Short Abstract: The Central American Bioinformatics Network (BiocaNET) is an organization with public character and institutional function, supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MICIT), the Counsel of Scientific and Technologic Researches (CONICIT) of Costa Rica and Ministry of External Commerce (COMEX). It's integrated by five regional nodes which objective is the research and education in bioinformatics and computer biology with focus on OMICS on the Central American zone. The effort of BiocaNET has been dedicated to the construction of a solid platform to develop methods, services and bioinformatics procedures with the objective of providing support towards projects on Genomics, Proteomics and Metagenomics that involve studies directed on Biodiversity and Molecular clinical medicine of the area. The BiocaNEt has developed this infrastructure based on web services, including one cluster of supercomputing (Nelly) for analysis and processing of biological data. On the tools side, the BiocaNet maintains a group of software tools commons, including: 1) GALAXY (NGS data), 2) KIT Bioinformatics Tools (MOBY services), 3) TAVERNA (Workflows ).
The implemented infrastructure support national projects and international projects related to the storage, access and exploration of biological data, that including: Molecular characterization of the CFTR gene, Spink 1, PRSS1, ATP7B in Central America (diseases), BICOS (Cloud Computing and Intelligent Biomedicine), FREEBIT-CYTED (Software bio-medical) and IBERO-NBIC-CYTED (Converging technologies for health). The BiocaNET will participate in the propose of the future American Bioinformatics Infrastructure (interconnected with fiber optics) with the CLARA NETWORK (Project of intercommunication of super-advanced nets supported by the European Economic Community).

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