Bioinformatics Core at AGERI Present and Future, By Osama A. Momtaz

2. Bioinformatics Core at AGERI
Present and Future
By
Osama A. Momtaz
Director
Genetic Engineering Research Institute,
Agricultural research Center, Ministry of Agriculture
Egypt

3. Establishment
 The Agricultural Genetic Engineering Research Institute
(AGERI) represents a vehicle within the agricultural
arena for the transfer and application of genetic
engineering technology.
 The institute started in 1989 as a UNDP funded project
called the National Agricultural Genetic Engineering
Laboratory (NAGEL).

4. Establishment
Agricultural Genetic
Engineering Research
Institute (AGERI)
represents a vehicle within the
agricultural arena for the
transfer and application of
biotechnology and genetic
engineering future sciences.

5. FULL INTERNET SERVICES
Provides the information
technology infrastructure
to support the research
activities carried at
AGERI
http//www.ageri.sci.eg
TECHNICAL SUPPORT
COMPUTER FACILITIES
BIOINFORMATICS SERVICES

6. Bioinformatics Core
A N e w E r a
As a new era of biotechnology is
emerging, a high-throughput
instruments now is available to help
decipher complex biological systems.
It’s a cornerstone for any successful
scientific organization dealing with
biotechnology to have a good
Bioinformatics core to decipher and
interpretate information embedded in
complex biological systems specially
as it continue to grow.

7. Vision
We envision that our program will develop into a
research-based and educational hub in AGERI as
will as border region to provide bioinformatics
and computational support for research
community and perform training for
bioinformatics, through our Bioinformatics Core.

8. Scientific Development
 AGERI has become the premier biotechnology
research institution in Egypt by developing a
highly trained research staff through:
• international education and training programs
• recruitment of top researchers from Egypt’s best universities
• collaboration with international agricultural biotechnology
firms
1990 2010 2020
Scientific Development
Institutional Development
 AGERI is now entering a new phase in its
development focusing on establishing a
new bioinformatics core to help decipher
complex biological systems.
Phase I
Phase II

9. Current situation
“Hardware”
Bioinformatics department now has:
 Three servers hosting two webpage
• AGERI web page:
http://www.ageri.sce.eg
• ARDF web page:
http://www.ardf.sci.eg

10. Current situation
“Software”
 Bioinformatics Department is
using several type of software:
E.g. R-pakage, Emboss,
genepix, Hex,
studan package, PERL,
Diversity database, Bio-linux,
mapmaker, WEKA,
velvet, SPDBV.

11. Current situation
“Hardware”
 The three server is also used to e.g. analyze
microarray data, Statistical analysis for several
experiment, clustering several type of
experimental data.
 We also have an 80 core cluster computer to deal
with NGS data generated from our Solid
sequencing facility.

12. Using I&C Technology: providing
platform
 Any fields, really, but newer biological fields are more
interesting
Bioinformatics
DNA computing (Bioprocessors)
 Special fields of interest
Genome Annotations …
Molecular breeding simulation programs …
 Target output: ICT show case, “infrastructure” for
other research centers, and training

13. Future Prespictive
 To decipher and interpretate information embedded in
complex biological systems bioinformatics department
looking forward to have another cluster computer
allocated only to data analysis.
 Also bioinformatics department is looking forward to
receive some essential soft ware to help in data
analysis e.g. CLC genome work bench, Geneious.