Bioinformatics

The Bioinformatics Core was a cooperative effort between Alaska EPSCoR and Alaska INBRE (IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence) and was established largely due to the efforts of Thomas Marr. The core was staffed by three full-time information technology specialists. Its overall purpose was to adapt and optimize informatics software to provide data management and analysis for investigators in the Alaska EPSCoR research focus areas of Integrative Approaches to Environmental Physiology and Population Genetics of Adaptation to Arctic Environments; for Alaska INBRE faculty; and others with needs in computational biology and bioinformatics.

The bioinformatics group made use of the Apple Xserve G5 Cluster purchased in Phase I of Alaska EPSCoR, the Alaska Metagenomics Site, and the Linux Penguin cluster (funded by Alaska INBRE), which includes a mirror of the the GenBank genetic sequence database from the National Center for Biotechnology Information.