- Edinburgh Centre for Bioinformatics , University of Edinburgh
- The Scottish Centre for Genomic Technology and Informatics (GTI, University of Edinburgh
- MRC Human Genetics Unit, University of Edinburgh
- Roslin Institute
- Bioinformatics Research Group at the University of Dundee
- Bioinformatics Research Centre (BRC), University of Glasgow
Edinburgh Centre for Bioinformatics , University of Edinburgh
The Edinburgh Centre for Bioinformatics, is a collaboration between life scientists, computer scientists and other physical scientists to stimulate and support collaborative interdisciplinary research in bioinformatics.
Edinburgh has one of the largest and best groups of researchers with interests in bioinformatics in the UK. The network and collaborations underpinning the Edinburgh Centre for Bioinformatics draw on several highly-rated academic Schools within the University of Edinburgh, on other Universities and on world-leading biological and biomedical Research Institutes in and around the City.
Within the University of Edinburgh, bioinformatics research mainly involves the College of Science & Engineering (the School of Biological Sciences and the School of Informatics) and the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine.
The Scottish Centre for Genomic Technology and Informatics (GTI, University of Edinburgh
GTI is an exciting and dynamic department that is really pushing the boundaries of interdisciplinary bioinformatics and biomedical research in Edinburgh. It aims to encourage collaboration between all of the major Scottish research institutions with an interest in genomics and post-genomics.
Its core competencies are in gene expression technologies – including the instrumentation side – and bioinformatics.
The Centre is led by Peter Ghazal, a charismatic director with a strong understanding of the technology issues as well as the science.
GTI has already spun out two companies:
MRC Human Genetics Unit, University of Edinburgh
The MRC Human Genetics Unit at the University of Edinburgh has developed considerable expertise in micro array and gene expression analysis technology in relation to the EMAGE in situ gene expression database project.
This is the basis of a number of international collaborations including those with the Sanger Centre and the Max Planck institute in Berlin.
Roslin Institute
At the Roslin Institute, the bioinformatics support for the high throughput genetics and gene expression research, LIMS, quality control analysis and its specialist transcriptomics unit (ARK genomics) is internationally competitive.
It is the principal group in the area of genome comparison.
Bioinformatics Research Group, University of Dundee
Led by Professor Geoff Barton, the primary emphasis of the group's research is on the computational analysis and prediction of the function and three-dimensional structure of proteins from their amino acid sequence.
The group is based in the Post Genomics and Molecular Interactions Centre at the University of Dundee School of Life Sciences.
The group was established with significant research funding from the BBSRC, Wellcome Trust and Scottish Higher Education Funding Council.
Computing facilities include around 8Tb of RAID5 storage and a 150CPU compute farm with 6Tb of distributed storage and 300Gb memory.
Bioinformatics Research Centre (BRC), University of Glasgow
The Bioinformatics Research Centre at the University of Glasgow provides an environment for collaborative interdisciplinary research in Bioinformatics.
The Centre is part of the Department of Computing Science, but is located in two large laboratories in the Faculty of Biomedical and Life Sciences.
Its research programme aims to close the loop between the wet-lab and in-silico analysis, actively promoting collaborative projects between life scientists and bioinformaticians.
The Centre is directed by Professor David Gilbert, and has a rapidly expanding strong and active research team, with backgrounds ranging from molecular biology to theoretical computer science.
The team's major research activities include:
- systems biology;
- structural bioinformatics;
- functional genomics;
- databases and visualisation;
- e-science and grid ;and,
- machine learning.
The Centre has an active outreach programme, with a dedicated visitors' area providing computational facilities as well as facilitating interaction with the Centre's members.
It has has strong links with the Glasgow eScience Hub of the National eScience Institute, with which it shares several research projects, and the Sir Henry Wellcome Functional Genomics Facility, for example in the area of microarray analysis.
The Centre plays an active role in Bioinformatics at the national and international level, and was local host to the large international ISMB/ECCB2004 Bioinformatics conference.