A central bioinformatics core group will help in critical cross-training and will facilitate communication among experts in the biological, informational, and computational sciences. An ability to bring together aspects of the experimental and the computational is of utmost importance for the future of biological research at the University of Tennessee. This kind of core bioinformatics analysis and support will become increasingly important if the University of Tennessee is to participate in large-scale data-driven projects at the exciting forefronts of biological research. In addition, even to stay at the forefront of hypothesis-driven research will require support to obtain and analyze large-scale genome or other data repositories. It is increasingly true that many experimental projects, especially Program Projects and other large grant applications, are expected to have credible bioinformatics components to compete with other applicants.

It is acknowledged that the following resources is the glue that will hold us together and make our efforts valuable:

• Tennessee Mouse Genome Consortium
• Computational Biology at ORNL
• Neurophenotyping