Description
: SARS-CoV-2 has so far infected more than 23,00,000 people in 185 countries and claimed 1,60,000 deaths but no drug or vaccine is yet available. Lock-down can provide temporary solution but we need a sustainable solution. For this we are proposing novel corona virus (nCoV) GenomeBank. Although there are three (A,B,C) SARS-CoV-2 variants but still we don’t know which one is prevailing in our country, how and through which route it has transmitted here; if it has acquired any mutations by now and how deadly has it become. Also, we do not know why some people are affected much more while others remain asymptomatic. We do not know why coronavirus created havoc in some countries whereas others are mildly affected. In the modern era, problems in biological sciences are tackled by a bottom up approach – where we do genome sequence of the relevant organism and associate it with other metadata to address the problem and find solutions. For the same reason so far 69 countries have deposited more than 11,000 genome sequences of this virus, which includes even countries like Nepal and Vietnam where the coronavirus problem is comparatively less severe. In this project, we will make a prototype that will create a dataset by combining 100 coronavirus genomes from Bangladeshi patients and integrate this genome information with patient’s personal/clinical/treatment/diagnostic etc. information. This information will be analyzed extensively by computational methods to do clustering, phylogenetic and pharmacogenomics studies, and will compare data with other world-wide available data to make a concrete information-base that will help pharmaceutical industries to produce appropriate drugs and vaccine for our population. Also, the ICT ministry will be able to announce that Bangladesh has uncovered the genome mystery of the coronavirus circulating in Bangladesh and trace back the transmission. This project will be a multi-center research where essential help from ICT/Bangladesh Govt., and help of IEDCR through Bangladesh Govt. will be required to get patients’ samples and relevant clinical data. We will carry out sequencing (Next Generation Sequencing) of the viral genome and other analyses with our own resources in Bangladesh. If ICT/Govt. support us, it is also possible to do further research in future where in addition to the viral genome we can sequence genome of some individuals who were infected and developed the disease as well as healthy individuals who did not develop the disease. This may also let us know the factors (if any) that conferred resistance to them. Our team consists of relevant experts who are well experienced in doing similar projects (eg. Jute genome, Ilsha fish genome, bacterial genome, human genome re-sequencing) and making prototypes at home and abroad, also all members have their own young, energetic and well-trained working group.
