The Korean Bioinformation Center (KOBIC) is the Korean national research centre in

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field of science that develops methods and Bioinformatics software, software tools for understanding biological data, especially when the data sets are large and complex. Bioinformatics uses biology, ...

, based in

Daejeon Daejeon (; ) is South Korea's list of cities in South Korea, fifth-largest metropolis, with a population of nearly 1.5 million. Located in a central lowland valley between the Sobaek Mountains and the Geum River, the city is known both as a ...

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...

. The centre is comparable to the

National Center for Biotechnology Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is part of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), a branch of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is approved and funded by the government of the United States. The NCBI is lo ...

(NCBI) in the United States and the

European Bioinformatics Institute The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) is an intergovernmental organization (IGO) which, as part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) family, focuses on research and services in bioinformatics. It is located on the Wel ...

(EBI) in Europe and plays a key role in various areas such as genomics, proteomics, systems biology, and personalized medicine. The research centre was originally established as the National Genome Information Center (NGIC) in 2001. It was designated as the National Center for Registration of Research Results in 2003 and gained its current name in 2006 by the NGIC director Jong Bhak who passed a bill to establish the national center for bioresource, biodiversity, and bioinformation. Prof. Jong Bhak coined the name KOGIC in 2005 and the formalization of the name was carried out by the vice prime minister Prof. Woosik Kim in 2006. KOBIC was designated as the National Center for Biological Research Resource Information in 2010. KOBIC is affiliated with the

Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (KRIBB; ) is a government research institute in Daejeon, South Korea. It is dedicated to biotechnology research across a broad span of expertise, from basic studies for the fundamental un ...

(KRIBB). As a national bioinformation management centre, KOBIC manages biological data from a number of different sources, with an emphasis on

omics Omics is the collective characterization and quantification of entire sets of biological molecules and the investigation of how they translate into the structure, function, and dynamics of an organism or group of organisms. The branches of scien ...

data. Research at KOBIC has an emphasis on

next-generation sequencing Massive parallel sequencing or massively parallel sequencing is any of several high-throughput approaches to DNA sequencing using the concept of massively parallel processing; it is also called next-generation sequencing (NGS) or second-generation ...

methods, systems bioinformatics,

biomedical informatics Health informatics combines communications, information technology (IT), and health care to enhance patient care and is at the forefront of the medical technological revolution. It can be viewed as a branch of engineering and applied science. ...

and structural informatics. Notable databases and tools provided by KOBIC include the MiRGator database for the functional annotation of

miRNAs Micro ribonucleic acid (microRNA, miRNA, μRNA) are small, single-stranded, non-coding RNA molecules containing 21–23 nucleotides. Found in plants, animals, and even some viruses, miRNAs are involved in RNA silencing and post-trans ...

and Patome, a database of

biological sequence Biomolecular structure is the intricate folded, three-dimensional shape that is formed by a molecule of protein, DNA, or RNA, and that is important to its function. The structure of these molecules may be considered at any of several length sca ...

data of issued

patents A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

and/or published patent applications. Researchers at KOBIC have also been involved in the analysis for the Korean Reference Genome Project. The Korean Reference Genome Project was initiated by the then director Jong Bhak who made a formal collaboration with National Standard Reference Center of KRISS, Daejeon, Korea in 2006. The first project under the Korean Reference Genome Project was KOREF. As it was expensive to build a reference genome in 2006, Jong Bhak made a collaboration with Gacheon Cancer and Diabetes Institute led by Dr. Kim, Seong Jin (SJK) and the first KOREF was SJK genome that was sequenced by Illumina GA2 sequencer.

References

External links

Korean Bioinformation Center homepage. English pages are no longer available.
{{authority control Bioinformatics organizations International research institutes Research institutes in South Korea