Centre for Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics Research Centre

The Centre is located within Biosciences in the Geoffrey Pope building. Other disciplines within the University of Exeter are also involved in research collaborations with the Centre, including the College of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics (specifically Mathematics) and the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society (EGENIS). Research interests are diverse and vary from structure based drug design, plant microbiology, biometrics image analysis and cardio-vascular medicine to ethical and legal implications of genetic testing.

Facilities in the Centre

The Centre contains a 24-hour access teaching and research laboratory used for the MSc/MRes programme, equipped with state-of-the-art Linux-based PCs. The Centre also houses database servers which store biological sequence data and which can be used for rapid genome analysis using tools such as MPSRCH, together with an Apple Mac cluster for sequence analysis and structural biology. The Centre houses the Phytopathogenic Fungi EST database, which is part of the Consortium for the Functional Genomics of Microbial Eukaryotes Project (COGEME).

Find out more about the facilities available for Bioinformatics on our facilities at Exeter page.

What is bioinformatics?

Bioinformatics has become a major field of academic research and an important focus for industry particularly in the post-genomic era. Originally the focus of Bioinformatics was biological sequence data, such as that from the Human Genome project. Now that the Human Genome is complete in first draft, Bioinformatics has spawned a series of 'omics' to develop our knowledge further. Genomics looks at genome organisation and compares genomes; Transcriptomics looks at the levels of RNA expression in cells (the Transcriptome) and gives us information on how the conversion of DNA to proteins are regulated; Proteomics considers the complement of proteins in the cell (the Proteome) whether they have been modified after translation or not; and Metabolomics looks at the regulation of metabolite concentrations and metablic pathways so that we can understand the chemical dynamics of the cell. In the future there are sure to be more 'omics' as the subject develops.

Our aim

Our aim is to provide students with theoretical foundations and a practical understanding of computational techniques in the study of biology, especially molecular biology; to prepare students for careers in the fields of molecular biology, genetics, biotechnology and/or the pharmaceutical industry, and for further advanced research work, including undertaking a PhD.

Find out about our postgraduate programme in Bioinformatics.