REPORT

Sept 06, 2011: Library day & Teachers day was observed at SIUCEB, on September 05th, 2011. The event had 3 agendas: Teachers day celebration & awarding of Oommen V Oommen fellowship, Library day celebration & inauguration of BookFace and awarding of the Reader of the Semester Prize. The guests of honor were Prof. Dr. Oommen V. Oommen, Dr. M.R. Thampan, Prof. V. Madhusoodanan Nair & Sri. K.P. Sadasivan. The guests were welcomed in Kerala style by giving jasmine flowers and the function commenced with the lighting of the “Nilavilakku” by the guests and Dr. Achuthsankar S. Nair.

In the lecture theatre, all the audience and the guests sat around the ‘Aksharakkalam’ (as remarked by Prof. Madhusoodhanan Nair) for the meeting. Welcome address was made by Dr. Achuthsankar S. Nair. After that students wished their teachers on the occasion of Teachers day. Prof. Madhusoodhanan Nair gave the inaugural address and distributed the Oommen V. Oommen fellowship which was instituted by Dr. Oommen V. Oommen’s research student Mr. Dileep R. The fellowship was awarded to Ms. Saraswathy V., of M. Sc B Batch and Ms. Priyadarshini P., of M. Phil E batch.

BookFace, a library management software, which has the features of the social networking site- FaceBook, was inaugurated by Dr. M. R. Thampan, Director of the Kerala Bhasha Institute. BookFace is an innovative library management software developed by Sookshmatech, a software firm in Technopark. Dr. M. R. Thampan, congratulated the Centre for instituting such an innovative idea in the library, the heart of every institution.

Sri. Sadasivan K. P., the president of the Kerala Library Association addressed the gathering and he emphasized the idea of library being the centre of attraction of every academic institution and librarian being the friend of every student. He distributed the “Reader of Semester” prizes to Ms. Sunitha P (Research Scholar), Ms. Deepthi Varughese (M. Phil E batch) & Ms. Priya Das (Research scholar).

The function came to a close with the National Anthem.

Program Schedule
• 09:30 – 10:00: Inauguration & Welcome Speech
• 10:00 – 11:30: Basics of Perl Programming
• 11:30 – 11:45: Tea Break
• 11:45 – 13:15: Object Oriented Programming & Use of Bio-Perl
• 13:15 – 14:00: Lunch Break
• 14:00 – 16:00: Hands on session

REPORT

April 02, 2011: The students of MSc. C-Batch, SIUCEB organized a DBT-BIF sponsored one-day seminar on Perl & BioPerl dated April 2, 2011. Anusooya N.J.(MSc C-Batch Student, SIUCEB) started the proceedings by welcoming everyone followed by the inauguration of the seminar by Mrs. Navya Raj(MPhil E Student, SIUCEB) and then the keynote address by Ms. Priyadarsini(MPhil E Student, SIUCEB). The seminar focused on basics of Perl & BioPerl. The seminar was divided into two theory sessions and one practical hands on session. Session chairs for the theory sessions were Mrs. Geetha G.(Research Scholar, SIUCEB/0 and Mrs. Baharak Goli(Research Scholar, SIUCEB) chronologically. The topics covered by the students are the following:

• History & Basics of Perl - Divya V.G.
• Associative Arrays - Deepasree M.
• Control Structures - Darsana Gopal
• Built-in Functions - Anju C.P.
• Regular Expressions - Anusooya N.J.
• Subroutines - Rekha R.B.
• References, Object Oriented Programming & BioPerl - Kashyap Chhatbar

After the conclusion of the theory sessions, Kashyap Chhatbar(MSc C Student, SIUCEB) proposed the vote of thanks. The lab session held after the talk gave participants insight on the use of Perl & BioPerl. The seminar was targeted for students and researchers of life sciences background. During the lab session, the participants gained insight on using Perl & BioPerl for solving biological problems. Participants involved in hands on session which focused on basic Perl programming and the use of BioPerl for: Batch retrieval of biological sequences from databases; Converting biological sequence file formats; Handling large biological sequences; Restriction enzyme activity and Handling PDB file.

REPORT

Mar 16, 2011: The talk by Dr. P.K. Krishnan Namboori focused on the current drug designing strategy with protein, DNA, and RNA as biological targets. He described the importance of studying disease mechanism and understanding the physiological changes happening during an infection. Alzheimer’s disease mechanism was explained as a case study. The steps involved in the drug discovery and development process was discussed and the experimental design along with the workflow was illustrated with suitable examples. The support provided by bioinformatics tools and softwares in the field of rational drug design was emphasized by the speaker.

The key points in target characterization was discussed which includes similarity analysis, motif identification, sub-cellular localization, half-life period of the target, stability and its active site analysis. Various bioinformatics tools like Protparam, prosite, clustal w, SOPMA etc can be used in this step. Ligand screening and characterization was also dealt with. Combinatorial library set up, bio-availability and ADME-TOX issues of the ligands were also pointed out. The talk was quite interactive with discussion on RNA switches; post-transcriptional gene silencing and SNP based drug targeting. The role of non-coding RNA in the post transcriptional gene-silencing of Alzheimer’s disease was highlighted. Dr. Namboori concluded his talk by giving an overview of force-field based molecular dynamic simulation of proteins, which is essential to study the native conformation of biological targets.