Urbana, Illinois - The Theoretical Biophysics Group at the University of Illinois is proud to announce the initial public release of BioCoRE, a collaborative research environment. BioCoRE software is freely available for use at the Theoretical Biophysics Group website. BioCoRE development is supported by the NIH National Center for Research Resources.

Modern computational structural biology requires scientists to employ a wide range of tools and techniques to solve complex problems while keeping accurate and complete records of research activities. Additional complications are introduced by the need to effectively engage in interdisciplinary collaborations with geographically dispersed colleagues. The software BioCoRE, a collaborative research environment for molecular modeling and simulations, addresses these challenges.

Initial design work has led to a web-based architecture focused on four primary interface paradigms:

• WORKBENCH interface includes features for controlling molecular modeling, simulation, and bioinformatics tools with convenient and uniform access to collaboratory data. Initial tools in this category include the ability to start and monitor molecular dynamics simulations via a web browser interface.
• NOTEBOOK interface automates recording of research activities. Initial tools in this category include a notebook tool which can be used by researchers to engage in offline discussions as well as review and search the entire text of any prior chat session.
• CONFERENCE interface enables scientists to discuss their research across distances in real time or time-delayed sessions and will spawn software for teleconferencing and synchronized visualization of shared data at distant sites. Initially, this category includes a text-based chat mechanism where the researchers can choose topics and converse with other researchers who are working on the same project.
• DOCUMENTS interface permits the preparation of multi-author documents in a cross-platform revision control system.

For additional information, please visit the BioCoRE website at http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/collaboratory/.

The Theoretical Biophysics group encourages BioCoRE users to be closely involved in the development process through reporting bugs, contributing fixes, periodical surveys and via other means. Questions or comments may be directed to collaboratory@ks.uiuc.edu.