Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

IBERS Research in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

A number of new staff have recently joined IBERS working in the area of bioinformatics and computational biology. Many of our research interests involve exploiting the recent investments made by Aberystwyth University in data intensive technologies. These technologies provide a great variety of large ‘omic data sets, including genomes, transcriptomes, metabolomes, metagenomes, phenomes, and so on, which when integrated together, along with time-series data sets of high resolution images and laser scans from the Plant Phenomics Centre – will elucidate the molecular processes of biological systems in incredible detail.

Key bioinformatics staff at IBERS includes:

• Anyela Camargo-Rodriguez,  Lecturer in Plant Trait Informatics
• Narcis Fernandez-Fuentes,  Reader in Genomics/Bioinformatics
• Lin Huang,  Senior Bioinformatics Research Scientist
• Dr Denis M. Larkin,  Lecturer in Animal Genomics
• Dr Gancho Slavov,  Lecturer in Statistical Genomics 
• Dr Martin Swain, Lecturer in Bioinformatics for Next Generation Sequencing

We have strong links with researchers across Aberystwyth University, and especially in the Computing Science Department. Strong connections exist with the Bioinformatics Group, and increasingly, as the Plant Phenomics Centre is becoming operational, with the Vision Graphics and Visualisation Group.

The main enabling technologies at IBERS and associated centres include:

• Next-generation sequencing and genotyping, this is led by Dr Matt Hegarty and Dr Justin Pachebat

• The IBERS Plant Phenomics Centre, this is led by Prof John Doonan

• The High Resolution Metabolomics Laboratory, this is led by Prof John Draper with Dr Manfred Beckmann

To support the analysis of these data sets IBERS has recently invested in a dedicated computer cluster with high memory nodes that are able to support challenging tasks such as plant genome assembly.

In addition, plenty of extra computing resources are becoming available via HPC Wales: a new £30 million initiative to support high performance computing activities between academia and businesses across Wales. Aberystwyth University is an active partner in this project. 

Informatics challenges at IBERS centre around integrating, data mining, and exploring massive data sets from a wide variety of biological systems – including plants, animals, and microbes – and modelling interactions between these systems, for instance during the fermentation and digestion of grass by ruminant farm animals. We tend to work in close collaboration with other wet-lab scientists in IBERS, and we run a seminar series to encourage collaborations and the exchange of research ideas: