The Centre for Tropical Bioinformatics and Molecular Biology (CTBMB) is based at James Cook University, adjacent to the World Heritage-listed Daintree Rainforest and the iconic Great Barrier Reef. James Cook University is uniquely positioned to become a leader in tropical bioinformatics research. With 50% of the world’s population predicted to live in the tropics by 2050, there are numerous untapped opportunities to utilise bioinformatics research to develop novel applications to improve the health and security of the soon to be majority of the world’s population. The Centre addresses big questions in tropical biology though the generation and analysis of high throughput molecular data.

CTBMB focuses on both molecular techniques to generate such data and its subsequent analysis using the latest bioinformatic methodologies. Ongoing technology improvements in the biological sciences continue to increase data generation rates for all omics fields including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metagenomics, and metabolomics. The analysis of such complex, inter-connected data requires bioinformatics expertise across a variety of research sub-domains. These techniques provide unprecedented opportunities for scientific discovery and further will lead to transformative applications able to improve clinical care, food production and environmental management.

This Centre serves as a focal point for researchers, industry and governemnt to share knowledge on new techniques and applications, ensuring we stay at the leading edge of this disruptive technology.