CENTRE FOR CELLULAR AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY, HYDERABAD
The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) is a basic research laboratory under the Council of Scientific of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Ministry of Science and Technology, Govt. of India. It was set up in the year 1977. CCMB is devoted to the frontier research in modern biology. It has been recognized as one of the member institutions of UNESCO's Global Network of Molecular and Cell Biology. 
It has also been recognized as a South Centre of Excellence in Research and Training of the Third World Academy of Sciences, Trieste, Italy. Some of the research activities of the host institute are in the areas of Tumor biology, cataract and other eye diseases, molecular chaperons, protein structures and functions, viral hepatitis, DNA fingerprinting, transgenics and aquaculture, applied processes and products, molecular basis of sex determination, osmoregulation and microbial  genetics, extremophiles, sequence analysis of nucleic acids and proteins, mathematical modelling of metabolic processes, mechanism of action of hormones, proteins of the female reproductive tract, molecular basis of development, signal transduction, transcription, host-guest interaction in plants, biotic and abiotic stresses in the plants, enzyme structure and function, intracellular transport of proteins, nuclear pores and lamins, membrane active molecules and membrane organization.

The Bioinformatics Centre at CCMB was started in 1986. The principal objective is to serve as part of a national network providing biological information with a stress on Oncogenes, Reproductive Physiology, Cell Transformation, Nucleic Acid and Protein Sequences. Since its inception, the centre has strived to achieve its objectives in a variety of ways. The centre is subscribing databases like EMBL, SWISSPROT, PDB and MEDLINE and making them available to users. These databases are updated regularly. The centre is well equipped with state-of-the-art computers and communication infrastructure comprising VSAT, DEC-Alpha Server, MicroVAX-II and several Pcs. INTERNET access facility is available at BIC. Silicon graphics workstation with Biosym software provides high speed high resolution graphics facility to the scientists. Several research journals are available online for users at the centre.

 All the systems in the centre are linked by ethernet and the facility has been extended to provide access to the centre's resources on about 60 personal computers in the institute. CCMB is one of the centres under the National Facility for High Resolution Graphics and Molecular Modelling. The INTERNET service is being used by all the CCMB and CDFD scientific staff for browsing scientific journals like JBC, Science, Nature, Cell and several other journals. INTERNET is also helping scientists for online submission of sequences and analysis of nucleotide and protein sequences and getting valuable information from other universities and laboratories all over the world.
The centre has contributed in the development of Graphic plotting the alpha-carbon backbone chain of protein for visualising the secondary structure of the protein molecule given the 3D coordinates of the constituent atoms; programme simulating a back propagating type artificial neural network model to be used for prediction; Statistical analysis of data obtained by searching protein sequence database for entries having disulphides, cysteine and proline residues. With the help of High Resolution Graphics facility, few softwares for Pcs were also developed by the centre. The centre also undertakes R&D in bioinformatics. Some of these are: Analysis and structure prediction of proteins and nucleic acid sequences; A programme to suggest substitution point mutations to engineer intracellular protein stability; Energy minimisation studies; Study of ribonuclease; Receptor binding study, linear and non-linear demand for biochemical reaction; Correlation between N-terminal amino acids and its radius of gyration; and Modelling alpha-crystallin, a molecular chaperon.

CONTACT FOR DETAILS

Dr. Ch. Mohan Rao
Bioinformatics Centre
Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology,
Uppal Road, Hyderabad - 500 007
Phone : (040) 7172241, 7170130, Ext. 529, 543, 776
Fax : 7171195
E-mail : mohan@ccmb.ap.nic.in