The service center BioInfra.Prot is a joint initiative of two partners: the "Medical Bioinformatics" research unit of the Medizinisches Proteom-Center of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum and the "Department of Bioanalytics" of the Leibniz-Institut für Analytische Wissenschaften - ISAS - e.V. in Dortmund. Both groups have deep and longstanding experience with tools, standards and analyses in the field of proteomics. This partnership enables synergies to be maximized in order to provide a broad range of services to the German proteomics community. The de.NBI partner project Lipidomics Informatics for Life Science (LIFS) provides further expertise in tools, standards and analyses in the field of lipidomics. LIFS consists of the partners Leibniz-Lungenzentrum Borstel (Bioanalytics group), the Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics Dresden (Biological Mass Spectrometry group), and the Lipidomics group at ISAS.
BioInfra.Prot provides consulting services regarding statistics and bioinformatics for proteomics as well as analysis of proteomics data and statistical analysis within cooperations or as a service. Proteomics and lipidomics software tools are offered in a consistent and user-oriented way. BioInfra.Prot provides data standardization and conversion services for proteomics data sets and result lists to simplify submission of data into public repositories or as supplementary material supporting journal publications. Furthermore, the service center offers the usage of its high-performance hardware infrastructure, on which additionally toolbox sharing is supplied, i.e. access to pre-installed proteomics tools, developed by the center as well as free third-party software. To increase the performance of targeted proteomics approaches, a quality database is generated, which contains validated high quality MS-spectra of peptides for download. In the field of lipidomics, LIFS will set up a quality-controlled reference database of quantitative lipidomics data and provide additional tools for data processing, including quality control, quantification and identification in MS-based lipidomics workflows.
Proteomics and lipidomics tools and workflows, which are developed by the members of BioInfra.Prot and LIFS, are maintained and further adapted to the requirements of the users. For the dissemination of the knowledge on bioinformatics for proteomics and lipidomics, tool trainings, bioinformatics for proteomics and lipidomics courses, statistical trainings and courses concerning standard formats and conversion tools are offered regularly.