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!