How do cells form tissues? How can we understand the function of the entities encoded in a genome? The research community of microscopy and genetics wants to understand biological mechanisms.
Researchers in the microscopy and genetics community focus on analyzing and extracting information from images obtained by live cell microscopy as well as sequencing-based bioinformatics.
The development of novel microscopes enables biologists to refine their knowledge about biological samples, like cells or tissues, by imaging them at a high spatial and temporal resolution. Moreover, following the embryonic development of model organisms (like e.g. the fruit fly) in three dimensions, allows for understanding the mechanisms regulating the spatio-temporal organization of a multicellular organism.
The researchers are convinced that algorithms in bio-informatics for genome assembly can be designed such that long sequencing reads can be used to produce reference quality reconstructions of novel genomes and they are working on the design and implementation of such algorithms.
GeRDI can enable researchers to search for microscopy data as well as genome data. This combined view will enable them to check ideas more quickly and come up with new hypotheses. By annotating metadata in the GeRDI search index with information from different sources, researchers are able to quickly lookup information and access datasets more closely related to their research focus. Mapping DNA data to genome coordinates and making this information searchable will open new ways to explore genomic data and to check hypotheses more quickly.
Community Fact Sheet
Research Community: Microscopy and Bioinformatics
Research Discipline: Cell Biology and Genetics
Research Field: Genetics
Research Data: Images, Image sequences, DNA sequences
Contact: Prof. Gene Myers, Director of Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics
Myers Group website: myerslab.mpi-cbg.de