AsianScientist (Apr. 22, 2013) – A partnership between the University of Birmingham, BGI, and its open-access journal, GigaScience, has received funding from the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to develop a software platform for the analysis of large-scale environmental metabolomics data.
The project is funded by the UK NERC under the Mathematics & Informatics for Environmental Omic Data Synthesis program.
Metabolomics involves the detection and quantification of small molecules (metabolites) in living organisms and can provide an indication of their cellular condition and health. The toxicological responses of organisms to pollutants can be studied using environmental metabolomics, enabling researchers to discover diagnostic markers for monitoring and risk assessment of our environment.
Researchers typically perform sophisticated computational analyses on metabolomics data in order to measure the abundances of the metabolites. Such analyses require expert knowledge in computer programming and biostatistics, restricting the usefulness of metabolomics to specialized laboratories. This project will develop a new software platform to make it much easier for non-specialist scientists to perform analyses.
As the first metabolomics project in the recently announced Joint BGI-University of Birmingham Environment & Health Center, the funding will enable a developer from the University’s School of Biosciences to travel to Hong Kong and work with GigaScience in developing the popular Galaxy workflow system for use in metabolomics data analyses.
“This funding from NERC will enable a synergistic exchange of skills in the curation and automated analysis of large-scale data that we have in GigaScience with the University of Birmingham’s expertise in metabolomics,” said Dr. Peter Li, Data Organization Manager at GigaScience.
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Source: BGI.
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