Technology

Computing

Computing for the Visible Cell® project relies on a 120-processor IBM 1350 Opteron cluster at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience, as well as two 64 and one 16 processor SGI Altix systems at The University of Queensland.

Data Infrastructure

Data Infrastructure for the Visible Cell® project includes database mirrors and specialised software including:

• an Oracle 10g database installed on the 16-processor IBM p690 Regatta at IMB to support rapid visualisation;

• Cell Centered Database (CCDB) with the Storage Resource Broker (SRB) to support mass storage and indexing of tomography data; and

• data storage comprises of 40 TB available within IMB, and a 100 TB-scale mass storage facility at Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation (QCIF).

The Queensland Facility for Advanced Bioinformatics (QFAB) further supplements this data infrastructure with commercial bioinformatics software such as the Sequence Retrieval System (SRS). QFAB is an active member of the developing national computational and data grids (e.g. the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC) grid, APAC private network).

Microscopy

For video microscopy the Visible Cell® project can call on the $3.9M Australian Cancer Research Foundation (ACRF) Cancer Biology Imaging Facility. This state-of-the-art live-cell imaging facility contains two Zeiss Meta 510 confocal microscope systems fitted with two-photon and motorised stage capabilities. It complements the Advanced Cryo-Electron Microscopy Laboratory, a major node of the Australian Microscopy and Microanalysis Research Facility (NANO), also at the IMB. The latter facility provides instruments for high-resolution 3D reconstruction and analysis of cells and macromolecules, including a 300-keV Tecnai G2 FEG transmission EM equipped with dual Gatan Ultrascan 4Kx4K CCD cameras, embedded energy filter, compustage and high-tilt tomography holders for both ambient-temperature and frozen specimens.

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