Within the short span of 5 years, the techniques of biomedical informatics (bioinformatics) have become universally applied in medical investigation. Cutting edge investigation in dermatology now requires ready access to expert and affordable basic and special techniques and services. The mission of the Bioinformatics Core Laboratory is to provide services, facilities, and education to support the bioinformatics needs of SDRC Investigators. It is organized under the Director, Lei Liu, Ph.D. (who also serves as Director of the Bioinformatics Center in the W.M. Keck Center for Comparative and Functional Genomics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and two Co-Directors (Harold Garner, Ph.D., Professor of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern and Mark E. Mummert, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Dermatology at UT Southwestern).
Specific aims are to: (1) provide biomedical informatics resources administered by the Core Director to SDRC Investigators on the UT Southwestern campus; (2) provide training and education in the performance of bioinformatics searches for participating SDRC investigators; and (3) make available to SDRC Investigators advances in the new field of massively parallel gene expression quantification, using new computer tools that facilitate construction of unique microarrays. This will include access to cutting-edge technology for the fabrication, use, and interpretation of data derived from use-specific genetic arrays and the construction and evaluation of high-density cDNA arrays for expression profiling of matched normal and experimental (pathological) tissues. These services will allow SDRC Investigators to employ contemporaneous informatics techniques throughout the 5-year granting period.
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