There are many issues to consider when establishing and building a Bioinformatics Core Facility. Mission, funding, scope of projects, organizational context, infrastructure, software support, and training are among the many to consider. One of the most important and arguably the most critical to success is building the team to execute the mission of the group. We devote this Perspective to our thoughts on this and related issues and how they affect the mid- to long-term success of the Core Facility, in particular its ability to make strong scientific contributions. Although Bioinformatics Core Facilities come in many different variants, depending on their history, mission, and institutional environment, they all share one challenge during the initial and consolidation phase: to recruit and retain the right people who thrive in such roles. One of the key requirements is that team members are able to learn new methodologies and expand into new areas as needed by the evolution of research methods. Bioinformaticians with sufficient and diverse experience are a relatively rare species. Therefore, hiring in the initial phase of a Core Facility's development often has to focus on bioinformaticians with experience in at least some of the key areas the group is expected to work in. A more mature and sustainable setup is often characterized by at least two to three senior staff with diverse experience but different focus areas, plus more junior ones in different stages (students, postdocs, and new staff). Such units are then able to offer the expertise required to competitively address difficult problems at the forefront of science. In environments that expect considerable scientific contributions from the Bioinformatics Core Facility, one of the major success factors is to have people on the team who have extensive formal background in biology plus several years of experience in applying bioinformatics methods to biological problems. Many projects will require considerable biological insight in addition to hands-on experience with bioinformatics tools and scripting (in languages such as Perl, R, etc.), and at least basic knowledge of statistics and experimental design. In addition to those “in silico biologists”, some projects will require people with more extensive background in areas that biologists often cannot cover well, such as data mining and analysis, computer science, structural biology and biochemistry, more advanced statistics and experimental design, software engineering, theoretical biology, and so on, depending on the institution and the mission of the Facility. In such mature Facilities, staying up to date with the most relevant new approaches becomes attainable, as different experts can efficiently share ideas taken from the literature and from scientific meetings. Achieving a high level of quality in providing scientific and technical solutions depends on several factors that include: a) allowing the bioinformaticians to spend 20%–40% of their time to develop mid-term focus areas that combine certain types of biological questions with related bioinformatics approaches; b) encouraging regular discussion on best practice within the unit, in particular the pros and cons of different approaches, and related resources; c) careful selection of the most relevant datasets and methods for a given problem (which can take some time if there isn't sufficient overlap with previous projects); d) designing solutions that, if possible, combine independent lines of evidence to make results as reliable and informative as possible; e) meaningful communication with the experimentalists on the scientific goals and their context (in many cases the formulation of the original request is the starting point of a discussion that results in solutions that address the main underlying problems more effectively), and what can be expected from the Facility (to avoid disappointments due to unrealistic expectations, which can be a major problem); and f) communicating the results to the experimentalist in a way that works for the target audience (often requiring many iterations of analyses and lab work). As a measure of the maturity of the Bioinformatics Core Facility, not only will the contributions be valued by at least the early adopters in the institution, but the latter may then start to request input from bioinformatics experts in data-intensive projects that are designed as true interdisciplinary team efforts from the outset. For many bioinformaticians, this is where they always wanted to be. An early involvement of experienced bioinformaticians will usually have positive effects on the quality and relevance of the experimental design, and on the relevance of the produced data for the bioinformatics approaches that are needed to answer the scientific questions at hand. Many Bioinformatics Core Facilities, however, do not reach that mature stage, and are caught, in extreme cases, in a “firefighting mode”, a vicious cycle between highly diverse, mostly urgent and hardly prioritized requests, and insufficient resources for developing high-quality solutions that make significant contributions to the output of the institution. Not surprisingly, it is notoriously difficult to attract and retain good people in such environments. Unfortunately, the problem is sometimes not analyzed systematically and recognized as such by the stakeholders. In such situations, open communication about the challenges and formalization of the communication to the main stakeholders in the form of a Core Facility committee can be a solution, if some understanding of the resources required to adequately address problems has developed. The first two to three years are crucial, therefore, in many cases for building up the unit, in partnership with at least a few scientists who have sufficient interest and vision, and a strategic interest in taking advantage of bioinformatics capabilities in their research. Once the success stories are ready for presentation and for other forms of communication, this can help to extend institutional support for developing the Core Facility into the mature stage described above, which provides additional resources for supporting a larger group of customers. In our experience, which includes discussions with other managers of Bioinformatics Core Facilities within the “bioinfo-core” community (http://www.bioinfo-core.org), the following factors can be crucial for overcoming the often-difficult first years. Developing the mission objectives of the Core