Name: Sharanagouda Patil

My Area of Interest: Animal viral genomics

My Favourite Quote: Be a smallest to learn the tallest

I am a: Scientist (Sr Scale) at PD_ADMAS, ICAR, Bangalore

Short Profile:

What are your future goals? Where do you see your research going?:
Presntly, I am working on Classical swine fever (CSF) which is categorised as “List A” disease by Office International des Epizooties (OIE). Indian has 14 millions of domestic pigs and there is huge demand for pork both within and outside country. CSF causes catstrophic effects causing enormous mortality leading to great loss to pig farmers mostly held by socially and economically weaker sections of the society. CSF is caused by Classical swine fever virus (CSFV)which belongs to Flaviviridae. Presently pigs are vaccinated using lapinised vaccine and there is no cell culture adapted vaccine. My future target is to go for designing of cell culture adpted vaccine and development of marker vaccine which can differentiate infected and vaccinated animals thereby derive control strategies for CSF making both animal and human life happier.

Technologies seem to changing faster than ever, how do you adapt to that? What are the current technologies you are using?:
Small is beautiful and we have a small set up having all recent equipments and we have plans to buy microarray systems, confocal microscopy, flowcytometry in order to study various host-cell interactions. Yes one need to have knowledge of the cutting edge technologies to arrive at conclusions which are of international standards. Of course outsourcing works out be economical in certain circumstances.

In the broader picture, where do you see the application for your cutting-edge research?:
We conduct both basic and applied research activities. In veterinary research, end users are farmers having dairy as a supplement to the thier agricultural farming and even the our Finance minister has a opinion of rearing livestock would as an annex to the land farming would be of more lucrative. Therefore the outcome of basic and applied reaearch activities conducted should help the farmers to alleviate the proverty and make a sustainable life for them.

Fast forward to 2020. What’s your vision of Genomics in 2020?:
Viral genomic diversity: India has a vast viral diversity and many unknown viruses and thier genomes circulationg in the environment are either directly/ indirectly beneficial in one or other way to the nature and humankind. Many viruses are to be understood in detail with respect to thier genes/genomics. To begin with, full genome sequencing of some of zoonotic viruses may be taken up. I am already at it of full genome sequencing of wild type Classical swine fever virus.