Within the last decade and at an ever-accelerating pace, biological sciences are undergoing a transformation in which extremely large datasets are being experimentally generated, analyzed and integrated for a wide variety of uses. In response, bioinformatics, a multidisciplinary field integrating biological, mathematical and computer sciences and providing the opportunity to accelerate the discovery process in the biological, biotechnological and biomedical sciences, has evolved. Still, there remains a great gap between the knowledge-base of most biologists and emerging bioinformatics methods and applications relevant to their particular field. The NIBN Bioinformatics Core Facility was established to help university biologists bridge these gaps and advance their research efforts through the use of bioinformatics.
Initially, the Bioinformatics Core Facility concentrated on individual consultations and training in the use of Bioinformatics tools for various purposes. However, with the increase in accumulation of large-scale experimental data at BGU, the focus of the Facility has shifted towards high-level computational and statistical analysis of large, complex data sets. We use cutting edge commercial and open-source software for analyzing data, either as a paid service or through collaborative grants, performing both statistical analysis and biological interpretation hand-in-hand with the experimentalist.
Our capabilities include:
- Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) data analysis: de novo assembly of DNA and RNA from novel organisms, RNA-Seq, ChIP-Seq and more.
- Exome sequencing data analysis, for identification of disease-causing mutations.
- Microarrays data analysis and re-analysis.
- Biostatistics.
- Medical informatics.
- Data mining: extracting patterns and trends from large volumes of experimental data, typically in the form of a large spreadsheet table
- Gene Ontology, pathway and biological network-based analyses of high-throughput data.
- Large-scale sequence analysis and functional annotation in sequencing projects
- Large-scale retrieval and parsing of data from external databases
The Facility includes Linux servers and PC workstations with both commercial and publicly available software including CLC Genomics Workbench, Partek Genomics Suite, MetaCore Pathway Analysis & Data Mining software, Sequencher, R/BioConductor, Expander, Cytoscape, NCBI Toolkit, a variety of public NGS analysis software and many more.
Bioinformatics Core Facility Website
