Alma-in-Silico

Xavier Tordoir

Date and place: Wednesday April, 14th 12:30 pm at 1/75 (B6c)

Systems biology research is fed by numerous data sources and requires advanced data processing and simulation techniques. The challenge is not only to manage and integrate a wide variety of biotechnologies but also the huge amounts of data being produced, and the very different processing and modeling techniques to be applied, all the resources being usually physically located in remotes sites.

The Alma In Silico project of the Interreg IV Program aims at addressing some of these issues. The project consists in 3 main actions including the development of a euregional bioinformatics platform, the establishment of a technology platform for systems biology and validation projects (inducing efficient collaborations in research against cancer, multiple sclerosis, pharmacological an toxicological studies, …) which will use the 2 previous platforms.

This talk will present the project, focussing on the IT developments dedicated towards setting-up the bioinformatics platform infrastructure. From a couple of scenarii illustrating how the framework of Alma In silica has been designed, we will demonstrate how it addresses some of the issues related to exposing biotechnologies services to scientific investigators and how to integrate them with data storage and processing in a distributed environment.