Informatics Center for Neurogenetics and Neurogenomics

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This is a proposal for an NINDS Institutional Center Core, the Informatics Center for Neurogenetics and Neurogenomics (ICNN) at UCLA. As with other areas of biomedical science, the post-genome era raises the prospect of transformational advances in neuroscience research. Neuroscience faces special challenges, however, in analysis, interpretation, and management of the vast quantities of information generated by genetic and genomic technologies. The phenotypic and organizational complexity of the nervous system calls for distinct analytical and informatics strategies and expertise. The ICNN will provide advanced analysis and informatics support to a highly interactive user group consisting of neuroscientists at UCLA, who are conducting basic, clinical, and translational research. These investigators have access to excellent facilities for genetics and genomics experimentation; the lack of corresponding resources in analysis and informatics constitutes a bottleneck in their research. ICNN faculty experts in statistical genetics, gene expression analysis, and bioinformatics will oversee the activities of highly-trained staff members who will accomplish three goals: 1) Providing expert consultation and analyses for neurogenetics and neurogenomics projects; 2) Developing and maintaining a shared computing resource that will include a computational cluster for computation-intensive analyses, web-servers and state of the art software tools for a wide range of applications (including user-friendly versions of public databases, as well as workstations on which ICNN users will be trained to employ these tools; 3) Providing hands-on training in analysis and informatics to the users.