Bio Saga Blog - A Chronicle of Life Sciences & Informatics

(EMBL-EBI seeking to recruit an enthusiastic Scientific Database Curator to join the InterPro team at the The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) located on the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus near Cambridge in the UK. The post-holder will work as part of a small team maintaining and curating the InterPro database. Their responsibilities will include updating existing InterPro entries, integrating new predictive signatures and adding annotation such as concise, literature-referenced abstracts. Data in InterPro needs to be of a consistently high quality and so potential candidates should have a good attention to detail and a thorough attitude to their work. We believe that understanding our users' needs and providing for them is critically important, and so the curator may be required to attend conferences, workshops or training events in order to meet with users, hear their ideas and expectations, and teach them about InterPro. The EBI, part of the European Molecular ...

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-                     CS101F Linux for Biologists, Level 1                               Jan. 24-26, 2012                         Online at Bioinformatics.Org                       http://www.bioinformatics.org/edu/ACGG -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- OBJECTIVES: This course teaches biologists how to use the powerful Linux operating system to work with biological data. No programming experience is needed, just a need to utilize Linux for biological research. INSTRUCTOR: Shailender Nagpal is a data analysis consultant in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries and specializes in the interpretation of data...

One of my recent post discussed the dawn of the new era and new breed of search engines Search Wars . YEBOL a youngling from the the Stanford stable, a new search in the block. Yebol's mission is to build human-like world's knowledge base and provide knowledge based search (semantics) and services. Yebol utilizes a combination of patented algorithms paired with human knowledge to build a Web directory for each query and each user. Instead of the common “listing” of Web search queries, Yebol automatically clusters and categorizes search terms, Web sites, pages and contents. Yebol allows for a multi-dimensional search result instead of the normal one-dimensional search seen by most web search engines today. This provides a more accurate summary of top sites and categories; a wider array of related search terms; a longer and richer expansion for query results; and a deeper base of links and keywords in search result pages. Unlike ...

A not very long time ago, in a galaxy near, very near by.... SEARCH WARS Search, Search engines, While the Search engine big wigs fight for a niche in the search engines landscape .... The Google , Yahoo & now Micorsoft too (with their Bing ) There are the Wolfram | Alpha likes that are forming a separatist and slowly gaining power over the Google order. In fact google has managed to bring balance to both with its Google Squared . While platforms like XTractor , NextBio , Novoseek , GoPubMed , BioMedSearch have specialized in searching biomedical and biological knowledge are even more strengthening the separatists. Now to see and know who is more powerful, the galactic empire or the separatist? I leave it to the 'Republic' i.e. You users! to judge, in the form of your comments and experiences with such tools and searches! you could even voice your opinions here

Microbes as bio-defence against chemical weapons, a skin-thin membrane to protect soldiers against toxic environments and cost-effective bio-diesel to fuel military vehicles are among the contributions researchers in the city are set to make for the Indian solider. Developing these futuristic systems is Anna University , with funding from the Defence Research and Development Organisation ( DRDO ). Of the 12 projects the university submitted, DRDO has approved four and allocated Rs 88 lakh as the first instalment. "The projects are research for bio-defence against pathogens and toxins, development of membranes for gas and organic vapour separation, development of novel anti-fouling nano and ultra filtration membranes (these membranes will prevent the solider from imbibing nano-sized toxins) and development of alternative source for bio-diesel from non-edible oils," D Mohan, a senior scientist with Anna University told the press. The most important among these is the research...

IMGT®, the international ImMunoGeneTics information system ( http://imgt.cines.fr ), is the reference in immunogenetics and immunoinformatics. IMGT standardizes and manages the complex immunogenetic data that include the immunoglobulins (IG) or antibodies, the T cell receptors (TR), the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) and the related proteins of the immune system (RPI), which belong to the immunoglobulin superfamily (IgSF) and the MHC superfamily (MhcSF). The accuracy and consistency of IMGT data and the coherence between the different IMGT components (databases, tools and Web resources) are based on IMGT-ONTOLOGY, the first ontology for immunogenetics and immunoinformatics. IMGT-ONTOLOGY manages the immunogenetics knowledge through diverse facets relying on seven axioms, ‘IDENTIFICATION’, ‘DESCRIPTION’, ‘CLASSIFICATION’, ‘NUMEROTATION’, ‘LOCALIZATION’, ‘ORIENTATION’ and ‘OBTENTION’, that postulate that objects, processes and relations have to be identified, d...

There was a time when bio-science was the Cinderella science: meticulous, certainly, and worthwhile, but far from glamorous. All that changed in 2003, when the sequencing of the human genome was completed. Now masses of data and the potential for radical technologies are attracting the best graduates in chemistry, physics, engineering and maths. And bio-science offers more than intellectual curiosity, explains Professor Sir David Read, Biological Secretary and Vice-President of the Royal Society. "It's the human factor," he says. "Cross-disciplinary approaches are addressing many of the major threats to humanity: disease prevalence, antibiotic-resistant micro-organisms, avian flu, the threats to the environment associated with climate change." The biological sciences are as varied, and sometimes as confusing, as life itself, taking in such disparate disciplines as neuroscience and taxonomy, environmental science and microbiology, physiology and bioche...

Videos in Biosciences

Leading scientists discuss DNA database at April 7-8 Meeting For a quarter century, GenBank has helped advance scientific discovery worldwide. Established by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1982, the database of nucleic acid sequences is one of the key tools that scientists use to conduct biomedical and biologic research. Since its creation, GenBank has grown at an exponential rate, doubling in size every 18 months. In celebration of this vital resource and its contribution to science over the last 25 years, the National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine (NLM), NIH, is holding a two-day conference on GenBank. The conference will take place April 7-8, 2008 at the Natcher Conference Center on the main NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland. For details on the meeting, see the conference Web site, at http://www.tech-res.com/GenBank25 . The conference is open to the public and also will be available via live and archived webcast; the April 7 proceedin...