The Barcoding Fauna Bavarica project is an All Species DNA barcoding campaign of the Zoologische Staatssammlung in Munich (ZSM) and the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding (CCDB). It represents a major component of Germany's contribution to the International Barcode of Life Project. Core funding comes from the Bavarian State Ministry of Science, Research, and the Arts, and from Genome Canada through the Ontario Genomics Institute. (Stefan Schmidt, unter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOQEYZRrB-s). ... [Miscellaneous as indicated]
Earthworms are essential to the life and health of the planet's soils, and thus to the life and health of terrestrial ecosystems. Charles Darwin and others have shown that earthworms both make soil, and ensure its fertility. Lumbricus rubellus is a common earthworm, found in many temperate ecosystems, used as a model species by researchers investigating the biology and ecology of the soil, and the effects of pollutants and other chemicals on soil organisms. This website is the home of our efforts to better understand how Lumbricus rubellus and other soil animals "make their living". We are sequencing the genome of Lumbricus rubellus. This will be the first oligochaete annelid genome to be sequenced. The genome sequence will reveal the 'parts list' for this important species, and help us to put together maps of how the worm grows, eats, and reproduces, and how it resists exposures to potentially toxic soil contamination. To do this we are using the resources, instrumentation and expertise of the GenePool, the University of Edinburgh Genomics Facility. The genome sequencing project builds on the successful Lumbricus rubellus Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) transcriptome project. ESTs are a way of sampling the expressed genes of a species, and we, as part of The EcoWorm Consortium gained funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) generate of over 20,000 ESTs. Using a combination of informatics tools these sequences have been analysed and used to build a relational sequence database - LumbriBASE - that can be queried by both sequence similarity and annotation. We have added ESTs from additional annelid species to LumbriBASE to make cross-comparison between species easier. ... [Information of the supplier]
Ascertaining when and where genes are expressed is of crucial importance in order to understand the physiological role of a given gene/protein and the interactions between them. In addition, the normal expression patterns can then be compared to those observed in a variety of pathological conditions to identify pathological hallmarks of gene expression. The EURExpress, an integrated project funded by the EU under the VI Framework proposes a transcriptome-wide acquisition of expression patterns chiefly by means of in situ hybridization (ISH) with non-radioactive probes and will use this data to establish a web-linked, interactive digital transcriptome atlas of embryonic mouse. The final goal of the project is to create the expression data of > 20,000 genes by RNA in situ hybridization on sagittal sections from E14.5 wild type murine embryos. This data will result in a detailed description (at a cellular level) of gene expression patterns in the developing mouse. The “transcriptome atlas” will be generated using a newly developed automated RNA in situ hybridization system. Automated scanning microscopes will collect image data, which will be electronically sent out in a digital format for annotation. The latter will be performed using a web-based “virtual” microscope and be entered in a hierarchical database specifically designed to hold large amounts of image data and display them in a user-friendly format. For a subset of genes, mainly those directly involved in human diseases, expression data will also be generated by using human and murine tissue arrays. This will offer the opportunity to compare human and mouse expression patterns in adult tissues. This project builds on a strong European concentration of skills in gene expression analysis and mouse genomics and integrates European skills, efforts, resources and information in the field of systematic gene expression analysis. All expression data generated by EURExpress will be made readily available to the scientific community via the EURExpress web-linked database, considerably advancing our knowledge of gene function and having a significant impact on the identification of gene expression markers of disease processes. ... [Information of the supplier]
In September, 2001, the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) convened a working group of its National Advisory Council to develop a strategic plan for Stem Cells and Developmental Biology. The working group made several recommendations, with the overall goals of providing new strategies for repairing or replacing damaged organs and generating new insights into pathologic processes underlying developmental defects and disease. There is the need for a more thorough understanding of organogenesis so that tissue degeneration and congenital malformations might be prevented and treated. The goal of GUDMAP is a fundamental description of the developing kidney and GU tract. The panel recommended that the following three objectives be combined to form the GUDMAP. a) High throughput in situ hybridization analyses to define the expression pattern of genes expressed in the developing kidney and GU tract, b) High resolution gene expression analyses to define gene expression during developmental time, the overlap in gene expression patterns, and the correlation between boundaries of gene expression and boundaries of anatomic or functional domains and c) Development of a database to house and annotate the above data and to provide rapid access of this data to the entire research community. Microarray analyses and the generation of murine strains with genetic markers are also goals of GUDMAP which serve to bolster the overall aim of defining molecular and cellular anatomy through developmental time. ... [Information of the supplier, modified]
Grid computing is regarded as one of the critical success factors in biomedical Research. The joint project MediGRID unifies well known research institutes in the area of medicine, biomedical informatics and life sciences into a consortium. Numerous associated partners from industry, healthcare and research facilities ensure a broad representation of these communities. The main goal of MediGRID is the Development of a Grid middleware integration platform enabling eScience services for biomedical life science. Therefore the consortium allocated the tasks in different modules. The four methodological modules (middleware, ontology, resource fusion and eScience) plan to incrementally develop and provide a Grid infrastructure while taking into account the need of the biomedical users. The user communities are represented in three research modules for biomedical informatics, image processing and clinical research. ... [Information of the supplier]
