APBioNet : Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network

1. APBioNet : Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Network Shoba Ranganathan Vice-President, APBioNet Assoc Prof, Bioinformatics Centre National University of Singapore shoba@bic.nus.edu.sg Presented by : Justin Choo, National University of Singapore

2. Outline • History of APBioNet • Recent Achievements • APBioNet Endorsed Meetings • APBioNet Annual General Meeting in InCoB 2002 conference, Bangkok • InCoB ExCo • APBioNet-Lion SRS Course: bids in progress • BioEd2002: The first S* Bioinformatics Education Symposium on March 11, 2002 • Work In Progress

3. What is Bioinformatics? Bioinformatics is the “the study of the information content and information flow in biological systems and processes”. Michael Liebman in “Bioinformatics: An Editorial Perspective” (http://www.netsci.org/Science/Bioinform/feature01.html)

4. Inputs From Different Fields: Biological Scientists Physical Scientists Bioinformatics Computer Scientists Medical Scientists

5. History of APBionet • APBioNet was founded in Jan 1998 at the Pacific Symposium for Bioinformatics, Hawaii as a non-profit organization. Currently more than 800 participants throughout Asia Pacific and beyond. • 1st Project with APAN Project 101 : Project BioMirrors (currently in the 5th year). • Tie up with Agriculture Working Group and the Bioinformatics Working Group of APAN. Distribution of 100GB of biological data. • Recently, joint paper submitted by US counterpart in Indiana University.

6. Bio-Mirrors • 22 relevant Bioinformatics databases maintained and updated regularly worldwide. • High speed access is provided by Internet2 infrastructure of the Very High Speed Backbone Service (vBNS), Abilene, TransPAC and the Asia-Pacific Advanced Network (APAN). • Currently there are 9 Bio-mirror nodes: Australia, China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan and USA (data source)

7. BioMirrors Project

8. DATABASES PIR PFAM REBASE NCBI REFSEQ SRC SWISSPROT Taxonomy TrEMBL UniGene euGenes Genbank Genbank Genomes InterPro PDB BlastDB BLOCKS DDBJ EMBL ENZYME PROSITE

9. APBioNet’s Aims APBioNet is dedicated: • to the advancement of the field of bioinformatics and its development • network infrastructure • the exchange of data and information • the development of training programs, workshops and symposia and • the encouragement of collaborations in the field of bioinformatics.

10. Recent Achievements • IncoB 2002 (Bangkok) and 2003 (Penang) conferences very successful. Bioinformatics Resolution passed in InCoB 2002 • Grant received from IDRC (idrc.ca) to carry out APBioBox, a software development research to catalyse the development of bioinformatics grid in Asia Pacific region. • APBioNet pushes into India with MoU with Andra Pradesh. See the press release at www.apbionet.org

11. Recent Achievements (cont.) • Collaborated with Cray, Lion KOOPrime in 2002 to set up Bioinformatics Workflow integration system. • Tied with S* Alliance to promote bioinformatics in the Asia Pacific region, looking into Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and AccessGrid™. APBioNet moving into bioinformatics distance education with this tie-up.

12. Abilene TEN-155 STARTAP REUNA APBioNet rides on APAN Advanced Network and Commodity Internet

13. In Progress • APBioNet also co-sponsors the Asia Pacific Bioinformatics Conference (APBC) meetings based out of Australia and NZ.The 3rd meeting will be in Auckland next year.check out the APBC website linked from APBIONethttp://www.apbionet.org/announce/new.shtml • APBioNet is looking at tie-up with ASEAN to setup ASEAN BIoinformatics Masterplan. • APBioNet is working on an Asia Pacific BioGrid for bioinformatics research, resources in data and computation

14. APBioNet Official Websitehttp://www.apbionet.org

15. How to reach us • Join APBionet: http://www.apbionet.org • Suggestions/comments to: sec@apbionet.org

16. End of Presentation