CLC bio joins $2.5M research project on HIV, bird flu, and other RNA-based diseases

CLC bio, the IT University of Copenhagen, and the Department of Molecular Biology at the interdisciplinary nano science centre (iNANO) of University of Aarhus are proud to announce that the Danish Council for Strategic Research has approved to fund the ambitious and ground-breaking research project PC Mini Grids for Prediction of Viral RNA Structure and Evolution.

Professor at the Department of Molecular Biology at University of Aarhus iNANO center, Jorgen Kjems, states: "Being part of this research project and collaborating with the top scientists from IT University of Copenhagen and CLC bio will provide us with innovative and valuable tools as well as input for new and ground-breaking research into RNA-based diseases. We are thrilled to be a part of this interdisciplinary research project, and have great expectations of the outcome."

The project aims at designing a collaborative, peer-to-peer software architecture for distributed bioinformatics algorithms, to make research into RNA-based diseases like HIV, SARS, and bird flu faster and more efficient than with current approaches. An important part of the project is to develop better and more user-friendly bioinformatics software for theoretical analysis of RNA available for conventional biology laboratories.

Detailed search and analyses on large amounts of data and time consuming calculations are significant components when doing research in RNA-based diseases. Work efficiency is enhanced with the development of novel software systems, which utilize ordinary workstation computers for analysis, and by improving the user-friendliness and robustness of such distributed parallel computing. This implies such analyses can be performed by non-technical persons, including biologists working in the laboratory. In other words: by developing this kind of solution, this project will dramatically help scientists and researchers worldwide get better RNA-research results in less time, through a simple graphical user interface on a standard computer.

The project will take four years and the total costs amount to 2.5 million USD of which half is funded by the Danish Council for Strategic Research and the other half is co-financed by the three parties involved.

An interesting feature about the project is the involvement of different fields of science. The project is truly interdisciplinary by involving researchers from computer science, bioinformatics, molecular biology, and nano technology.

With the participation in this research project, CLC bio takes an important step toward assuring that CLC RNA Workbench - the upcoming bioinformatics software package for advanced RNA sequence analysis - will continuously be ahead of competing products when it comes to user-friendliness, scientific level, and innovative use of the latest IT technology.