In silico synteny based comparative genomics approach for identification and characterization of novel therapeutic targets in Chlamydophila pneumoniae.

Chlamydophila pneumoniae is one of the most important and well studied gram negative bacterial strain with respect to community acquired pneumonia and other respiratory diseases like Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), Chronic asthma, Alzheimer's disease, Atherosclerosis and Multisclerosis which have a great potential to infect humans and many other mammals. According to WHO prediction, COPD is to become the third leading cause of death by 2030. Unfortunately, the molecular mechanisms leading to chronic infections are poorly understood and the difficulty in culturing C pneumoniae in experimental conditions and lack of entirely satisfactory serological methods for diagnosis is also a hurdle for drug discovery and development.

MPI-LIT: a literature-curated dataset of microbial binary protein--protein interactions.

Unlabelled: Prokaryotic protein-protein interactions are underrepresented in currently available databases. Here, we describe a 'gold standard' dataset (MPI-LIT) focusing on microbial binary protein-protein interactions and associated experimental evidence that we have manually curated from 813 abstracts and full texts that were selected from an initial set of 36 852 abstracts. The MPI-LIT dataset comprises 1237 experimental descriptions that describe a non-redundant set of 746 interactions of which 659 (88%) are not reported in public databases.

Environmental quality assessment of Port Blair in Andaman islands.

The Andman and Nicobar archipelago comprises of about 556 small and big islands covering an area of 8493 sq. kms in the Bay of Bengal. The very remoteness of these islands from the mainland has preserved their pristine environment and spectacular natural beauty.