Information Technology major, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), is developing an end-to-end bioinformatics software package, 'Biosuit' on Linux platform for which 20 leading Indian institutions have provided the domain knowledge.

The Biosuit project, in collaboration with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and supported by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) , will roll out the Alpha version in May with the full product expected to hit the market in one year, Prof A. S. Kolaskar, Chairman, National Task Force on Bioinformatics, maintained.

Twenty leading academic bodies including Indian Institute of Science, Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics, IITs, Pune University and University of Hyderabad have contributed domain knowledge and tools for Biosuit.

"We estimate the Indian bioinformatics industry to touch $2 billion by 2006. For this, we need affordable world-class software and the TCS effort is on this. We are learning from the IT experience to create talented people in Bioinformatics," Kolaskar, who is also the Vice-Chancellor of Pune University, said.

He said Biosuit would be comparable to Accedos, the best bioinformatics software available in the market, and at a cheaper price.

Kolaskar said the effort was to bring down the cost to be affordable to students.