Category Archives: BioInformatics

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 28-Aug-2014 Contact: Beth Parada apps@botany.org American Journal of Botany As technology advances, science has become increasingly about datahow to gather it, organize it, and analyze it. The creation of key databases to analyze and share data lies at the heart of bioinformatics, or the collection, classification, storage, and analysis of biochemical and biological information using computers and software. The tools and methods used in bioinformatics have been instrumental in the development of fields such as molecular genetics and genomics. But, in the plant sciences, bioinformatics and biometrics are employed in all fieldsnot just genomicsto enable researchers to grapple with the rich and varied data sources at their disposal. In July 2013, Surangi Punyasena of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Selena Smith of the University of Michigan organized a special session at Botany 2013, the annual meeting of the Botanical Society of America in New Orleans, Louisiana. They invited plant morphologists, systematists, and paleobotanists, as well as computer scientists, applied mathematicians, and informaticiansall of whom were united in their interest in developing or applying novel biometric or bioinformatic methods to the form and function of plants. The goal: to provide a forum for a cross-disciplinary exchange … Continue reading →

Pheno 2 GRN Bioinformatics Tool This video goes over some of the basic uses of the Pheno 2 GRN Bioinformatics Tool. By: USD Bioinformatics … Continue reading →

Michael Stitzel joked that his research has led him to climb up the evolutionary tree. As an undergraduate he worked with yeast, and over the years, he has worked his way up to studying Drosophila, C. elegans, and, now, people. Stitzel shifted from the more basic roots of the tree to the biomedical limbs as a matter of motivation. He said that as a graduate student, though he worked on an important and interesting question, when experiments didn't go well, it was hard for him to get motivated. And so, he found himself drawn to questions with more direct relevance to medicine. He turned to studying type 2 diabetes. Using a genome-wide association study approach, he identified a number of regions in the genome linked to the disease, but many of them were, as he put it, "in the middle of nowhere." This led him to thinking about epigenetics, and then to later uncover what he and his colleagues dubbed 'stretch enhancers,' longer-than-average enhancers that appear to be driving physiological functions. Read more here: ABRF Assesses NGS Platforms, Library Prep, Bioinformatics in Effort to Create RNA-seq Standards … Continue reading →

University Park, Pennsylvania (PRWEB) August 26, 2014 The breakthrough of sequencing the human genome created a need for professionals with backgrounds in life and computer sciences to analyze vast amounts of biological data for developing gene-based drugs and treatments. In response, Penn State World Campus is offering a new graduate certificate in applied bioinformatics that will train a new generation of biomedical researchers in computational thinking and procedures. These skills will allow them to apply algorithmic processes, tools and techniques to their data for a deeper understanding of biological processes. Faculty from the Penn State Eberly College of Science will teach the 11-credit certificate program. This field is really poised to grow and impact society as a whole, said Istvan Albert, associate professor of bioinformatics, biochemistry and molecular biology and the lead faculty member for the certificate program. I think were only at the beginning of understanding how cellular activity works, and the best is yet to come. What life scientists currently need the most is the availability of training that imparts the know-how and practical knowledge that can be put to immediate use in biomedical labs that rely on sequencing technologies. Applications are now being accepted for enrollment in … Continue reading →

Every disease has a genesis, and bioinformatics tools can be used to understand the origin and possible cause and the findings can be used for better treatment and designing new medicines, said former Vice-Chancellor of JNTU-Kakinada and Chairman of Institute of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (IBCB), Prof. Allam Apparao. Delivering the keynote address at the inaugural session of the two-day workshop on Bioinformatics Tools in Diabetic Research here on Saturday, he said the origin of diabetes can be traced to four million years ago and it was present in marine species. The root cause and mapping of the disease is important, as diabetes has been declared a pandemic and India is the global capital of the health disorder, he said. The professor further stated that Andhra Pradesh heads the count in India and it was estimated that about 20 per cent of the population in AP was affected by the disorder. About two decades ago, the average impact age group was between 40 and 45 years, but in the present context it has come down to 25-30 years, thanks to the changing food habit and lifestyle, he noted. Talking about bioinformatics, he said that it was an emerging field of … Continue reading →

Epic Sciences has appointed Greg Lucier as chairman of its board of directors. Lucier was previously chairman and CEO of Life Technologies. Illumina said this week it has appointed Google Senior Vice President Jeff Huber to serve on its board of directors. Huber, who works with the Google X research branch, joined Google in 2003 and led development of Google Maps, Google Apps, and Google Ads. He also formerly was VP of architecture and systems development at eBay, and senior VP of engineering at Excite@Home. Peter Dansky, formerly the president of the molecular and cell biology division at Life Technologies, has joined Agena Bioscience as its CEO and a member of its board of directors. He will lead Agena's expansion of its genetic analysis business into new application areas including clinical diagnostics. Previously, he held management positions at Arcturus Bioscience, Affymetrix, Molecular Dynamics, PerSeptive BioSystems and Millipore. Mark Guyer has retired from his post as deputy director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. Guyer joined the Office of Human Genome Research, the institute's precursor, in 1998, and he helped guide NHGRI's research activities from the earliest days of the Human Genome Project. He became director of the NHGRI Division … Continue reading →

