KAREN has vastly improved our access to international bioinformatic resources, collaborations and events.

Decreasing the distance of data

Bioinformatics researchers need to have access to many rapidly expanding databases of genetic information, protein structures and biodiversity, in an attempt to understand how the molecular makeup of living things determines their structure, the way they function, and the environments they inhabit.

Typically organisations in New Zealand have mirrored overseas biomolecular databases but there are significant downfalls with this approach. The databases are rapidly expanding, they need to be refreshed frequently and with the bandwidth available prior to KAREN meant this was a slow and expensive process. Then there's the question of sharing these databases with collaborators within New Zealand; with stories of researchers in the South Island couriering hard discs of information to their research offices on a weekly basis.

The bandwidth and capacity enabled by KAREN has changed all this, and the Bioinformatics Institute based at the University of Auckland is quick to adapt to this advantage.

Excellence and access in bioinformatics

With five academic staff, three research programmers, more than 10 postgraduate students and twenty-five affiliate investigators, the Bioinformatics Institute is a centre of research excellence in bioinformatics, with specialisations in evolutionary bioinformatics, genomics, microarray analysis, and population and conservation genetics.

For several years now, the Bioinformatics Institute has maintained the New Zealand Biomirror, a collection of freely accessible databases of genetic and molecular information that is updated nightly from international repositories.

With a large bandwidth these databases are now more easily accessble than ever, and the Bioinformatics Institute, with funding from REANNZ, is involved in projects that build on the raw data that these databases provide, to deliver software and applications that cater to the day-to-day activities of researchers in New Zealand.

"Our access to the international community has been limited and costly, which means that we have had to endure limited or no access to critical databases, as well as opportunities for e-collaboration and e-conferences. This has changed with KAREN," says professor Allen Rodrigo, Professor of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics at the University of Auckland.

What is Bioinformatics?

Bioinformatics involves the development and application of computational methods with the aim of extracting information from biomolecular and genetic data to answer questions in biology, biotechnology and medicine.

Bioinformaticists take advantage of rapidly expanding databases of genetic information, protein structures and biodiversity, in an attempt to understand how the molecular makeup of living things determines our structure and the way we function. A bioinformaticist has to have a sound understanding of mathematics, statistics, computer science and biology because of the large amount of genetic information, and the particular nature of biomolecular data itself.

Specialised areas of research include protein structure prediction, molecular evolution, prediction of genetic function, drug design, forensics, immunology, and the analysis of genetic responses.

More information

http://www.bioinformatics.org.nz/

http://www.biomirror.org.nz

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Updated 16 May 2008