BiOmics’19

The Biotechnology & Bioinformatics area at NIIT University (NU) organized a Symposium on ‘BiOmics’ on 27th April 2019. The BiOmics symposium was aimed to provide a platform for promotion and ventilation of ideas and interpretations among a major section of interested faculty, students and research scholars. The conference focused on inter alia on how to leverage current strengths of the research community to seek answers to some fundamental questions in biology, to generate new technologies and to identify what it takes for a country to become a leading contributor to the area of biotechnology and bioinformatics.

The major thrust areas included Genomics, Lipidomics, Proteomics, Glycomics, Foodomics, Transcription, Metabolomics, Nutrition, Pharmacology and toxicology.

The inaugural address was delivered by Professor Amulya Kumar Panda, Director – National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi who was one of the keynote speakers of the symposium on the topic ‘Drug Discovery through BiOmics’.

Followed by session I, there was a discussion about ‘Lipidomics – a potential strategy to identity novel drug targets against MDR-TB’ by Dr. Zeeshan Fatima, Amity University, Haryana. Thereafter, another discussion was held by Mr. Tara Chand Yadav IIT Roorkee, Uttaranchal on the topic ‘Identification of Immunomodulatory bioactive inhibitors from Woodflorida fruticosa against HSP70-1 to subdue Imiquimod-induced psoricosa like skin inflammation in mice’. Going further, an amazing and mind-boggling presentation was given by one of the keynote speaker Professor Sonika Bhatnagar, Head-Biotechnology, Netaji Subhash University of Technology, New Delhi on the topic ‘Lipidomics markers and drug targets in Cardiovascular diseases’

Another keynote speaker was Dr. Prashant Suravajhala, Research scientist, Birla Institute of Scientific Research, Jaipur, who delivered on the topic ‘Systems Genomics: Where are we heading?’

– Navya Singh