The Indian Express
31 October 2012

The value of the neem plant both as a medicine and as a bio–pesticide is deeply embedded in the Indian way of life, but the scientific properties that go into making the plant a natural remedy remain largely undiscovered, leaving the plant with little pharmaceutical significance.

The sequencing of the entire genome structure of the neem plant for the first time and the publication of the data in the international BMC Genomics journal last month by the GANIT (Genomics Application and Informatics Technology) lab, a now two–year–old public–private initiative in Bangalore, is expected to open the doors to the possible lab production of what gives neem its medicinal properties.

The GANIT lab, which has been tasked with taking up uniquely Indian genomics problems, is currently working on extended studies of the neem genome to try and find what genetic activity makes it the most frequently used grandmother's remedy in India. The genomics of neem and of oral cancer in India are the two major aspects being studied by the first PPP genomics lab in the country.

"This study may help close the gap between traditional knowledge and current practices in the agrochemical industry. The progressive increase in the cost of petroleum–based starting materials has led to a surge in the price of synthetic pesticides scourging the meagre profit margins presented to farmers in developing countries," says the paper published.

"This is unique also because we are talking about an organism that is so indigenous to our country and has been used routinely by people in all villages of India. We know for a fact the medicinal properties of the plant. We know for sure the chemical and pesticidal qualities. We do not know how they work and it is critical to understand how they work," says Dr Binay Panda, head of the GANIT lab.

"It is not a widely used plant because, outside of India, not many people know its utility. One of our jobs is to educate other scientists by showing actual data, not by telling them that my grandfather uses it, so it is good," Dr Panda says.

"This is the first study that links the traditional nature of the utility of neem to its actual molecular architecture," he says. He says the paper, published in September, is "one of the first published reports from an Indian lab in a peer–reviewed international journal on both the genome and multiple transcriptomes of a higher organism".

The genome and transcriptome sequencing is the beginning of work targeted towards deciphering the bio–synthetic pathways that result in the creation of compounds such as azadirachtin (derived from the term azadirachta, which is the biological name of the neem plant) that give neem its powers.

"Everybody knows about the compound azadirachtin, which is taken primarily from the seeds. The problem is that if you take the plants grown in the southern part of Andhra and compare with (plants from) the northern parts of UP, Kerala or Orissa, the amount and the activity of the compound varies," says Dr Panda.

"It would be nice if tomorrow, instead of relying on the seeds, we can come up with an artificial way of bulk–producing these compounds in the lab itself – which is what has happened in the case of large–scale bio–tech production for medicine and the pharma industry," he says.

The first job of the research work on neem at the GANIT lab is to find out, through gene sequencing, the biological pathways that produce chemical compounds and the enzymes that ultimately lead to medical compounds. "If we can understand that, we would be able to produce it in the lab. That is the basic intent," says Dr Panda.

Attempts to naturally synthesise azadrachtin in the lab have been made in the past. A researcher at Cambridge University is reported to have taken 19 years to do so.

"The problem is that it is a horribly cumbersome process. Bulk production is not really possible. So we have to go the genetic way and see how we can harness the genome," says Dr Panda.