Microbial Informatics Resource Core

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The overall long-term goal of the proposed project is to establish a computational environment to support antimicrobial and antibioterrorism research and development. The proposed environment will allow rapid identification and characterization of biological warfare agents and the development of efficient strategies for their containment. We will develop computational tools, algorithms, and databases for analysis, visualization, and annotation of the data targeted to the particular needs of microbiology research and the antibioterrorism effort, and we will provide environment for seamless integration of those tools with the national computational Grid (the NSF TeraGrid). The developed tools will allow identification and characterization of virulence factors, prediction of pathogens' major physiological and metabolic characteristics, and estimation of their taxonomic positions. We will leverage the National Computational Science Alliance Scientific Workspaces of the Future initiative to provide collaboration tools that will enable investigators from multiple institutions to collaborate seamlessly on coherent projects focused on particular pathogens. We also aim to develop and deploy tools that will enable students and other members of the scientific community to be efficiently and effectively trained in the use of computational biology techniques for the particular needs of the anti-bioterrorism effort, and will help overcome the national shortage of workers in computational biology