India got its first national repository for life science data

Context

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

About

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.

The Biotech PRIDE Guidelines will facilitate and enable the exchange of information to promote research and innovation in different research groups across the country. The Biotech PRIDE Guidelines are applicable to all biological data generated through research conducted within the country.

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:

The biotech sector can be broadly divided into five major segments:

Biopharma
Bio-agriculture
Bio-services
Bio-industrial Applications
Bioinformatic

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.