Bioinformatics Resource Center

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Introduction

Bioinformatics as a field represents the intersection of computation and biology. It is a broad umbrella but major components under it include software development, data curation, analysis, and biological interpretation.

With the increased accessibility of affordable next generation sequencing (NGS) data, bioinformatics as a field has kept pace to provide solutions for ever larger datasets. NGS data can include mRNA expression from RNA-Sequencing or chromatin accessibility from ATAC-Sequencing. A project involving NGS includes the process of demultiplexing sequencing runs to obtain sample data, analyzing data to discover novel biology such as identifying genes that are differentially expressed following a drug treatment, and summarizing complex data into easy-to-understand tables and visualizations. Ultimately the goal of an analysis is to gain deeper insight into the biology while leveraging the study’s design in a robust and reproducible fashion.