The IU Department of Biology, in partnership with University Information Technology Services Research Technologies and National Center for Genome Analysis Support, hosted a Bioinformatics clinic at Lindley Hall last week.
Through several hours of lecture broken up with small group exercises each day, the free, five-day workshop provided participants with an introduction to cyberinfrastructure resources available at IU for computational genomics.
Participants explored the fundamentals of the cyberinfrastructure resources iPlant and Galaxy and their application in solving problems in genome biology, according to the UITS Research Technologies website.
iPlant provides powerful, extensible platforms for bioinformatics, data storage, image analysis, cloud services and Application Program Interfaces, among other forms.
Galaxy is an open web-based platform for data intensive bio-medical research.
Volker Brendel, a professor of biology and computer science at IU, organized the event and taught the iPlant portion of the clinic.
“It is a nationally supported computer environment used to conduct life science research and the specifics of that are very complex,” Brendel said.
Participants in the clinic included IU students, faculty and staff with interests in cyberinfrastructure, biology, chemistry and biochemistry.
“Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field, including research in biology, science, informatics and physics, so we advertise broadly on campus,” Brendel said.
The clinic included participants from a broad spectrum of interests as well as skill level.
Daniel Standage, a doctoral candidate in bioinformatics who taught the basic scientific computing aspect of the clinic, said the heterogeneous nature of the participants served as the biggest challenge.
“Some come with little or no experience and need their hands held as they take their first steps in scientific computing and bioinformatics,” Standage said. “Others have a bit of experience and want to improve.”
The clinic provides bioinformatics students with the foundation for success.
“Most life scientists recognize the importance of the skills we teach in this workshop, but nobody really has enough time to devote a semester-long course to learning those skills,” Standage said.
Brendel said he is pretty much committed to offering this workshop each summer, but there might be additional workshop options as well.
“It’s not much work for us to offer a week-long clinic for free, and in return the participants come away some basic bioinformatics skills, providing the foundation for improving and expanding their research program,” Standage said.