Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) with a dedicated bioinformatics group, has developed a new bioinformatics solution, ‘Anvaya’, which will help to simplify handling of large volume data for biologists.

The novel bioinformatics solution will help accelerate biology research. The product is a flexible and standalone bioinformatics workflow for genome analysis. “Anvaya consists of several bioinformatics tools, loosely coupled together in a coordinated system which can be executed in the form of a workflow. It will allow biologists to derive and validate information without getting into the intricacies, but will enable infer results and replicate experiments to accelerate analysis. Anvaya would bring to the desktop the numerous tools that a genomics researcher would use,” said Dr Rajendra Joshi, group coordinator and head,bioinformatics, Scientific Engineering and Computing Group, C-DAC.

The key features of Anvaya are its ability to handle large volume of data, faster retrieval, 11 pre-defined workflows, stand alone and web independent capability, automation of repetitive tasks, user friendly interface and customisation of work flows.

“Our bioinformatics team provides advanced solutions for problems in biology that demand the usage of high performance computing. We have the dual capability in computational biology and in high performance computing”, he added.

The group is already executing projects in the areas of computational genomics and molecular simulation methods. It has advanced level of expertise in molecular modelling and software development.

Anvaya joins the bandwagon of C-DAC’s software solutions for clusters and grids like GIPSY, GenomeGrid, iMolDock and Genopipe. While GIPSY and GenomeGrid are problem-solving environments used on the clusters and grids respectively, Anvaya users can have the advantage of back-end supercomputing cluster to handle numerous genomes at a given time resulting in a high throughput analysis, said Dr Joshi.

The Centre has also established Bioinformatics Resources and Applications Facility (BRAF), which is a dedicated supercomputing cluster for life sciences where several researchers are conducting studies.

Currently a number of joint ventures are on with leading scientific organizations in the United Kingdom, under the collaborative project with Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC, UK). This project deals with understanding the systems biology aspects of mycobacteria and salmonella, the causative agents of dreadful diseases like tuberculosis and typhoid. The group is interacting with the scientists at Institute of Animal Health (IAH) at Compton, Sanger Institute (Cambridge) and the University of Surrey (Guildford) to understand the factors responsible for host-specificity and pathogenicity in the bacteria. GenoPipe, software developed by the team for high-throughput comparative genomics has already been installed at Institute of Animal Health (IAH) and is being used by the UK scientists to study comparative genomics of bacterial pathogens known to affect humans and animals. Similarly, the group also has a major project with the Oregon Health and Sciences University (OHSU), USA, under which advanced level simulations are being carried out for proteins of therapeutic interest, like GPCRs and transport proteins.