The Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) has become the first CSIR institution to develop novel software meant for simultaneous comparison of multiple proteomes without a priori classification of protein functional families. The software, PLHOSTFA, has been designed and developed at the G. N. Ramachandran Knowledge Centre for Genomic Informatics, at IGIB, New Delhi.

PLHOSTFA (Peptide Library based Homology Search Tool [Function Assignment]) makes a proteome wise comparison of several organisms simultaneously and reports longest invariant peptides present in minimum number of organisms as specified by the user. It is extremely useful in the fields of training, R&D and drug development.

The web based software provides a novel method for simultaneous comparison of multiple proteomes comprising of millions of peptides and retrieves functional signatures without a priori classification of protein functional families.

The institution has offered the first-of-its-kind product to all research organizations of the country. Dr. R. A. Mashelkar, DG, CSIR officially launched PLHOSTFA last week.

The IGIB sources informed that the product has been successfully demonstrated live by our scientists at a workshop on the 'Role of Bio-informatics in Biological Research' organized by ITRC Lucknow between 28th & 29th January 2003.