Warangal: NITW joins scientific research of Covid-19

Warangal: While the frontline warriors are out there battling out coronavirus (Covid-19), simultaneously the scientific community has also galvanising its efforts to figure out the pandemic that is threatening to assume gigantic proportions. Up there in the fight against the coronavirus is the National Institute of Technology, Warangal, (NIT).

The Biotechnology research wing of the NITW got down exploring Molecular Dynamics (MD) which would help in the biophysical characterisation of the virus such as the effect of temperature, which might further help in experimental studies.

Thanks to the COVID-19 High Performance Computing Consortium, a unique private-public effort spearheaded by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the US Department of Energy and IBM.

The Consortium is to help researchers by providing access to high performance computing facilities available at NASA, IBM, Google Cloud, Microsoft and MIT, University of Pittsburgh and University of Illinois etc. The world's top most scientific members of the Consortium, which reviewed the project idea of the NITW's Biotechnology Department, has given a go-ahead to it. It may be mentioned here that the Consortium has been inviting ideas to investigate on Covid-19 disease.

The idea of the project is 'Computational Study on virus SARS-CoV-2 responsible for Covid-19 disease in a controlled environment of temperature and humidity.' The study will help the experimentalist to understand the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 at molecular level. The project is to be headed by the Assistant Professors Dr Soumya Lipsa Rath and Dr Kishant Kumar.

Speaking to The Hans India, Dr Soumya Lipsa Rath said: "Against the backdrop that government agencies and various research institutions in India and abroad are putting in their efforts to design new vaccines, proposing new inhibitors, and predicting disease models, it is a huge opportunity for us to work on finding a way out from the deadly virus."

In this project, there will be a theoretical investigation on structure of virus by using Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations. MD studies would help us do the biophysical characterization of the virus such as the effect of temperature, which might further help in experimental studies. We need to overcome this virus epidemiology, for which a collective effort of doctors and pharma companies on the forefront and researchers in experimental and theoretical studies is required. We hope that we will be able to contribute that would facilitate eradication of the disease, according to Dr Soumya.