep up with the rest!!!!). We have yet another member... Yipppyyyyyyyyy none another than JADU (Ubuntu Chris)... Our own JADU from KOI MIL GAYA.... Hey aliens are also GOing.!!!! (special request from Moderator: No Red) So GOing!!!!

Happy GOing.......

P.S.: Nicknames are patented to TBGO. Copying is strictly prohibited. Terms and Conditions applied.

The Last Mile

IPW Team is pushing hard to finish the last mile of data QC before coming to the on-site phase at Teen Murti. The Team at this hour (11:14 pm) is sitting in the lounge of the Guest house concentrating on the task. They have shown unending commitment to finish this humongous task in such a small period of time!!!

But this is not all... The Team is very active when it comes to play sessions too!!! They take a 20 mins break every evening in the lawns of HRDC, playing and having fun.

As most of the selected C2D members have boarded their trains, the eagerness to meet the Virtual Team is getting more intense.

Cheers to all the members who have made C2d possible!!!!

Get Ready for the Swirl

Many of the participants of Connect to Decode must be boarding trains today and tomorrow. Do take enough rest while in train. When you are at the onsite phase your PIs have plenty of assignments for you that might keep you awake almost the whole night during your stay. The IPW and TBGO team are working without a break to meet the schedule. This is probably the most intensive QC exercise you can come across. So its work time folks. But you bet, you are going to have a ball of a time. It will be one great learning exercise – for everyone- including the Connect to Decoders, the PIs, the organisers and the rest of us. All of us are eagerly awaiting your arrival. Buckle up for the fast drive!

TBGO Workshop Day1

TBGO C2D: Gene Ontology Annotation by the students across the world. And now they are here in Delhi for the final rounds of their work.

Lets hear from them their experiences for the DAY1.

Hey, We (PSGians) landed here at the Nizamuddin Station with hand full of luggages that we can hardly carry. Mr. Sukhbir received us with a big smile and with a weird sense of direction! We finally reached IGIB Guest House. After lunch with Sukhbir and Deeksha, we went to IGIB lab, where we met our Guide, Dr. Vinod Scaria. Dr. Zakir Thomas gave us a visit. He even sneaked at Suresh's work and gave him a shock (Suresh didn't know that he was talking to ZT)! Anyway, we finally ended at the conference room with a room full of scientists and "kids" (Thats how they called us!). After surviving the questions that were bombarded at us, we got to continue our work! We returned to our rooms late at night, to a much awaited cosy bed and looking forward to tomorrow's dawn!

Sunday!!! Hurray... Its a holiday... I guess not! :( We worked! Dipon and Vivek joined us for lunch and ever since, they are stuck with us! Since it was Easter, Shamini (Sham), Dipon, Suresh and Myself went on a road trip to St. Sacred Heart Cathedral with Mr. Saurabh, late in the evening. We pushed cars (boys did this exercise and VS helped too!), jumped on the autorickshaw (which got punctured) and even trended on our footwear. We roamed the streets of Delhi to find Palika Market and we finally found a bottle of water (Bisleri Bottle)! Open Central Park was crowded but we had the time to relish our bottle of water! We found kids dancing MJ's moves on the road, woman washing her clothes, Delhi band playing some tune and the calm trees shadowing the streets at night. We got on the Metro, saw Hanuman Mandir and returned back to IGIB. Poor Deepa, Karthi and Vivek. They were stuck with small notebooks and annotation work. Dont worry, they'll get their due credit (I hope!).