University of Dundee University of Dundee
Text only
         
Search
 
 
 
 

16 November 2012

Dundee shares in £5.5m BBSRC funding to help lay the foundations for biology breakthroughs

A project at the University of Dundee which is helping power scientific research around the world is among the recipients of a £5.5m investment announced today by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

The Dundee-led project will provide scientists in 140 countries with the software tools to take raw genetic sequence data and make predictions about the structure and function of the proteins that they encode. This will help researchers to make better use of the enormous volumes of DNA sequence data that are generated in modern bioscience.

"We have developed tools at Dundee that are now used by researchers around the world thousands of times a month and across the scientific spectrum, from research into diseases like cancer to areas such as plant sciences," said Professor Geoffrey Barton, from the College of Life Sciences at Dundee.

"Research now generates massive amounts of data which has to be handled, stored and analysed. The work we have done and which we continue to develop at Dundee provides fundamental capabilities for researchers to use this data efficiently."

The Dundee project is receiving around £700,000 from BBSRC.

The University is currently expanding research in quantitative biology within the £50m Centre for Translational and Interdisciplinary Research, which is due to be complete in late 2013. The Centre will integrate expertise in cell biology, mass spectrometry, proteomics, "big-data" analytics, drug discovery and computer science to exploit the potential of the human genome project for healthcare and the development of safer drugs.

BBSRC has announced support for ten projects to help researchers develop and maintain the infrastructure and resources that are vital for modern bioscience. The projects represent a £5.5m investment by BBSRC to ensure that the bioscience community is equipped to help meet some of the biggest challenges that we face as a society.

The projects are being supported through the Bioinformatics and Biological Resources fund which aims to provide scientists with important resources such as databases, new software tools and libraries. These are essential tools for modern data-driven biology.

Professor Douglas Kell, BBSRC Chief Executive, said "Many of the exciting breakthroughs that have been achieved by modern biology have only been possible because of advances in technology. Developing new tools and techniques to allow us to make the most of the vast amounts of data that bioscience produces is a vital and often underappreciated aspect of research. Projects like these are allowing scientists to make major insights and solve previously intractable puzzles at unprecedented speed."

One of the funded projects, led by researchers at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL), will provide a central repository for models to be shared amongst biologists. Researchers will be able to browse available models via a website and then download them for use in their own work. Making these models more accessible promises to help scientists understand how biological systems work and could help researchers in fields including drug discovery and synthetic biology.

A community resource in wheat transformation is also being funded at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB). The aim is to provide plant scientists with access to the best public wheat transformation system currently available anywhere in the world. The resource could help increase wheat yields in the face of food security challenges.

The ten funded projects are:

  • Professor Bonnie Ann Wallace , Birkbeck College, and Dr Robert Janes, Queen Mary, University of London - The Protein Circular Dichroism Data Bank, the DichroWeb Server, and ValiDichro: Data Sharing, Analysis and Standards Resources for CD Spectroscopy
  • Dr Alex Bateman and Dr Paul Kersey, EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute - The RNAcentral database of non-coding RNAs
  • Professor Michael J Sternberg, Imperial College London - Maintaining and extending PHYRE2 to deliver an internationally-recognised resource for protein model
  • Professor Pedro Mendes, University of Manchester - COPASI - Open source software for advanced biochemical network modelling
  • Professor Thomas Freeman, University of Edinburgh, and Dr Anton Enright, EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute - Development of a Rapid Processing Pipeline and Graph-based Visualization for the Analysis of Next Generation Sequencing Data
  • Professor Peter Ghazal, University of Edinburgh - The SPRINT approach to network biology
  • Dr Nicolas Le Novere, EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute - BioModels Database, the comprehensive resource for computational models in biology
  • Mr Henning Hermjakob, EMBL European Bioinformatics Institute - DAS in the age of data-driven research
  • Professor Andy Greenland, National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) - A community resource in wheat transformation
  • Professor Geoffrey Barton, University of Dundee - The Dundee Resource for Protein Structure Prediction and Sequence Analysis

For media enquiries contact:
Roddy Isles
Head, Press Office
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384910
E-MAIL: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk
MOBILE: 07800 581902