The ultimate goal of the Program is to develop methodologies to study cancer. One important aspect of it is to understand the biology, or function, underlying the large amount of data that will be analyzed. The four projects in this Program will deal with data and annotations at different levels. For example, genetic variation data will be analyzed in Project 1, gene and protein data is used in Project 2, 3 and 4, while microbiome and metabolites data is used in Project 3. Functional annotations to these datasets will be crucial for each project to properly analyze the data and interpret the results. The key focus of Core B is to support these projects by providing resources to annotate the data. The Core will work very closely with Core D (Data analysis and software development), which provides support in centralized data storage. The project will leverage the existing in-house annotation tools, for example, ANNOVAR for genetic variant annotation and PANTHER for gene/protein annotation, and identify external resources, prioritize and build an integrative and comprehensive infrastructure for annotation. The system will allow us to annotate and re-annotate data that are brought into the Program by Core D. It is crucial to maintain all annotations up to date, so it should make frequently updates from the source. It should also have a user-friendly interface to allow members in the Program to annotate the data while they are generating them, browse and identify the data of interest and retrieve shared results by other researchers.
The Functional Annotation Core (Core B) will identify internal and external annotation resources, including public annotation data and annotation software and tools, and provide annotations to the colorectal cancer data collected by Core D to produce the master datasets. In addition, the Core will provide support for Program investigators to add additional annotations by building web interfaces, training and organizing workshops.
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