dbGENVOC

CONTEXT:

DBT-National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG), Kalyani an Autonomous Institute funded by the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India has created a database of genomic variations in oral cancer; the first of its kind in the world. NIBMG has made this database publicly-accessible.

FOR PRELIMS:

• dbGENVOC is a browsable online database of GENomic Variants of Oral Cancer and is a free resource.
• First release of dbGENVOC contains

1. 24 million somatic and germline variants derived from whole exome sequences of 100 Indian oral cancer patients and whole genome sequences of 5 oral cancer patients from India,
2. somatic variation data from 220 patient samples drawn from the USA and analyzed by TCGA-HNSCC project and
3. manually curated variation data of 118 patients from recently published peer-reviewed publications.

• Variants were identified by the community approved best practice protocol and annotated using multiple analytic pipeline.
• dbGENVOC is not just a catalogue of genomic variants, it has a built-in powerful search engine. It also allows a reasonable extent of statistical and bioinformatic analysis to be carried out online, including identifying variants in associated altered pathways in oral cancer.
• It has the potential to support data from new oral cancer patients from different regions of India and southeast Asia.
• Will be a major step in moving forward from simply cataloguing variants to gain insight into their significance.

Sources

• PIB