The Australian Bioinformatics Facility (ABF) supports the Bioplatforms Australia investment in Genomics Australia, Proteomics Australia and Metabolomics Australia by delivering leading edge bioinformatics infrastructure and services to build bioinformatics service capacity within and across these platforms.
The ABF enhances the bioinformatics service capacity of the three –omics through
- Embedding within platforms dedicated bioinformatics staffing and associated infrastructure;
- Providing non-embedded support of specific identified platform-based bioinformatics activities, and
- Disseminating to platforms national and international best practice in bioinformatics.
The ABF is a specialised service platform operating within the Western Australian State Government Centre of Excellence in Comparative Genomics (CCG) at Murdoch University.
The platform draws upon the full range of expertise and infrastructure located within the Centre. The Centre’s team has national and international expertise in bioinformatics, computational biology, comparative genomics, molecular biology, internet-based software development and high performance computing. Specific CCG bioinformatics capabilities include: sequence assembly, gene and genome annotation, mapping, transcriptomics, comparative genomics, vaccine candidate identification, new tools for alignment, phylogenetic analysis, gene expression and statistical analysis, peptide mass fingerprinting analysis and customisation of protein datasets.
At the heart of the Centre is the Bioinformatics Research Laboratory (BRL) which represents unique scientific infrastructure for Australia. The BRL offers a range of bioinformatics capabilities, including the development of computational tools, a vast range of data analysis and high resolution visualisation strategies, and the development of integrated web-based applications. The BRL is a dedicated high performance computing facility that will soon be upgraded to 512 cores. The facility also provides industry and scientists access to state-of-the-art computing infrastructure and support. A key feature of the facility is a 4 metre wide by 3 metre high, 18 million pixel high-resolution display wall. This infrastructure enables scientists to visually interpret and conduct in-depth analysis in a manner which was previously not possible.
Summary
The ABF through drawing upon the full range of expertise and infrastructure located within the Centre for Comparative Genomics at Murdoch University supports the BioPlatforms Australia investment in the three –omics platforms by building the bioinformatics service capacity of each platform.