Facility Details

Mission statement. The INBRE Bioinformatics Core will provide state-of-the-art research bioinformatics support for the Oklahoma scientific community, foster educational efforts to train Oklahoma scientists in the use of bioinformatics tools for research purposes, and promote bioinformatics education for undergraduate and high school students in the state of Oklahoma.

Summary. In pursuit of this mission, the INBRE Bioinformatics Core Facility provides support to biomedical research and educational institutions in the state of Oklahoma, other regional IDeA-participating states, and elsewhere. To date, research support has focused primarily in two areas. 1) Global analysis of gene expression data using custom spotted microarrays and commercial Affymetrix and Combimatrix arrays to examine gene expression patterns in mice, adenovirus-infected cells, and a variety of bacterial systems. Current work is transitioning to transcriptome analysis using RNA-seq methodology. 2) Genome annotation and comparative genomics analysis, including studies on several bacterial and viral pathogens important for human and agricultural disease. These studies have included informatics support for genome sequencing projects, annotation support, and post-sequence studies such as phylogenetic inference and recombination analyses. Other projects during the current funding period have focused on using bioinformatics-based strategies for developing hypotheses that are amenable to experimental testing. Bioinformatics educational support has developed a variety of resources used by INBRE network PUIs and CCs in Oklahoma, providing lecture and laboratory materials. Examples of these educational experiences include analysis of laboratory data for DNA barcoding, instructional materials for protein structure analyses and phylogenetic analyses, and microbial and viral genome sequence annotation and analysis. We have provided career counseling to undergraduate students, both individually and in large groups. We have supervised both undergraduate summer interns and high school interns to enhance interest in pursuing bioinformatics as a career path. Additionally, we have provided instructional materials for high school teachers interested in incorporating bioinformatics into their lesson plans.