India News | 1 Lakh Genome and DNA Sequencing Done for COVID-19 by DBT: Jitendra Singh
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. One lakh genome and DNA sequencing has been done for COVID-19 so far by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and five COVID-19 biorepositories with 57,000 samples were made available to academia and industry for R&D and product development, Union minister Jitendra Singh said on Friday.
New Delhi, Nov 12 (PTI) One lakh genome and DNA sequencing has been done for COVID-19 so far by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and five COVID-19 biorepositories with 57,000 samples were made available to academia and industry for R&D and product development, Union minister Jitendra Singh said on Friday.
He also announced that a vaccine testing and research facility will come up at the second campus of the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology (RGCB).
This center will also have a BSL 3 facility which is capable of handling airborne viruses like coronavirus, Singh said.
He also said the RGCB will be developed as a hub for research and testing of multiple vaccines such as cancer vaccine and those for infectious diseases, including COVID-19.
Also Read | Anil Deshmukh’s ED Custody Extended By 3 Days By Special PMLA Court.
“This will bring huge recognition for RGCB in the specific area of vaccine research and development,” the minister said.
Singh also lauded the RGCB's model of supporting both innovative research and biotechnology incubation facilities.
He was presiding over a high-level meeting to review the current status of COVID-19 research, development of vaccines and other protocols as well as the contribution made in this direction by each of the autonomous institutions of the Department of Biotechnology in different parts of the country, an official statement said.
"One lakh genome, DNA sequencing done for COVID-19 so far by DBT and five COVID-19 biorepositories with 57,000 samples were made available to academia and industry for R&D and product development," Singh said.
The Institute of Life Sciences (ILS), Bhubaneswar, informed the meeting that it is one of the three institutes in the country that has established and characterised 22 virus cultures including Delta and Delta Plus, the statement said.
The ILS has also established a biorepository for 3,000 COVID-19 clinical samples containing serum, plasma, saliva, blood, urine and stool as a national resource centre for research by academia and start-ups for commercial product developments. ILS has done important work on Covid testing (more than three lakhs RT-PCR tests), 9,000 genome sequencing of the samples collected from Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Maharashtra and immune-profiling of symptomatic and asymptomatic COVID-19 patients, the statement said.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)