GenomeIndia: Mapping the Genetic Diversity of India

Funded by Department of Biotechnology, Government of India

GenomeIndia aims to construct a comprehensive catalogue of genetic variations for India’s population that will better capture our unique diversity. About 0.1 % of the entire sequence differs between any two individuals on average, thus creating variations in the genetic code among individuals. These genetic variations among individuals are crucial for understanding our disease predispositions and rare inherited disorders. They determine our response to drugs and help track migration and evolutionary patterns of population groups.

Populations across the world differ in their genetic makeup and environmental influences. Therefore, it is important to examine the risk factors for complex genetic diseases and rare genetic variations contributing to specific disorders in population-specific studies.

The Indian population of 1.3 billion consists of >4600 population groups, and several thousand of them are endogamous. These factors have contributed to the genetic diversity of the current-day Indian population. Thus, the Indian population harbors distinct variations and often many disease-causing mutations are amplified within some of these groups. Therefore, findings from population-based or disease-based human genetics research from other populations of the world cannot be extrapolated to Indians. The GenomeIndia endeavor is complex, yet much needed to understand our nation’s genetic makeup.

This is a national project funded by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India, and spearheaded by CBR. The project aims to identify genetic variations through whole genome sequencing of 10,000 representative individuals across India in the first phase of the study. The 20 national institutes across the country that form the working consortium are represented below.

Please look up https://genomeindia.in for a detailed overview and status update on this Pan-India project.

Flagship Projects

Prof. K. V. S. Hari

Director

Prof. K. V. S. Hari joins CBR with over 30 years of experience in research, teaching, and leadership. With a PhD in Systems Science from the University of California San Diego, he has been a Faculty Member of the Department of ECE, Indian Institute of Science, since 1992 and served as its Chair from 2015 to 2017.

Besides holding Visiting Faculty appointments at premier universities like Stanford and KTH, Stockholm, he built and nurtured enterprising collaborations with leading research groups at Oxford University, TU Delft, and CMC Vellore, among other institutes. He is a Fellow of IEEE, INAE, and INSA and Editor-in-Chief (Electrical Sciences) of Sadhana – Academy Proceedings in Engineering Sciences, published by Springer.

Over the years, he earned unique recognition for his exemplary contribution through several prominent leadership positions in academia and industry.

His current research interests are centred on data science and applications of signal processing to solve problems in neuroscience and medicine.

Please visit https://ece.iisc.ac.in/~hari/ for more information.

Prof. Y. Narahari

Former Director

Dr. Y. Narahari has been on the faculty at the Department of Computer Science and automation, Indian Institute of Science since February 1988. He was Chair of the Department during December 2009 – July 2014. He was the Dean, Division of EECS (Electrical, Electronics, and Computer Sciences) at IISc from August 2014 till July 2021. He was chairing the Office of DIGITS (Digital Campus and Informational Technology Services) during January 2016-December 2020. He is a part of the AI Research Cluster and has been the convener of the Pratiksha Trust Initiative on Brain, Computation, and Data Science at the Institute since 2015.

He is an elected fellow of: IEEE, New York (FIEEE); Indian National Science Academy (FNA), New Delhi; Indian Academy of Sciences (FASc), Bangalore; Indian National Academy of Engineering (FNAE), New Delhi; and the National Academy of Sciences (FNASc), Allahabad. He is a recipient of the J.C. Bose National Fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. In 2009, he received the IISc Alumni Award for Research Excellence in Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science.

He has authored or co-authored three books: Game Theory and Mechanism Design (IISc Press and World Scientific) (2014); Game Theoretic Problems in Network Economics and Mechanism Design Solutions (2009) (Springer Monograph); and Performance Modeling of Automated Manufacturing Systems (Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs) (1992).

His work has been driven by talented and brilliant students: 23 of them have completed Ph.D.; 18 have completed Master’s by Research; more than 100 have completed M.Tech. projects. Currently, the group consists of 6 Ph.D. students and 6 M.Tech. project students.

The main thread in his research is to apply game theory, mechanism design, and artificial intelligence techniques to research problems at the interface of computer science and economics. He is also exploring the application of AIML techniques to digital agriculture and public health problems.

Please look up https://gtl.csa.iisc.ac.in/hari for more details.

Prof. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath

Founding Director

Dr. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath obtained her Ph.D from the University of Mysore in 1981. In 1986, after completing her post-doctoral training at the National Institutes of Health, USA, she joined the Department of Neurochemistry at National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, (NIMHANS) Bangalore. In 1999, the Dept. of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India sought her out to help establish the National Brain Research Centre (NBRC), an autonomous institution of DBT, Ministry of Science and Technology as a centre of excellence and to co-ordinate and network neuroscience research groups in the country. She continued as Founder Director, NBRC till May 2009, when she returned to Bangalore at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) as Professor and Founder Chair of the newly created Centre for Neuroscience. She is currently Founder Director, Centre for Brain Research (CBR) at Indian Institute of Science.

During her tenure as Director of NBRC, she provided visionary leadership at NBRC, which in a very short period attained a position of being an internationally acclaimed centre of excellence. NBRC was granted “Deemed University” status in May 2002 to help promote human resource development in an inter-disciplinary manner. She networked 45 institutions around the country with NBRC with a goal to share resources and promote neuroscience. She then established the Centre for Neuroscience at IISc leveraging the expertise at IISc in mathematics, computation and engineering. The newly established Centre for Brain Research is a unique public-private partnership between IISc (a public funded institution) and Pratiksha Trust (a philanthropy) that funds CBR. Research at CBR is focused on aging brain and a large, prospective longitudinal study of 10,000 againg individuals has been initiated for the first time in India. In addition, she has received generous funding from Tata Trusts, which has paved the way for starting a longitudinal study in an urban cohort.

Dr. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath is elected Fellow of all the 3 science academies in India, namely Indian National Science Academy, Indian Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India. She is also a Fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences, India, Indian Academy of Neurosciences and Third World Academy of Sciences. She is a recipient of the prestigious S.S. Bhatnagar award (1996), Omprakash Bhasin Award (2001) and the J.C. Bose National Fellowship (2006), S.S. Bhatnagar Medal, INSA (2016) and the civilian honour, Padma Shri (civilian honor, 2010). She is also a fellow of American Academy of Advancement of Science, USA (2019).

GenomeIndia