Bioinformatics

Introduction

While the bioinformatics community has matured substantially in recent years, rapid development is required to keep pace with massive increases in data volume and generation. Specifically, there is still much room for improvement in the optimization of computational resources, discovery of and access to analytical tools, and training and general dissemination of bioinformatics best practices. Furthermore, privacy and data protection policies often present major obstacles for bioinformaticians, particularly those in the realm of health informatics. To address these needs, the Compute Canada Bioinformatics National Team (BNT) is committed to a strategy that includes leveraging existing Compute Canada resources as well as developing new resources and practices where necessary.

Who we are

The BNT's members are bioinformatics professionals from Compute Canada, the BC Genome Sciences Centre, and the Canadian Centre for Computational Genomics.

Access to Compute Canada resources

Compute Canada's digital research infrastructure is available free-of-charge to eligible researchers. For more information, see apply for an account

Bioinformatics support

If you have a bioinformatics or sequencing question, and would like to access our experts from across the country, please visit the Canadian Bioinformatics Helpdesk. You can browse the existing solutions in our forum, or simply register and post your query. One-on-one sessions are also available to eligible users in case posting a question just won't cut it.

General support

If you are experiencing a general issue working on Compute Canada systems, please email Technical support.

Training and education

If you're interested in bioinformatics workshops and seminars, please see our page here Or, if you don't see what you're looking for, please let us know your idea and we'll do our best to make it happen.

Software

Click here to see a list of available bioinformatics software on Compute Canada systems. You can sort on 'Type', where bioinformatics software is categorized as 'bio'.

Genome Database

In partnership with C3G, we maintain several genomes that are available on Cedar, and Graham as well as Guillimin, and Mammouth. In addition to the fasta sequence, many genomes include aligner indices and annotation files. For more information about the available data click here