While the IGBB Service Center can perform low-risk, fairly routine biomolecular tasks on a fee-per-service basis, some of your research goals may require (or would most readily be completed with) the help of professionals trained in advanced procedures and/or data analysis techniques. The IGBB research associates, most of whom have Ph.D. degrees and/or many years of practical experience, can be hired to conduct research tasks associated with their specialties. For example, let's say you need an expert in RNA isolation and RNAseq to help you complete a portion of a research project. You could train a student or postdoc to become proficient in these research tasks, but you may not have the experience, time, or money to train someone. Moreover, you may not have the instrumentation you need to do the research correctly. This is where the IGBB can help. Rather than training someone new, you can hire a highly skilled IGBB scientist to perform the research for you. The savings in cost and time is tremendous! The process works like this:
- The principal investigator (PIs) interested in determining whether
the IGBB can help them in their research/analyses contacts one of the IGBB's Research Leads.
- The Research Lead(s) sets up a meeting with the PI to discuss project goals, feasibility, and
approaches. This consultation is free.
- If the PI and the Research Lead agree to a research plan, the
Research Lead
will generate an itemized quote for the PI that includes salary, fringe, reagent
costs, machine costs, etc. The duration of the employment agreement depends upon the needs of the customer and can range from a few hours to several months. In addition, IGBB employment agreements can cover fairly low weekly time committments spread out over long stretches (e.g., a customer may hire an IGBB employee to work on a project 5 hours a week for four years). Overhead charges and/or HPC² retainage costs may or may not be
applicable. Once a plan is set between a PI and an IGBB Research Lead, a final quote will be sent to the PI for approval. Once the PI approves the quote, work can begin.
If you don't have funding in hand, but are working on a grant proposal, you can include the participation of an IGBB expert-for-hire in your proposal budget (note: you must make such agreements with the expert-for-hire through a IGBB itemized quote). To discuss a hiring an IGBB expert, please contact one of the IGBB's Research Leads by phone or e-mail.
NOTE: PIs are asked to consider whether the participation of an IGBB employee in a project merits that employee's inclusion as a co-author on a resulting manuscript(s). The decision ultimately lies with the PI. However, the IGBB encourages IGBB staff and faculty involved in
Proposal Partnerships and
Experts for Hire to discuss/negotiate co-authorship with PIs before starting work on a project.
AgBase: a functional genomics resource for agriculture
IGBB Authors:
Fiona M. McCarthy, Nan Wang, G. Bryce Magee, Bindu Nanduri, Mark L. Lawrence, Dawn S. Luthe, Susan M. Bridges, Shane C. BurgessPUBLICATION YEAR:
2006IMPACT FACTOR:
4.188CITATION COUNT:
247McCarthy FM, Wang N, Magee GB, Nanduri B, Lawrence ML, Camon EB, Barrell DG, Hill DP, Dolan ME, Williams WP, Luthe DS, Bridges SM, Burgess SC (2006) AgBase: a functional genomics resource for agriculture.
BMC Genomics 7: 229.
DOI:
10.1186/1471-2164-7-229EID:
2-s2.0-33750483615PMID: 16961921
DOWNLOAD PDFABSTRACTBACKGROUND: Many agricultural species and their pathogens have sequenced genomes and more are in progress. Agricultural species provide food, fiber, xenotransplant tissues, biopharmaceuticals and biomedical models. Moreover, many agricultural microorganisms are human zoonoses. However, systems biology from functional genomics data is hindered in agricultural species because agricultural genome sequences have relatively poor structural and functional annotation and agricultural research communities are smaller with limited funding compared to many model organism communities. DESCRIPTION: To facilitate systems biology in these traditionally agricultural species we have established "AgBase", a curated, web-accessible, public resource http://www.agbase.msstate.edu for structural and functional annotation of agricultural genomes. The AgBase database includes a suite of computational tools to use GO annotations. We use standardized nomenclature following the Human Genome Organization Gene Nomenclature guidelines and are currently functionally annotating chicken, cow and sheep gene products using the Gene Ontology (GO). The computational tools we have developed accept and batch process data derived from different public databases (with different accession codes), return all existing GO annotations, provide a list of products without GO annotation, identify potential orthologs, model functional genomics data using GO and assist proteomics analysis of ESTs and EST assemblies. Our journal database helps prevent redundant manual GO curation. We encourage and publicly acknowledge GO annotations from researchers and provide a service for researchers interested in GO and analysis of functional genomics data. CONCLUSION: The AgBase database is the first database dedicated to functional genomics and systems biology analysis for agriculturally important species and their pathogens. We use experimental data to improve structural annotation of genomes and to functionally characterize gene products. AgBase is also directly relevant for researchers in fields as diverse as agricultural production, cancer biology, biopharmaceuticals, human health and evolutionary biology. Moreover, the experimental methods and bioinformatics tools we provide are widely applicable to many other species including model organisms.
Mark A. Arick, II (Tony)Interm Director & Computer Specialist
BIOCOMPUTING LEAD
email(662) 325-0583
Pace 110
The IGBB is supported, in part, by the following units:
The IGBB is an HPC² member center.