Facility: does it include or exclude scientific collaborations (and co-authorship as an evaluation criterion), application development and hosting, statistics and experimental design support, educational campaigns, taking care of hardware, development of innovative bioinformatics methods, and so on? Is there an understanding of the resources needed to address those problems adequately? Deciding on the right mix of people to be hired for this environment, after getting to know the early adopters and the institution to a degree that allows the selection of the most relevant skill sets. Developing a good balance between small projects with a quick turnaround and larger collaborations that require in-depth literature study, exploration of alternative approaches, and extensive discussion (the latter are crucial for developing good showcases and strategic partnerships, and usually result in co-authorship on publications; small and swift projects, on the other hand, can help to build up partnerships and mutual understanding). Finding strategies for addressing problems quickly and effectively (and related best practice, see above). This often includes reusable tools and datasets and the development of a dedicated bioinformatics computing environment that allows quick prototyping of alternative solutions to problems. Transparent prioritization and careful time management helps in dealing with demand overload. This usually requires regular communication with partners and stakeholders, and helps to avoid situations in which staff become too scattered in terms of the different types of ongoing projects at a particular time. Proper management of the above challenges will have considerable impact on the quality of the solutions and often also affects the retention of experienced staff. The head of the Bioinformatics Core Facility needs to make sure that those who request help from bioinformatics experts are comfortable with the process and the people (a certain degree of informality and getting-to-know-each-other can be very helpful here), while also balancing this goal of responsiveness and customer focus with the ability to manage expectations and urgent requests during times of high demand to provide an environment that allows sufficient time for quality work and capability development. This sometimes also includes the management of situations in which the bioinformaticians are going off track. Staying connected: keeping in touch with new trends in the research strategy of individual investigators, understanding what is most relevant, and regularly collecting feedback on the relevance of the Core Facility.

Biomedical research is benefiting from the wealth of new data generated in the laboratory through new instrumentation, greater computational resources, and massive repositories of public domain data. Using these data to make scientific discoveries is sometimes straightforward, but can be complicated by the number and breadth of public sources available to the researcher as well as by the plethora of tools from which to choose. Complex searches, analyses, or even storage needs require more computational expertise than that available within an individual laboratory. As biomedical researchers develop more computational skills, this may change over time. Having a centralized group of experts in computational biology can be of great value to the experimental biologist, and, recognizing this, many organizations have invested in building a team of computational biologists, bioinformaticists, and research IT services to address the needs of the investigators. This Editorial presents our views on the benefits and challenges of centralizing these activities. In order to benefit from expertise among existing teams of experts around the world, the “Bioinfo-Core” group was formed during the ISMB 2002 meeting in Edmonton, Canada, with approximately 25 initial members. Since then, the group has expanded in both organization and interest. Our worldwide membership now includes more than 150 people who administer centralized bioinformatics and research computing facilities within diverse organizations, including academia, independent research institutes, academic medical centers, and industry. Additionally, the group holds quarterly meetings via teleconference, continues an annual face-to-face meeting at ISMB (averaging 40–60 people), and hosts a mailing list and Wiki (http://www.bioinfo-core.org) to further communication.

MOTIVATION: Scientific data pertaining to GABA receptors, which are of medical importance, are widely scattered throughout numerous heterogeneous Internet resources. This situation has made the integrated acquisition of such data difficult and substantially time consuming even for researchers who are Internet aficionados. Thus, there exists a genuine need for the development of Internet applications, such as GABAagent, which provide efficient and timely access to concise and integrated information. RESULTS: We report here the establishment of a novel server (GABAagent) which has been written in Perl script, and which is freely accessible through the Internet. GABAagent is designed to assist researchers in retrieving focused and integrated information related to GABA receptors from various public domain databases. GABAagent relies on server-side flat-file databases that have been created through data mining from Internet sources such as the PubMed, DDBJ, SWISS-PROT and TrEMBL, in addition to the many World Wide Web (Web) sites which are accessible through Excite (E-Web). These warehouse databases are regularly updated and contain among other things, information concerning: (i) GABA receptor publications, (ii) DNA and protein sequences and (iii) the contents of related E-Web sites along with their addresses. Our system also provides hard links to the above-mentioned Web sites and E-Web sites; the feature which adds to it the character of virtual federation type of database. The current version of GABAagent provides two user-friendly services. The first is a search engine possessing intelligent query reformulation support (GABAengine), the second an elaborate email alert service was designed into the system (GABAalert). The GABAengine allows the user to search server-side databases exclusively for GABA receptor-related queries. Whereas, GABAalert allows the user, by means of subscription, to receive immediate and/or monthly updates automatically. AVAILABILITY: GABAagent is freely accessible at the following Web address http://www.ust.hk/gaba.