Over a decade ago, the development of our bioinformatics infrastructure and capabilities was a new focus for the 2 major research institutions in KY because they had clearly recognizable needs associated with the blossoming of the 'omics' era in the life sciences. More recently, health-related and biomedical informatics are seen as challenging necessities for clinical and translational research. The recognition of the importance of bioinformatics is being expressed now in the regional institutions, because bioinformatics is seen to be an important requirement in the undergraduate science curriculum, especially in biology and computer science classes. We will continue to encourage our KBRIN-affiliated regional institutions to integrate bioinformatics into their research and educational missions. In addition, we propose to incorporate our KBRIN-outreach institutions into this 'movement' so that a larger proportion of the state's undergraduate student body can be engaged in our overall integrated genomics/bioinformatics research training/education mission. Our operational model for bioinformatics (Table 10, above) shows that each of our 6 KBRIN primary networked institutions have resources committed to some aspect of bioinformatics whether it be in research, training or education. For example, Uofils committed to eliminating the bottlenecks in the data-analyses pipeline that currently hold up progress in research. UK, similarly, is developing a Clinical Translational Science Award (CTSA) supported bioinformatics center in support of translation/clinical research. A most impressive development in bioinformatics infrastructure among our network has to be the 50 member strong Bioinformatics and Information Science Center (BISC) at WKU. The integration of bioinformatics across departments into a Center-like organization at a regional institution has to be a first. Two faculty members associated with this center have participated for several years in the HHMI's SEA-PHAGE program, a unique vehicle for introducing genomics/bioinformatics research training/education to undergraduate students. We intend to make use of their experience and expertise, together with the core facilities and resources at the 2 research intensive universities to establish a KBRIN-centric genomics/bioinformatics training exercise in our outreach institutions. This will bring our functional genomics theme to an expanded network of undergraduate students (see administrative core). The bioinformatics core narrative is described under the following headings: (1) Infrastructure, (2) Research, (3) Education and Training (4) The Next Five Years. (1) Infrastructure: At Uofl we initially had a major problem building interest and collaborations between interdisciplinary/multi-disciplinary investigators on multiple campuses. These include investigators in Anatomical Science and Neurobiology, Biochemistry and. Molecular Biology, Bioinformatics and Biostatistics, on the Health Sciences campus and Chemistry, Computer Engineering and Computer Science, Biology, Psychology and Mathematics on the main/undergraduate campus, geographically separated by several miles. To enhance collaboration between these researchers, and engage more biomedical researchers a bioinformatics, the PI negotiated with the EVPRI and the Dean oUhe School of Medicine to develop a dedicated 1900 ft2 space and a state-of-the-art videoconferencing facility on the University of Louisville's Health Science Campus (Figure 20) in this past 5 year funding cycle. This space is fully operational and allows for KBRIN to further develop bioinformatics research capability and provide a mechanism for keeping close contact with bioinformatics researchers across campus and throughout the state. It is currently inhabited by KBRIN-affiliated researchers, and can accommodate visiting faculty from other campuses and/or KBRIN institutions. We hope to grow this space as additional needs and resources become available.
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