A section aimed at presenting to the student community the ongoing projects in the various Departments in BITS Pilani. The third edition of this featured series
focuses on a project being undertaken under Professor Ashis Kumar Das of the Department of Biological Sciences.
Project Title: A Systems Biology approach towards understanding Severe Malaria directly from the patients. In the end, a Systems Biology approach was adopted for the
with special reference to the Transcriptome and Proteome of the Parasite and the transcriptome and a collaborative project emerged between BITS (transcriptome), IISC
Host: funded by Department of Biotechnology, Government of INDIA (2006)
(proteome) and S.P. Medical College and associated hospital (patient care and material) as a
collaboration where the collection of parasitized RBC and the host PBMC (in the blood)
Systems Biology is an upcoming field of Biology which deals with constructing
was done. New custom designed microarrays designed for use with field samples were also
computational and mathematical models for complex biological systems. It deals with using
created with outsourced help from Genotypic located in Bangalore.
a holistic approach, i.e., one where the whole is considered instead of standard reductionist
processes followed by other methods and approaches. The field has come into use in
Biological studies since the advent of the twenty first century and initially started with
integrating existing single gene data especially with the objective of understanding individual There is little data available on P.vivax complicated malaria and little data on complicated
cells. In most cases, it involves studying the entire genome or proteome at the level of a cell malaria from P.falciparum in adult patients from India. We are comparing complicated and
uncomplicated cases of malaria on a transcriptomic level so as to take an organismal
or organism (mostly unicellular organisms).
approach towards the parasite.
Prof. Ashis Kumar Das of the Department of Biological Sciences has been involved in this
and other projects over the past fifteen years. The EPC caught up with him to discuss his
project in detail.
The project, as such, is partially a discovery related project, there being little prior research
on the topic in the approach we had taken. Specific goals, such as confirming known
marker molecules or providing clues to new molecules, which could form the basis for
When we started work on the project back in 2003 or so, the global scientific acceptance future diagnostic, prognostic or therapeutic interventions, were already committed for in the
was that complications in cases of malaria were caused only by one particular species of the project proposal.
malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum. The other major species, Plasmodium vivax, was
considered to cause only milder cases. This caused more studies to be initiated on the
former alone, although severe P. vivax malaria had been reported as far back as the 1940s in Although delivery has been delayed due to circumstances beyond our control, a decent
India. This was met with a lot of reservations by the biomedical community as such, number of high impact publications have already emerged or are in the process of
because the diagnostic capability at that time was limited to slide microscopy, which, while communication and review. The first publication detailing the presence of Natural
being the gold standard in malaria, remains a subjective technique. A PCR (Polymerase Antisense transcripts (NATs) in P.vivax and the first from P.falciparum showing NATs in
Chain Reaction) based detection system had been developed earlier in a joint project patient-derived isolates are already available. Others are in various stages of the publication
between National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi and Centers for Disease Control, pipeline. As with our earlier projects, extremely exciting results are being observed. There
Atlanta, GA, USA. This was modified and upgraded, and the first PCR validated report on are also futuristic diagnostic approaches in the pipeline from other creative ideas.
severe P. vivax malaria was published by us along with our collaborators from S. P. Medical
Even though this project is malaria-centric, its methodology is not malaria-specific. Our
College, Bikaner, in “Emerging Infectious Diseases” in 2005.
approach to study malaria, if understood properly, can easily be used to study other
diseases, such as cancer, for example. As to further research, the future is open. A large
We decided to study the transcriptome or the entire set of RNA molecules produced by the number of projects can result from our understanding of the data generated. The
parasite. We also decided not to use cultured cells as we wanted to use samples collected inspiration behind our research remains BEDSIDE (patient material) > BENCH (in Silico
and Wet Labs) > BEDSIDE (patient care).
The news flashes
“BITS Girl Aces
CAT ’14” and
the same thought
races
through
every BITSian’s
brain,
“Neha
Manglik! Wow!”
And duty came
calling for the
English Press
Club, to bring to the general BITSian their share of the sagely
wisdom she has to bestow on us.
Q. Firstly, what was your driving force for the rigorous
preparation that's required for cracking the CAT?
In fact, cracking CAT does not require 'rigorous preparation'.
It demands focus and consistency. Most BITSians are already
good at the maths section. We just need practice, which, in my
case, was driven purely by interest. I have an equal interest in
English (poetry writing being my favourite hobby), so I never
really saw the preparation as a punishment or sacrifice.
Q. What routine did you follow during the preparation,
and what was your basic methodology, in terms of time
spent in classes, coaching, self- study and recreation?
I focused all my energy on completely eliminating those
weaknesses. I learnt vedic maths, joined CETking shortcut
workshops, practiced para-jumbles and learnt GRE word lists.
Basica