DL COMP BIOTECH

Spreading is a key activity in a network, and hence, an unmet need exists for identifying the influential spreaders (IS) in a protein-protein interaction network (PPIN). However, for best outcomes, these spreaders should be derived from a causal inference of interacting proteins, which, again, must be enriched in specific contexts by augmenting information such as pathways, localization, process, and tissue specificity. ‘Konnect2prot’ (Published in Oxford Bioinformatics, 2023) is a first-of-its-kind user-friendly directional PPI web application that stores multidimensional information of an interactome and provides user-driven context-specificity, as well as IS identification.  konnect2prot fetches information from secondary PPI databases and thereafter filters for causality. It allows the search of single or multiple proteins to build a directional PPI network. Using localization, biological process, tissue-specificity, molecular function, and pathway filters, users can build a co...

For decades, a question has buzzed around the scientific community: are diabetes and Parkinson's disease interlinked, with the risk of Parkinson's increasing among patients with type 2 diabetes (T2DM)?  A PubMed query search using the keywords "(Diabetes[Title/Abstract]) AND (Parkinson's[Title/Abstract])" yielded 2,406 results, indicating the intensity with which this question has been pursued over the years. However, this chase may have reached a turning point. A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Olivier Rascol et al. showed that a diabetes drug slowed the progression of motor issues associated with Parkinson's disease. This phase 2, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial investigated whether a diabetes drug called hashtag # Lixisenatide could slow the worsening of motor symptoms in people with early-stage Parkinson's disease. After one year of follow-up, the group receiving the treatment saw no worsening movem...

The immune system is always in a constant battle against varieties of pathogens. Sometimes, they win by themselves, sometimes, they need a push to attain victory. Among various means to do so, one way is to provide them with a vaccine push, where the goal is to recognize specific pathogens, like viruses or bacteria, well before an infection occurs. However, this concept of vaccination has now expanded beyond interventions that prevent disease to treat or ameliorate ongoing pathology. Along with eliciting new immune responses in naive individuals, vaccines can now be used to enhance pre-existing immunity and modulate its type to better tackle the targeted disease. Therapeutic cancer vaccines fall into this category, where they identify proteins produced by cancer cells, known as antigens, to provoke a powerful immune response to existing tumours. The preventive vs therapeutic comparisons of vaccines can be visualized in a battleground scenario, while the former’s goal is to identify the...