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. PTI VIJ APR
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(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)