IIT-M develops algorithms to detect diseases causing dysfunctional proteins and genes

Chennai, Apr 6 (PTI): IIT Madras researchers have developed algorithms to detect disease causing dysfunctional proteins and genes in biological networks. Through their initiative, they hope to develop detailed maps of tissue and disease specific networks that can help in better understanding of the connections among genes and proteins, a press release said on Monday.

The faculty are working with researchers across the world to develop computational algorithms which not only detects gene groups causing diseases, but also the links between diseases and gene groups. The team has comprehensively analysed existing module identification algorithms and developed an improved system to achieve 50 per cent improvement in identifying disease- relevant modules over existing approaches.

The research was led by professor B Ravindran, Head of Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science and Aritificial Intelligence, IIT Madras and faculty members Karthik Raman and Himanshu Sinha. "All biological processes are a result of complex interactions among genes and proteins and diseases are often caused by perturbations in them", Ravindran said.

"Genes are seldom isolated and occur as connected groups called disease modules. The ability to identify and automatically extract these modules can help in understanding the root causes of several diseases", he added. The recent work by the team at IIT Madras was part of the DREAM challenge, an open science approach involving researchers from industry, academia and non-profit organisations across the world, the release said.

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