The MRC Consortium for Medical Microbial Bioinformatics

The UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK and SWANSEA UNIVERSITY, in partnership with the UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM and CARDIFF UNIVERSITY, propose a programme of capital expenditure, recruitment and training to create the MRC CONSORTIUM FOR MEDICAL MICROBIAL BIOINFORMATICS, a state-of-the-art interdisciplinary facility, led by Professor Mark Pallen (an MD PhD at Warwick) and Dr Sam Sheppard in Swansea, for use by the academic, industrial and healthcare communities that will enhance regional and national capability and infrastructure in microbial bioinformatics and improve our understanding of bacteria of medical importance. RATIONALE: Microbial pathogens still present a MAJOR EXISTENTIAL THREAT to humanity. In addition, the HUMAN MICROBIOME - the rich and dynamic community of host-associated microorganisms and their genes - is now known to play a decisive role in the balance between health and disease, even in medical conditions not usually considered as microbial in origin (e.g. obesity). Harnessing medical bioinformatics to the study of microbial genes, genomes and metagenomes thus represents a DISTINCTIVE UNMET CHALLENGE and a UNIQUE FOCUS AMONG RESPONSES TO THIS MRC CALL. Rather than taking aim at the fixed, relatively tractable target of the human genome, we focus instead on genomic information derived from HUNDREDS OF BACTERIAL PATHOGENS and THOUSANDS OF COMMENSAL SPECIES: a distributed and dynamic system of MANY MILLIONS OF GENES, at least two orders of magnitude larger than the human gene set. Our four research-active universities are located in neighbouring regions of the UK, thus providing an initial GEOGRAPHICAL COHESION to the Consortium that will facilitate community building and the exchange of ideas, and underpin the formalities of governance. At its inception, the Consortium will benefit from a NATIONAL AND GLOBAL REACH through a dense network of collaborations, collegiality and, through an application process for new partners, will soon grow in a scalable fashion to embrace a national remit. The Consortium will build on TRACK RECORDS OF INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH EXCELLENCE and impressive INSTITUTIONAL INVESTMENT in medical microbiology and bioinformatics with all partners making a distinctive contribution. Through this initiative we will recruit THREE HIGHLY TALENTED INDIVIDUALS into microbial bioinformatics fellowships from careers outside the discipline or the country. We have LEVERAGED SUPPORT from the host organisations to place these research fellows on a TENURE TRACK. All three fellows will contribute to the goals of the Consortium through research, training and management roles as well as pushing forward their own cutting-edge research programmes. Building on interests in parallelisation and cloud computing, we will develop a DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING INFRASTRUCTURE in Wales and the West Midlands that will provide an agile, scalable system for the UK microbiology research community. We will develop an ambitious and exciting TRAINING PROGRAMME that will include bootcamps, hackathons, workshops, modules and courses, suitable for a wide range of users from professional bioinformaticians to undergraduate students. We will strengthen regional, national and international microbial bioinformatics research through COMMUNITY-BUILDING ACTIVITIES, encouraging knowledge transfer and dissemination of best practice. Meetings of different sorts and scale will be held monthly and quarterly and annually. The Annual Meeting, with an academic and management component, will benefit from participation by our external Steering Group. We will exploit pump-priming funds together with externally funded research activities to "stress our systems", confirming that the facilities that we have created work as planned and/or priming iterative refinements to our infra-structure. We are confident that the consortium will become self-sustaining through institutional commitments and the recruitment of additional research funding.