December 4, 2009
Moncton, NB – A recent announcement by the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) celebrates the addition of new infrastructure aimed at enhancing bioinformatics capacity at its Moncton-based facility. The Bioinformatics Lab is a joint initiative between the National Research Council, I’Universite de Moncton, the Atlantic Cancer Research Institute and the University of New Brunswick.
The NRC Institute for Information Technology (NRC-IIT) conducts scientific research, develops technology, creates knowledge and supports innovation, and operates facilities in four Canadian cities: Fredericton, Moncton, Gatineau and Ottawa.
The new infrastructure consists of high powered computers and a large capacity server, vital links in mining vast data sets. Bioinformatics is the application of information technology to the filed of molecular biology. Bioinformatics is used to mine data in order increase our understanding of biological processes, especially when there is a large amount of data to process or many criteria to take into consideration.
While the capabilities are being set up primarily in view of serving biomedical research, bioinformatics is a platform capability which serves research in the whole range of biological sciences. In addition to the work on cancer genomics, New Brunswick has hosted several large-scale genomics projects in the bioscience disciplines of plants (primarily potato and spruce) as well as fish (primarily salmon and cod), microbes and algae. Many New Brunswick biology researchers would attest that their work involves established capabilities in genomics and bioinformatics. These capabilities have been established via investments from several sources including provincial funds, private funds, Genome Atlantic / Genome Canada, the federal granting agencies and intra-mural investments in several federal departments.
