Mission

The University of Maryland Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology is a multidisciplinary center dedicated to research on questions arising from the genome revolution. CBCB brings together scientists and engineers from many fields, including computer science, molecular biology, genomics, mathematics, statistics, physics, and biochemistry, all of whom share a common interest in gaining a better understanding of how life works.

The Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology is a joint effort between the College of Chemical and Life Sciences and the College of Mathematical, Computer, and Physical Sciences,and is organized as a center within the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS).

Research Spotlight: Genome Assembly with Short Reads

High-throughput sequencing technologies are providing small research labs with a sequencing capacity similar to what was previously only available at large genome centers. CBCB researchers are supporting this sequencing "revolution" through the development of software tools for the assembly and analysis of the data generated by the new technologies. Click here to find out more about our software and our current research in this area. The recent availability of high-throughput sequencing technologies has "democratized" genome sequencing by providing individual labs with a sequencing capacity similar to what was previously only available at large genome centers. read more »

 

Scientific Findings
May 2008.  CBCB scientists led a consortium that published the complete genome of the bacterium Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae, which causes bacterial blight in rice.  The international collaboration include 35 scientists from the U.S., Japan, India, France, and Ireland.
Link to BMC Genomics article
April 24, 2008.  Scientists this week published a description of the papaya tree's genome in the journal Nature, the first transgenic crop ever to have its genome sequenced.  The "SunUp" papaya plant includes an artificially inserted virus protein that confers resistance to papaya ringspot virus.  The collaboration included CBCB scientists Salzberg, Schatz, Nagarajan, Delcher, and Mount.

March 10, 2008.  CBCB scientists Schatz, Trapnell, Delcher and Varshney publish MUMmerGPU, a short-read mapping program. MUMmerGPU uses the graphics processing unit (GPU) in a desktop PC to map short reads to a reference genome up to 10-fold faster than conventional CPU-based programs.
Link to BMC Bioinformatics article
November 8, 2007.  The Drosophila 12 Genomes Consortium publishes its analysis of 12 species of the fruit fly Drosophila in the journal Nature.  The Consortium, led by Prof. Andrew Clark of Cornell University, includes CBCB scientists Delcher, Mount, Salzberg, Schatz, Yorke, and Zimin.

September 21, 2007.  An international team of researchers, including seven CBCB scientists, reveal the genetic make-up of  the parasite Brugia malayi, a tiny worm tha causes elephantiasis and river blindness.  The WHO estimates that more than 40 million people have been disfigured by this parasite and over 150 million people are infected, primarily in Southeast Asia and Indonesia.  The genome project, published in the September 21 issue of the journal Science, is an important towards discovering vaccines and therapies against this debilitating disease.
Link to Science article
July 27, 2007. CBCB scientists have provided a compelling explanation for a pattern in the position of overlapping and closely spaced genes in prokaryotes. The analysis appears in the journal Molecular Biology and Evolution.
Link to MBE article
June 22, 2007. Genome sequence of mosquito that carries the yellow fever and dengue fever viruses published in Science.  Three CBCB scientists - M. Pertea, M. Schatz, and S. Salzberg - contributed to this landmark study.
Link to Science article
Comment: A breakthrough for global public health
May 18, 2007.  CBCB scientists publish details of a new computational method for DNA signature discovery in the journal PLoS Computational Biology.
Link to PLoS article
April 17, 2007.  CBCB scientists lead a study that discovered 3 new strains of avian influenza ("bird flu") which developed as the flu moved into European countries.  The study, which included scientists from 11 different countries as co-authors, appears in the May issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

March 9, 2007.  CBCB researchers have three papers in the current issue of the journal Genome Biology.  These include a paper on prediction of transcription terminators, another on the Hawkeye genome assembly visualization tool, and an opinion piece on genome re-annotation.
January 12, 2007.  Researchers decode genome of the parasite that causes trichomoniasis, a sexually transmitted diseas that infects 170 million people annually worldwide.  The genome analysis of Trichomonas vaginalis, led by Prof. Jane Carlton of NYU in partnership with a team that includes four CBCB scientists, appears in the 12 January issue of Science.
...press release
Link to Science article
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Contact Us

Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
3115 Biomolecular Sciences Building #296
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742

Tel: 301.405.5936
Fax: 301.314.1341

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