About Us

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

CTBMB Uniquely Situated in The Tropics

Our researchers span three campuses all located in the tropics; Cairns, Townsville, and Singapore. This positioning gives us unprecedented access to samples from the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s oldest rainforest (Daintree), and hospitals throughout Northern Australia and South East Asia.

The Centre aims to ensure our researchers are incorporating appropriate molecular techniques and bioinformatic methodologies in their work.  We have researchers working across a wide variety of activities such as:

• Tropical health
• Biodiversity
• Aquaculture
• Biosecurity
• Agriculture

Our Focus

The Centre will address big questions in tropical biology though the generation and analysis of high throughput molecular data.

CTBMB will focus 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 will serve as a focal point for researchers to share knowledge on new techniques and applications, ensuring we stay at the leading edge of this disruptive technology.