Dikhyaa Mohanty An innovative study project has been proposed by the Institute of Life Sciences, Bhubaneswar, a renowned center for biotechnology research, to address the health, nutrition, and well-being of tribal groups in Odisha. Three years ago, the Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India funded the ILS-flagship initiative on tribal health and nutrition, which was overseen by the late Dr. Ajay Parida, the previous director of ILS. Multiple ILS scientists are overseeing various aspects of studies that may help the tribes of Odisha’s health and well-being under this program. The ILS team intended to investigate how using advantageous microbes may help these people’s health in one of its research.
When consumed in sufficient quantities, probiotics are beneficial bacteria that both people and animals can ingest to improve their health. These beneficial organisms are well known for their value in the prevention and treatment of several health-related issues, including diarrhea, obesity, and a variety of immunological illnesses. The scientists of ILS aimed to identify and describe possible probiotics after realizing the distinct eating patterns, culture, and ecosystems of the tribes of Odisha.
In this context, Dr.Shantibhusan Senapaiti’s team from ILS has identified and characterized a number of probiotics. The researchers recently revealed the whole genome sequence and other probiotic characteristics of one of the beneficial bacteria, and the study was published in the reputable worldwide magazine in this field known as the “World Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology.” The primary authors of this paper, Dr. Jayalaxmi Dash and Manisha Sethi, said that three other probiotics have already had their full genomes sequenced and submitted to the NCBI database.
The Director of ILS and the lead researcher on the ILS-flagship project, Dr. Pulok Kumar Mukherjee, has expressed his enormous joy over this accomplishment and emphasized expanding this endeavor in a more sophisticated way to create functional meals employing these probiotics in the future. Dr. Senapati anticipates that the health-promoting properties of these organisms will be more advantageous to the tribal people of Odisha and aid in improving their general health condition in the future because these probiotics’ roots are from the tribes of that state. This is a bold step in the direction of the creation of population-specific probiotic interventions.
