The
 Bioinformatics
 Laboratory
 (BL)
 at
 CRS4
 is
 a
 dedicated
 multi‐user
 resource
 that
 provides
 state‐of‐the‐art
 computational
 support
 for
 biologically
 related
 research.
 The
 goal
 of
 the
 BL
 is
 to
 help
 customers
 solve
 the
 data
 analysis
 bottleneck
 through
 access
 to
 best‐in‐class
 capabilities
 and
 expertise.
 The
 BL
 offers
 the
 services
 described
 below
 to
 both
 internal
 and
 external
 customers. 
All 
work 
is 
performed 
via 
quotes 
from 
the 
BL 
after
 discussions
 on 
the 
project 
and 
experimental 
design.

Our research activities are tightly integrated with an experimental laboratory providing facilities for high-throughput analysis, including 2 Illumina GAIIx and 3 HiSeq2000 Next Generation Sequencing systems and are supported by a state-of-the-art supercomputing center (3,200+ cores).

DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

Modern biological experiments are producing data volumes at unprecedented rates. This is generating issues in data handling/storage, data computation and analysis, and interpretation of results. The central goal of the BL is to reduce these issues in a cost-effective manner to allow researchers to focus on the biological problem rather than the data problem. To meet this goal, the BL offers services for gene expression analysis, next generation sequencing data analysis and much more:

Microarrays (Affymetrix)

• Genotyping (SNP, CNV)
• mRNA expression (preprocessing, quality control, feature selection)
• microRNA expression (preprocessing, quality control, feature selection)
• Functional analysis (GO, Kegg, domain)
• Custom analysis (i.e. comparison to published studies, mRNA-miRNA integration) 

Next Generation Sequencing (Illumina)

• Whole-genome sequencing
• Exome sequencing
• RNA-seq (preprocessing, quality control, feature selection, functional analysis)
• ChIP-seq (transcription factor binding sites, histone modifications)
• DNA methylation
• Custom analysis (i.e. integration of different datasets)

NETWORK ANALYSIS

For an in-depth investigation of gene relationships, the BL proposes a suite of state-of-the-art algorithms for gene network construction which allows the identification of networks of physical interactions and regulatory events. These services can complement other bioinformatics analyses, such as microarray gene expression analysis.

Support Information: Bioinformatics services (84KB, PDF)