Epic Sciences has appointed Greg Lucier as chairman of its board of directors. Lucier was previously chairman and CEO of Life Technologies. Illumina said this week it has appointed Google Senior Vice President Jeff Huber to serve on its board of directors. Huber, who works with the Google X research branch, joined Google in 2003 and led development of Google Maps, Google Apps, and Google Ads. He also formerly was VP of architecture and systems development at eBay, and senior VP of engineering at Excite@Home. Peter Dansky, formerly the president of the molecular and cell biology division at Life Technologies, has joined Agena Bioscience as its CEO and a member of its board of directors. He will lead Agena's expansion of its genetic analysis business into new application areas including clinical diagnostics. Previously, he held management positions at Arcturus Bioscience, Affymetrix, Molecular Dynamics, PerSeptive BioSystems and Millipore. Mark Guyer has retired from his post as deputy director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. Guyer joined the Office of Human Genome Research, the institute's precursor, in 1998, and he helped guide NHGRI's research activities from the earliest days of the Human Genome Project. He became director of the NHGRI Division … Continue reading →

San Jose, California (PRWEB) August 11, 2014 Follow us on LinkedIn The need to create and maintain a database to store, analyze and interpret various types of biological data, including nucleic acid (DNA/RNA), amino acid sequences, protein genomic, protein structures and protein domains, is resulting in significant growth in bioinformatics. The concept of bioinformatics combines life sciences with informatics involving the use of computer or information technology in storing, retrieving and analysis of large scale data sets generated during "omics" experiments. Bioinformatics finds applications in drug discovery, genomics, molecular science, proteomics, transcriptomics, molecular phylogenetics, metabolomics and pharmacogenomics. In particular, bioinformatics enables the development of sequence databases and related tools for the analysis of large data sets generated during biomedical or life science research using ultra-high-throughput technologies and assays, such as gene expression microarrays, high-throughput sequencing technologies, imaging devices and proteomics platforms. The technology is gaining importance owing to its ability to accelerate clinical research by expediting the application of research findings to enable scientists to understand pathophysiology of diseases while identifying molecular targets for drug discovery and potential biomarkers. Data management tools based on bioinformatics, for instance, help simplify the task of analysing the biological diversity of a disease, thereby … Continue reading →

SINGAPORE: Scientists at A*STARs Institute of Medical Biology (IMB) and the Bioinformatics Institute (BII) have found new clues that could lead to the early detection and more personalised treatment of ovarian cancer. IMB scientists have successfully identified a biomarker of ovarian stem cells, which may allow for earlier detection of ovarian cancer and thus allow treatment at an early stage of the illness, A*STAR announced on Friday (Aug 8). The illness is one of the three predominant cancers that affect women, along with breast and womb cancer. Of the three, ovarian cancer is of the greatest concern as it is usually diagnosed only at an advanced stage due to the absence of clear early warning symptoms unique to the illness, the agency said. Successful treatment is difficult at this late stage, resulting in high mortality rates. Ovarian cancer has increased in prevalence in Singapore as well as other developed countries recently, and is now the fifth most common cancer in Singapore among women, with about 280 cases diagnosed annually and 90 deaths per year, according to a Singapore Cancer Registry study. KEY BIOMARKER LOCATED The IMB team has identified a molecule, known as Lgr5, on a subset of cells in … Continue reading →

[5] 9083 genes and their mutational patterns were examined from the retrospective data of 334 HG-SOC tumor samples provided by The Cancer Genome Atlas Research Network for study by the research and clinical community ________________________________________________________________ Image attached: Figure 1. Mouse ovary isencapsulated by asingle layer ofcellscalled ovary surface epithelium (indicated by black arrows). These cellsare long believed tobe thecancer cell of origin of ovarian cancer in humans. Annex B findings at A*STARs bioinformatics institute hold potential for personalised treatment of major type ovarian cancer Scientists at A*STARs Bioinformatics Institute have identified genes whose mutation status could be used for prognosis and development of personalized treatment for high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma (HG-SOC), a major type of ovarian cancer. Besides identification of CHEK2 as a biomarker for poor prognosis, the team of scientists also identified a prognostic signature comprising 21 genes that could be used to stratify patients diagnosed with HG-SOC into subgroups with high- or low- risk of mortality within five years of diagnosis. Patients identified as high-risk had a five-year survival rate of 6%, and appeared to be twice as likely to exhibit resistance to therapy in contrast to those in the low-risk group. Besides determining the effectiveness of treatments, … Continue reading →