This Core provides Seattle BioMed researchers access to state-of-the-art infrastructure (hardware and software) and personnel in order to track, store, manipulate and analyze the biological data needed for scientific testing and discovery. The facility is equipped with several multiprocessor Linux-based servers for high-capacity (multi-Gigabyte) computation, Windows-based SQL servers for database management, as well as Terabyte-scale storage capacity on the Seattle BioMed Storage Area Network. These servers host a variety of genome-scale software packages including sequence alignment and assembly, gene prediction and annotation, local BLAST service (using specialized databases), a client/server-based desktop sequence analysis package, microarray data analysis and statistical packages, and a proteomics analysis pipeline. This Core also provides custom designed project-specific scripts, software and GUIs.

The facility is supervised by a faculty scientific advisor, Dr. Peter Myler. Staff includes a database specialist, bioinformatics software specialist and a bioinformatics programmer, as well as a systems administrator from the Seattle BioMed Information Technology Department. The staff works with personnel from Seattle BioMed research programs and other GHBC core facilities to provide support for the specialized data and process management databases, data manipulation and analysis, as well as software training and consultation.

Future projects include creating locally maintained organism-specific databases and software for pathogens of interest to Seattle BioMed investigators (e.g. parasites, fungi, bacteria and viruses). This would provide researchers with consistent data representation, as well as querying and retrieval tools that will support all Seattle BioMed discovery programs.

To get more information, please contact Bioinformatics Core Manager Dr. Isabelle Phan at (206) 256-7113.