The Bioinformatics/Computational Biology (BI/CB) investigators at The Jackson Laboratory are national leaders in community database development, statistical genetics, and the development of computational approaches for understanding gene function. Biomedical researchers here and in the wider scientific community are tapping the wealth of mouse sequence and phenotype data to understand the molecular networks involved in human disease and normal development. In response to the increased reliance of functional analyses on computational approaches, the BI/CB programs are expanding to add strength in computational biology and to further integrate in silica and in vivo approaches for understanding gene function. In the long term, such collaborative, interdisciplinary research will be enabled by the development of nationwide computing grids. Richly annotated data from our substantive phenotyping and genetic characterization programs, accompanied by tools for data visualization and mining, will add to the national endeavor. To achieve that goal, Jackson plans to recruit four new faculty members over the next five years with expertise in applying computational approaches to solving biological problems. However, our three-floor BI/CB area is at capacity because of the rapid growth of existing programs. There is no space for new recruits or expected program expansions. In addition, there is insufficient space to house the expanding computing hardware necessary to meet the increased needs of the BI/CB programs and our wet-bench research programs, which are increasingly dependent on computation. The project described in this application will create the additional office and conference space necessary to support expansion of the BI/CB programs. It will also construct a Computing Infrastructure Facility creating the additional space necessary to house the existing and anticipated additional computing hardware required to support the increasingly data- and computationally intense research of the entire Jackson Laboratory scientific staff.
