The Bioinformatics Core was established in 2007 to provide analytical support for numerous research projects at the Joslin Diabetes Center. Core activities and resources including biostatistics consulting, the clinical data warehouse, the high-performance computer cluster and the analysis of genomic data have benefited most labs at Joslin. The recent emergence of new technologies for high-throughput DNA sequencing, metabolomics, and proteomics among others catalyzed transformative changes throughout the biomedical sciences. The need to introduce these whole genome technologies into diabetes research brings numerous informatics and systems biology challenges. Computational science, network modeling and informatics play important roles in meeting these challenges. We propose an expanded Computational Core that will significantly enhance our analytic capabilities in order to cover not only basic support functions but also to promote innovative network modeling and systems biology approaches to diabetes research at Joslin and throughout the Boston area. The proposed Core is named the Boston University Joslin Regional Computational Core (BUJRC Core) and will consist of two branches: the Bioinformatics / Computational Biology Service branch and the Collaborative Systems Biology/Medicine branch. The Bioinformatics / Computational Biology Service branch will act as a resource to the diabetes research community by providing state-of the-art analysis of high-throughput biomedical data, as well as consultation on the design of these types of experiments. This branch will support diabetes research in the design, analysis, and biological interpretation of experiments that involve generation of omic data and its integration with physiological and clinical data. The Collaborative Systems Biology/Medicine branch will help to create an environment that incorporates computational systems biology/medicine methodologies into clinically relevant translational and basic diabetes research. This branch includes local faculty with a proven track record of having worked together to produce innovative systems biology and translational research. This proposed expanded Core will significantly enhance the prior capabilities to provide support functions to Joslin researchers as well as developing relevant network modeling and systems biology methodologies at Boston University. The expanded core will serve as a bridge for establishing collaborations with other diabetes researchers throughout the region.
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