Bio Saga Blog - A Chronicle of Life Sciences & Informatics

A new paper written by researchers from the Institute for Systems Biology describes a computational approach for studying regulatory activities in cells that relies on integrated networks of transcriptional and metabolic data. The study, published in PLOS Computational Biology earlier this month, describes software called the Gene Expression and Metabolism Integrated for Network Inference (GEMINI) which uses an integrated model of network and metabolic data to explore growth phenotypes in Saccharomyces cerevisiae . GEMINI builds on work from the same researchers published in 2010 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . That paper describes the Probabilistic Regulation of Metabolism (PROM), which provides a mechanism for integrating transcriptional regulatory networks and metabolic networks in a single in silico model and using it to make predictions about phenotypes such as flux and growth rate. While based on PROM, GEMINI is designed to tackle a slightly dif...

January 10-12, 2014  Birla Institute of Scientific Research, Statue Circle, Jaipur, India  [link]   Bioinformatics Centre at Birla Institute of Scientific Research, Jaipur is organizing a three-day Bioinformatics workshop on "Structural Bioinformatics". BISR is known for providing a high quality training in advance area of Biotechnology and Bioinformatics.  This workshop will enable participants to learn tools & techniques that are being used to analyze biological structures i.e. proteins and DNA along with application in drug design. The workshop will feature morning lectures, demonstrations with evening hands-on session in Bioinformatics lab.  The no. of participants is limited to 40 only. The participants of the course may be the UG/PG students, research scholars, faculty member and industry personnel with background in Biological Sciences and/or Information Technology. The workshop is self-contained and does not assume any special knowledge of the subjec...

Accelrys has bought Qumas, a provider of cloud-based and on-premise enterprise compliance software for regulatory and quality operations in regulated industries including the life sciences, for $50 million. Accelrys said that the added intellectual property extends its informatics portfolio by providing document and process management compliance solutions that improve its ability to help customers reduce regulatory risks and quality costs, improve compliance, and increase operational efficiency across their product development lifecyles. Operating from offices in Cork, Ireland and New Jersey, Qumas provides an electronic document management application with related research and development submission and QA documentation packages based on customer and industry requirements and best practices. Its business process management applications include corrective action/preventive action, audit, change control, deviation, complaint, and more. For the last two decades, the company has been ...

Here are some bioinformatics courses, These are geared towards: - Scientists, so they can think like a programmer and solve bottlenecks in data-based Biology - Computer programmers, so they know how to solve bioinformatics problems for scientists - Bioinformaticians, so they can advance their skills in newer application areas Some of these courses include scripting and database management with Linux, Perl, R, Matlab and MySql, while others include learning to use software for analyzing data from Microarray, NGS, Metabolomics and Proteomics platforms. A course on High Performance Computing and Primer Design is also offered. A detailed roster of scheduled courses is available at: http://www.bioinformatics.org/edu/calendar/view.php?view=upcoming Additionally, through Bioinformatics.org, an instructor-led program in practical bioinformatics is being offered. The goal here is to provide attendees a broad overview of the bioinformatics landscape, while giving them hands-on experienc...

GATTACA has always been one of my favorites; every now and then I have used it as a reference in many of my posts, this one being the recent! Genome From Birth - Dawn of the GATTACA era! This is what Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says in his latest public address; Speaking at a Liberty University event in Virginia, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) warned that genetic testing could lead to eugenics à la the 1997 movie Gattaca , reports the Associated Press . "In your lifetime, much of your potential — or lack thereof — can be known simply by swabbing the inside of your cheek," Paul said. "Are we prepared to select out the imperfect among us?" He was campaigning in Virginia for gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli. Other aspects of Paul's speech referring to the dystopian movie, though, resembled the Wikipedia entry on the movie, Rachel Maddow pointed out on her show on Monday. USA Today notes that Paul has not responded to those accusations. Paul added tha...

Illumina today announced it signed a definitive agreement to acquire clinical software firm NextBio. NextBio, based in Santa Clara, Calif., provides platforms to aggregate and analyze large amounts of phenotypic and genomic data for research and clinical applications. It currently has customers at more than 50 commercial entities and academic institutions. By acquiring the firm, Illumina "will be able to offer customers enterprise-level bioinformatics solutions that accelerate the discovery of new associations between the human genome and disease, and ultimately, enable the application of those discoveries within healthcare," according to a company statement. NextBio's platform allows customers to compare experimental data against existing data sets using a correlation engine, enabling them to discover new associations. It uses "highly scalable" software-as-a-service enterprise technology and is capable of analyzing petabytes of data. Illumina plans ...

Qiagen has acquired CLC Bio, a privately held bioinformatics software company headquartered in Aarhus, Denmark. The news was first reported on AllSeq's blog . This is the second bioinformatics company that Qiagen has purchased this year. In May, it bought Ingenuity Systems for $105 million in cash to offer its life science and clinical customers a complete and integrated workflow for its PCR- and next-generation sequencing-based molecular testing solutions ( BI 5/3/2013 ). Qiagen has been making some interesting moves lately, slowly building an end to end sequencing solution. They’ve already established themselves as the market leaders in sample prep, but then they started acquiring the missing pieces. First they bought Intelligent BioSystems in June 2012, giving them access to a sequencing platform built with the clinical market in mind (fairly standard SBS chemistry, relatively fast runs and multiple flow cells to obviate the need for sample multiplexing). Then they ...