Gone Fishing: Teaching Bioinformatics With Skate DNA

As computers have advanced over the past few decades, researchers have been able to work with larger and more complex datasets than ever before. The science of using computers to investigate biological data is called bioinformatics, and it’s helping scientists make important discoveries, such as finding versions of genes that affect a person’s risk for developing various types of cancer. Many scientists believe that almost all biologists will use bioinformatics to some degree in the future. Bioinformatics software was used to create this representation of a biological network. Credit: Benjamin King, University of Maine. However, bioinformatics isn’t always included in college biology programs, and many of today’s researchers received their training before bioinformatics was widely taught. To address these gaps, the bioinformatics cores of the five Northeast IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBREs)—located in Maine, Rhode Island, Delaware, Vermont, and New Hampshire—have worked together to offer basic bioinformatics training to students and researchers. The collaboration started in 2009 with a project where researchers sequenced the genome of a fish called the little skate (Leucoraja erinacea) and used the data to develop trainings. The Little Skate Genome-Sequencing Project Scientists have used the ocean-dwelling little skate as a research organism to study how kidneys regulate the salt concentration in organisms’ bodies. After t...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Being a Scientist Genes Bioinformatics Cool Creatures DNA Genomics Training Source Type: blogs