In the furthest corner of the University Park lies the Bioinformatics Centre (BiRC). It is here that methods are being developed to translate the ever increasing volumes of biological data into knowledge of the origins of mankind and genetic make-up.

Every once in a while news comes from the scientific world that finds its way into newspaper columns. This happened in January 2007 when methods that had been developed by a research team based at the Bioinformatics Centre at Aarhus University were used to demonstrate that humans became an independent species 4-5 million years ago and not 5-7 million years ago as previously supposed. At a stroke it was made probable that a series of fossil finds estimated to be approximately 6 millions years old did not stem from a human but rather from a human-chimpanzee forefather.

Results of this calibre emanate from the interdisciplinary collaboration, which is the core of the work of the centre and which brings together people from the disciplines of computer science, statistics and biology. Christian Nørgaard Storm Pedersen, Assoc. Prof. at the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University and leader of BiRC since June 2005 states:
 ”There are about 40 of us at the centre and we are involved in a large number of projects. If I had to give my opinion on the split of our work, around two thirds of our work is pure basic research and a third is more usage-orientated.

Important knowledge
BiRC’s main activities are focused on the development of new methods within the area of association mapping (the mapping of DNA, for example, in order to evaluate the probability of developing diseases), genome analysis (e.g., the temporal establishment of the emergence of the species) and structural bioinformatics (e.g. studies of the dynamics of proteins).  The core of the work is a fruitful crossing of large volumes of biological data with the correct algorithmic and statistical methods. Thomas Mailund, Assoc. Research Prof. at BiRC states:
 ”In recent years the methods for DNA sequencing have become so good that we have had enormous volumes of data about the human genome at our disposal. We have therefore developed methods that mean that we can perform a through scan of human DNA. By doing this we gain important knowledge, for example, about the probability of a person developing a specific disease.
The methods and tools that are being developed by BiRC will be presented on the website www.birc.au.dk and can be used by the centres and institutes that conduct the actual analyses of biological data.

Turned on students
BiRC is also involved in a number of teaching activities and here the direct use of the algorithms is a clear motivational factor.
 ”We give the students the opportunity not just to learn about some exciting algorithms but also to actually implement and experiment with them. And I believe this really turns them on”, says Centre Leader Christian Nørgaard Storm Pedersen.  
However there are other aspects of bioinformatics that make this a fascinating discipline. Computer Scientist Søren Besenbacher, who has just put the finishing touches to his PhD thesis on association mapping is in no doubt:
”It is always exciting to be involved in an area where something actually happens. I believe that just now association mapping is extremely exciting, as it represent a scientific revolution.  We have been successful in getting the first human DNA to sequence and we therefore know what a typical human looks like.  Now we have to find out why there are differences between people, which of course there are. This is where great progress is being made. It is only in recent years that twice as many disease genes as were previously known have been discovered.