BIONFORMATICS & BIOSTATISTICS CORE

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In this competitive renewal, the Bioinformatics & Biostatistics Core reasserts its commitment to providing the computational/bioinformatics infrastructure and analytical techniques necessary for the success of the University of Washington NIDA Center. The unifying theme of the Center is to integrate results from global gene expression and protein abundance profiles to provide a more detailed understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in the host response to viral infection. By bringing together researchers with expertise in such varied fields as virology, bioinformatics, immunology, biostatistics, clinical medicine, and mass spectrometry, our multidisciplinary approach to studying viral diseases such as AIDS and HCV allows for communication across these fields and integration of information to provide novel or improved methods toward treatment of these diseases. While the other Cores are responsible for generating the collaborations that will lead to unique sets of biological samples and solving the problems surrounding newer technologies such as proteomics, the Bioinformatics & Biostatistics Core provides the necessary functions underpinning the success of these efforts such as data management, computational infrastructure, statistical experimental design and analysis, and data dissemination. The Specific Aims of the Core are to: 1) Provide data analysis support and platforms for the integration of disparate types of data. 2) Provide mechanisms for the dissemination of raw data and processed results to the research community. 3) Provide statistical expertise and application training for optimized experimental design and data analysis. Our role often begins at the inception of a research program and continues long after the laboratory experiments have been completed. Biostatistics is key to our mission in terms of optimizing sample population, sample size, and sampling technique for the greatest efficiency and significance to be garnered from experiments as well as statistical analysis of the resulting data. Bioinformatics provides the computer infrastructure and databases for storage and dissemination of our results and is responsible for custom analysis, data integration, and software training. These wide-ranging efforts inextricably tie the Bioinformatics & Biostatistics Core to the overall success of the other Cores with in the NIDA Center and underscore our importance in these research efforts.