BFAM (Bioinformatics for the Functional Analysis of Mammalian Genomes)
BFAM (Bioinformatics for the Functional Analysis of Mammalian Genomes) is a regional project in Bavaria funded by the BMBF for a 5 years period and is part of the German Genome Analysis Network (NGFN). The BFAM consortium includes the Munich and Erlangen Universities, the GSF Neuherberg amd the bioinformatics companies Biomax Informatics AG, Genomatix Software GmbH and Molecular Networks GmbH.
BFAM aims at the research on bioinformatics integration in the systematical analysis of the static and dynamic properties of mammalian genomes, as, e.g. regulatory effects, genotype/phenotype correlations, or protein/protein interactions.
The project comprises the following areas of activities:
- Database design for structure and reactions of metabolic pathways
- Protein/protein interactions in mammalian genomes
- Mouse functional genome database
- Expression analysis repository
- Structural studies of protein interactions
- Individual expression patterns for drug design
- Efficient clustering methods for genomewide expression analysis
- Modeling and visualization of biochemical pathways
- Mathematics for functional genome analysis
- Stochastic, constraint-based approaches for the description of regulatory sequences
- "E-Cells" as a basis for the bioinformatical modeling of genetic interactions
- Integrated databases for the mapping of complex congenital diseases
- Development of DNA arrays for the detection of alternative splicing
- Bioinformatical analysis of a gene trap library for the functional analysis of the mouse genome
- Bioinformatical modeling of genetic networks for the description of the development of murine brains
- Bioinformatics of livestock genomes
- Infrastructure for the genome analysis / data integration
- Development of methods for representation and modeling of chemical structures and reactions in genome analysis
The research will focus on developing novel computational techniques and appropriate database structure in order to extract maximal biological knowledge from the data being generated by all currently available high-throughput technologies. Computer science and mathematics methods will be applied to the problems of data mining, hierarchical structuring and visualization of complex data. Statistical and mathematical methods will be employed to evaluate and improve the selectivity and sensitivity of the methods employed. The bioinformatics infrastructure needed to access heterogeneous data sources and to integrate and implement the different resources and methods will be provided.
Beyond, BFAM is active in establishing a new pre- and postgraduated studies "Bioinformatics" as a joint project between both of the Munich universities. www.bioinformatik-muenchen.de