Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC)

Introduction

Center Director

Vision

Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) will be a world-leading node for the development of cutting-edge computational technologies for knowledge discovery in the life sciences. These technologies will significantly accelerate biomedical discoveries for the benefit of the people of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the region, and the world.

Mission

Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) will develop innovative knowledge discovery and data integration platforms for the biomedical field through graduate-level research in systems and integrative biology. In so doing, it will build human capacity for a knowledge-based economy through the training of future leaders in Computational Biology, by challenging them with novel solutions to difficult problems. It will provide a leading role in the Kingdom in the search for bioactive molecules for use in agriculture, aquaculture, medicine, as well as the biotechnology and bioprocess industries, and will facilitate utilization and conservation of local ecosystems. As the pivotal force for international collaborative computational life science research in the Kingdom, and following a core concept of KAUST, the Center will unite academic and commercial partners through collective local and international projects of significance.

 

Center Objectives and Approaches

The Center will offer an interactive interdisciplinary scientific environment. Experts in the fields of life and medical sciences, engineering, physics, chemistry, mathematics, and computer science will work together in the Center on experimental design, data acquisition and analysis, and development of sophisticated computational approaches to produce viable solutions for complex problems of biology and medicine. Researchers in the Center will have access to wet laboratories including core facilities, as well as to specialized units for experimental support of their research. The Center will have its own international Scientific Advisory Board, as well as an Advisory Board for Commercialization and Industrial Collaboration.

Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) Diagram

Center activities will include:

  • Graduate research and training.
  • Development of IP that includes generic and specialized technologies.
  • Development of resources for the life sciences.
  • Industry partnerships which include contract research and technology transfer.

The establishment of multifaceted local and international research collaborations will play an important role in the activities of the Center. The Center will strive to commercialize some of its products and intellectual property.

The primary focus of Center research is the development of cutting-edge computational technologies for knowledge discovery in the life sciences. The generic nature of these technologies will allow for the engagement of the Center in a variety of R&D projects in biology and medicine.

In keeping with the goals of KAUST, the Center will aim to develop a pool of future leaders in the field that can efficiently contribute to, and further the aims of, a knowledge-based information society, both locally and internationally. This new cadre of global players will be capable of effectively addressing current and future challenges.

 

Multi-Disciplinary Areas of R&D Focus

Research activities within the Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) will be grouped into three main thrusts.

Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) Diagram

  • Knowledge Discovery
    This thrust will include activities related to data integration, knowledge-extraction, and systems biology. Its activities will range from the integration, modeling, and retrieval of data to the development of computational knowledge discovery platforms, data integration platforms, and various tools and resources for the life science community.
  • Functional Genomics
    This thrust will develop new computational resources and analysis pipelines to deal with the complexities of experimental data in an attempt to uncover different molecular functionalities in living cells. It will cover functional genomics and proteomics, with primary activities that include the acquisition, storage, processing, and analysis of high-throughput sequencing, epigenetic and proteomic data. Genome assembly and annotation based on next generation sequencing data will be one of the core activities of this thrust, as well as the analysis of data from chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq), non-coding RNA expression, or protein/gene array experiments, among others.
  • Immunology and Chemogenomics
    The activities of this thrust will include metabolomics, computational immunology, biochemoinformatics, and toxicogenomics. These activities will address several key issues related to the health, biotechnology, pharmaceutical and other industries – both theoretical and applied. For example, the search for bioactive molecules from Red Sea species, and genotyping of the Arabic population for potential pharmacogenomic applications will be among the topics of this thrust.

Tools and resources developed by all three of the Center’s thrusts will have critical potential for commercialization in different forms and will constitute an integral part of technology transfer.

Technical Expertise
Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) will offer a spectrum of technological expertise ranging from information systems and software development to experimental biology and knowledge discovery. A group of experienced scientists and software developers will work on the development of “Integrative Knowledge Discovery Platforms” which will make space to significantly accelerate and enhance biological discoveries. These platforms will facilitate the integration of the state-of-the-art technologies for knowledge discoveries with a wide range of experimental data (e.g., from microarrays to chemiproteomics, protein-protein interactions, non-coding RNA expression, metabolomics, transcriptomics, ChIP-seq, etc), data from the published literature, public and commercial life science and patent databases. These, for example, will form the basis for systems that automatically generate fully functional database resources on specialized topics in biology and medicine. The Center will also work on the development of pipelined bioinformatics tools and development of computational technologies for handling and analysis of the next generation sequencing data, comparative genomics, transcriptomics, gene and protein expression, and epigenomic data.

 

Leveraged International Research by Partnership

KAUST Academic Excellence Alliance

KAUST Global Research Partnership

Regionally-Relevant Focus Areas

  • The Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) will leverage KAUST’s fast access to the global Internet network, vast data storage capacity, and supercomputing facilities to offer easy access to local copies of biomedical databases and software tools for research within the Kingdom, as well as within the wider region.
  • The Center expects to find promising opportunities within the Kingdom to collaborate with the oil industry on bioprocessing (biocatalysis, biodesulfurization, biodenitrogenation) and bioremediation projects.
  • The Center, in collaboration with the Red Sea Science and Engineering Research Center and other partners, will also contribute to the cataloguing of Red Sea biodiversity by DNA barcoding and metagenomic sequencing of microbial communities. The Center will work to identify toxins and other bioactive molecules (such as antimicrobial peptides) produced by organisms within the Red Sea ecosystem with the aim of exploiting their pharmaceutical and pharmacognosy potential.
  • The Center, in collaboration with the Plant Stress Genomic and Technology Research Center, will contribute to the identification of those genetic, metabolic or epigenetic factors in plants which lead to increased salt stress tolerance and increased tolerance to abiotic stress in general. This could lead to better ways of modifying plants to cope efficiently with semi-arid environments.
  • The Center also will play a role, in conjunction with the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, in genotyping the local Arabic population, with the aim of developing a pharmacogenomic approach towards treatment of diseases such as diabetes, obesity and hypertension. This work will also extend to some infectious diseases, such as malaria, influenza, and schistosomiasis.

 

Facilities and Equipment

The Biosciences and Bioengineering Research Core Facility will enable Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) researchers to carry out (re-)sequencing and comparative sequencing projects. These next generation sequencing projects are capable of producing a terabyte (1000 gigabytes) of data every day and will, therefore, require and use KAUST’s powerful computing and data storage facilities, as well as server systems capable of coping with the associated computational demands. Interaction with the centralized IT services is expected to be significant.