SETTING UP A BIOINFORMATICS UNIT IN THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGY (INTA)

PAULA FERNANDEZ; MARCELO SORIA; IÑAKI LANDERRECHE; SERGIO LEW; SEBASTIÁN ASURMENDI; MARISA D. FARBER; NORMA PANIEGO

Torremolinos, Malaga, España

Workshop; Workshop on Collaborative Bioinformatics; 2007

RIBIO/EMBnet

We are setting up a computing center to meet the bioinformatics requirements of several research lines within the Institute of Biotechnology, specifically in the area of agrobiotechnology. The first step was the purchase, installation and configuration of a network composed of 6 Dell Optiplex desktop computers and a Dell workstation. Most of the computers has dual boot options for Windows XP and Linux Fedora Core 6. However, most of the software installed runs under Linux. The choice of software applications installed was selected considering the current needs of the research projects. At this point the center offers a range of applications for numerical data analysis; sequence search, alignment and comparison of DNA and protein sequences, motif discovery, whole genome analysis, biomolecules visualization and phylogenetics. Currently we are installing and configuring tools to implement basic routines for microarray analysis, polymorphism detection, transcriptome and metabolic data integration. The sunflower genomics project already has a working pipeline for EST analysis encompassing cleaning of non-EST sequences, EST trimming, contig assembly, GO annotation and database management. We have been organizing training courses and workshops for CICV personnel. In collaboration with the CIPF from Valencia, Spain, we held a course on perspectives in comparative and functional genomics, that took place in the Faculty of Sciences at the National University of Buenos Aires in March 2007. A second course was held in collaboration with the Institute Pasteur (Montevideo) on bioinformatics tools for comparative genomics in prokaryotes. In the near future we are planning the purchase of extra hardware, setting up local consolidated databases and further pipelines according to the researchers needs. The final goal of this effort will be the development of an autonomous support unit with their own research.