Bioinformatics is the application of information technology to biological data, typically using computational and statistical techniques to better understand complex data. Bioinformaticians annotate and analyze complex volumes of genomic data for projects in epidemiology, infectious disease, virology and many other medical fields.
Integrating bioinformatics data into infectious disease research and vaccine development advances therapeutics and clinical care for more effective and preventive patient care. The Bioinformatics group at IGS includes researchers with expertise in genome assembly, genome analysis and annotation, comparative analysis, evolutionary analysis, systems, biology, cancer genomics, and genotyping.
The Informatics Resource Center (IRC) at IGS provides annotation and analysis of genomic data for projects locally and internationally, using state-of-the-art computational infrastructure. Often the IRC group works in combination with the Genomics Resource Center to provide comprehensive analysis for projects. The IRC has developed and maintained several tools and pipelines to facilitate research. Highlights of IRC's work include the NIH Human Microbiome Project and DACC, the IGS Annotation Engine Service, and GEMINA (Genomic Metadata for Infectious Agents). A vital component of every bioinformatics project at IGS is training and outreach. IGS offers four free workshops each year in sequencing, annotation pipelines, manual curation, and data analysis. The workshops are modular, allowing participants to attend only sections of interest. Web-based training opportunities are under development.
