Human atlas project Manav looks to partner with technical and scientific research centres

Manav, a project to create a human atlas with complete information about the human body, is looking to partner other institutes under the Department of Biotechnology, as well as technical and scientific research centres. Pune-headquartered Persistent Systems, which is the technology partner, has committed Rs 7 crore for the project.

Manav, which is being spearheaded by the Indian Institute for Scientific Education and Research (IISER) and the National Center for Cell Science (NCCS), has received initial funding of Rs 13 crore from DBT for three years.

Manav attempts to create a human map with macro (organ, tissue, cell) and micro (molecular interaction networks) information. It also hopes to collaborate with the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in future.

Over time, the project could be opened up to students and faculty of these organizations as they work towards creating a self-correcting system of information on the human body, said Kundan Sengupta, associate professor-biology at IISER-Pune, who is part of the project.

“This would help upskill graduate students and researchers, helping them understand the subject better. They would get an opportunity to collaborate with senior scientists and other experts to help with the process of understanding and annotating the scientific literature,” Sengupta said.

The aim is to go through almost 14 million scientific papers, 48,000 protein entries and 16,000 points across several different databases, he said.

“All the information exists in public repositories, but it is in silos. There is no way to search for all of it in one place, so we’re developing a platform where everything comes together,” said Anamika Krishanpal, Senior Domain Specialist, Labs at Persistent Systems.

Drawing an analogy with Google Maps, she said this would allow information to be accessed at the continent level, and then be drilled down to a specific location on a street, or go from the organ to tissue to sub-cellular level.

The scientific literature would first be annotated by students and reviewers and then the structured data would be collated and validated to generate a holistic model. The process has already started, and currently, summer workshops are being conducted with 600 students in the next phase, she said.

Once students start engaging with the content, existing gaps in knowledge would become apparent and spur more scientific research in those areas.

While similar initiatives are being undertaken in other parts of the world, these are either focused on a specific organ or a specific aspect of human physiology. Manav aims to be a more comprehensive human atlas, said Sengupta, adding it is expected to improve understanding of how the human body works and to design better therapeutic targets for treating diseases.