The Supercomputing Institute has most popular software for bioinformatics (BLAST, GCG, EMBOSS, Phred/Phrap, ...), microarray data analysis (Expressionist, GeneTraffic, GeneSpring, S+ArrayAnalyzer, ...), proteomics (Mascot, Sequest, ProTS Data, Clinprotool), structural determination and simulation (Explorer, CNS, InsightII, Charmm, ...). Statistic packages such as SAS, R, and SPLUS are available and can be used for bioinformatics data analysis. For database application development IBM DB2, Oracle, MySQL and SQL Server are all available at the Institute.

Please contact the Institute's user support staffs to discuss your needs, projects, databases, and software requirements. For more information, please check the Institute's computational biology website at http://www.msi.umn.edu/user_support/compgen/

One of the bioinformatics group's unique strength is its staff ability to bridge across the fields of biological/biomedical research and bioinformatics. Staff members provide expert advice and analysis of DNA-based microarray gene expression analysis, sequence processing, sequence annotation, data integration and modeling. In this support context, new applications are being developed (e.g. GO-annotator tool) or brought in house for evaluation.

The Core and its Bioinformatics Groups participate in the Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) initiative. The CaBIG goal is to develop an infrastructure that facilitate data and tools sharing to foster collaborations and speed the process of research and discovery.

The Center for Computational Genomics and Bioinformatics (CCGB) is an evolution of the Computational Biology Centers, an organization that has been serving the users of the campus molecular biology community for many years. The CCGB presently addresses issues of molecular biology, including database design, bioinformatics software integration, and serving the high-throughput DNA sequencing community on campus.

The mission of the Center is to develop a novel structure for bioinformatics research, that will, in turn, provide a means for fostering true inter-disciplinary education, for developing integrated service functions within the University, and to act as a platform for outreach to the community, both academic and at-large.

Recognizing the necessity of bioinformatics in the success of any genome-related project, the Center seeks to develop a cadre of interactive scientists who can both operate independently, but more importantly, recognize and leverage their strengths to develop an atmosphere of breadth and depth which does not generally exist in academic units. Operating out of the Academic Health Center (AHC), but with campus-wide support, the Center works with other organizations on campus, such as the Supercomputing Institute's Computational Genetics Laboratory, and the Cancer Center, to manage both internal (individual and group) research and development projects, as well as continue to develop and implement a strategy for the support of bioinformatics tools for all university researchers.