The Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech proposes to serve as the Bioinformatics/Genomics Core Research Facility for the mid-Atlantic RCE. VBI was created by the Commonwealth of Virginia as a world-class bioinformatics research center and a shared resource and its research programs center on the ?disease triangle?, or host-pathogen-environment interactions. Thus, VBI is scientifically focused on pathosystems biology, through comprehensive quantitative measurements of molecular components of living systems. Specifically, to serve the genomics core component, VBI will provide high-performance laboratory infrastructure for analysis of biological samples with respect to DNA, RNA, proteins and metabolites via VBl?s Core Laboratory Facility. To serve as the bioinformatics core, VBI will provide high-Performance computational and information management needs via VBl?s Core Computational Facility and it will evolve, deploy and support VBl?s software information system for PathoSystems Biology-called PathPort, a DOD-funded project-to enable data acquisition, storage, analysis, curation, and integration for the RCE members and beyond. Finally, VBI will train and educate RCE research project constituencies on computing and information systems use for their RCE research objectives.