A Call for a Statewide Bioinformatics Institute

At present bioinformatics research and education capacity in South Carolina is distributed amongst a large number of colleges and universities as well as government laboratories, such as the Hollings Marine Laboratory and the Department of Energy Savannah River National Laboratory. We argue that to attain national-level recognition, we need to provide support for a statewide virtual community. Significant synergy is possible through collaboration in on-going research and joint research proposals for external funding. Furthermore, education resources could be used more effectively for training students in this important area. A statewide bioinformatics institute that connects researchers and educators in the various colleges, universities, and government laboratories would advance the capacity and competiveness of bioinformatics in South Carolina. During the last 10-15 years we have witnessed a tremendous increase world-wide in the number of organizations and educational institutes engaged in bioinformatics research and development. Bioinformatics is important because it helps us to understand the molecular basis for health and disease. In general, bioinformatics addresses the representation and interpretation of information in biological systems. The main areas targeted by current bioinformatics research include genomics (genome sequencing, gene prediction, gene splicing, effects of single nucleotide polymorphisms, and analysis of gene expression), proteomics (protein structure, characterization of protein function, and modeling of protein-protein interactions) as well as a number of other "omics".