Today the scientific community produces more data than ever. Thanks to new methods and technological advances in computing technology, it is now possible to store and share these large volumes of data. Not only new methods are necessary for their analysis; ensuring the quality of the underlying data is a prerequisite for reliable analysis results.
The laboratory for data curation is engaged in methods of data curation and evaluation and puts them into praxis.
One focus of the work is the generation and analysis of genomic information of viral pathogens, the assessment of data quality and their enrichment with functional metadata. These datasets are used to track viral outbreaks and characterize the causative pathogens.
Important results of our own projects
Ad hoc de novo detection of viral pathogens with adaptive diagnostics to prevent epidemics (DetektiVir): Optimisation of in-lab and in-silico methods for metagenomic virus detection.
As part of the DetektiVir project (duration 10/2015 - 12/2018), a diagnostic workflow was developed that enables better and faster identification of new viral pathogens. The focus was on new software and database functionalities that enable a high degree of automation. These functions were also to be made accessible to large user groups through simple graphical user interface concepts and data interface. The project was funded under the BMBF's "Civil Security" program. (www.sifo.de).