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Wits Bioinformatics, lead by Acting Director, Dr. Kurt Lightfoot, is situated on the 12th Floor of University Corner. They are primarily responsible for bioinformatics at Wits: teaching, research and service.
They teach the following formal courses as part of various curricula:
- Introduction to bioinformatics: this is a two-week intensive module taught in various honours programmes: Molecular and Cell Biology; Human Genetics; Molecular Medicine and Haematology.
- Computational Molecular Biology: honours module in computer science
- Bioinformatics for MCB: honours module for Molecular and Cell Biology.
They also coordinate and teach a number of short courses throughout the year.
Research in bioinformatics is done in a number of schools across Wits and the facility plays a coordinating role in this. There are also a number of research projects carried out from Wits Bioinformatics, including EST clustering, protein targets, copy number variation, and gene discovery.
Wits Bioinformatics also has a small service component and can provide assistance on various research projects. In addition they run an EMBOSS server as a service for the community as well as a mirror of some of the major bioinformatics databases. The unit hosts a small cluster for large computing jobs, and also uses the facilities of Meraka and the Centre for High Performance Computing for its large-scale work.
Dr Kurt Lightfoot; +27 011 717 6367; Kurt.Lightfoot@wits.ac.za
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