India got its first national repository for life science data

The Government launched India’s first national repository for life science data, the Indian Biological Data Centre (IBDC) at Faridabad, Haryana.

• As per the BIOTECH-PRIDE guidelines of the Government of India, IBDC is mandated to archive all life science data generated from ‘publicly-funded’ research in India.

• With the support of the Department of Biotechnology (DBT), the repository has been established at the Regional Centre of Biotechnology (RCB), Faridabad with a data disaster recovery site at National Informatics Centre (NIC), Bhubaneshwar.
• It has a data storage capacity of about 4 petabytes and houses the ‘Brahm’ High-Performance Computing (HPC) facility.
• IBDC has started nucleotide data submission services via two data portals namely;
• Indian Nucleotide Data Archive (INDA)
• Indian Nucleotide Data Archive -Controlled Access INDA-CA
• The portals aimed to accumulate over 200 billion bases from 2, 08,055 submissions from more than 50 research labs across India.

India’s potential in the field of Biotechnology:

• Efforts in the Past: In 1986, much before any other country in the world, India recognized the enormous potential of biotechnology and established a separate department committed to this branch of science.
• Current Economic Status: India accounts for approximately 3% of the global biotech industry.
• The biotechnology sector in India has grown from $1.1 billion in 2003 to a mammoth $64 billion industry in 2019 and by 2024; it is expected to be a $100 billion industry.
• Growing Biotech Start-ups: India’s pioneering achievements in biotechnology is the primary reason why the sector employs the best of minds and contributes to the development of generic and affordable medicare.

Important Government Initiatives:

• Make in India, Skill India, and Start-up India programs are aimed to develop India as a world-class biotechnology and bio-manufacturing hub.
• Biomanufacturing hub: The government’s aspirational goal of developing the country into a $100-billion bio-manufacturing hub by 2024 is certainly going to give a fillip to the biotechnology sector as well.
• Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), established under the Department of Biotechnology in 2012, continues to play a crucial role in developing the biotech sector in India. BIRAC brings innovators and funders to a common table, enabling ideas to become a reality and facilitating technological advances that make human progress possible.