Eagle to Build Genetics Cloud
By Bio-IT World Staff
September 9, 2011 | Eagle Genomics has announced that it has found a way to slash the amount of time it takes to store genomic information using cloud computing technology. The hope is that storing sequencing data and analyses in the cloud will allow researchers quicker access, which in turn would enable faster diagnoses.
The project builds on the Taverna workflow management system developed by Carole Goble at the University of Manchester (see, Democratizing Informatics for the 'Long Tail' Scientist, Bio-IT World, March/April 2011).
The work is being done in collaboration with The University of Manchester, and Cytocell with assistance from NGRL, based at the Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre. The £500,000 project is part-funded by the UK’s national innovation agency, the Technology Strategy Board.
“By storing genetic data in the ‘cloud’ indefinitely, we can use it for research studies and also to help clinicians to decide if medical conditions, that patients develop at any stage, may be linked to their genes,” said Graeme Black, Director of the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre, in a press release.
“Taverna is ideal for this project because it allows you to systematically automate the analysis processes of expert geneticists and make them easily available for other to use at the press of a button” said Andy Brass of The University of Manchester in a press release.
In February, Eagle Genomics signed a collaboration agreement with the university to provide commercial support for Taverna. Eagle Genomics is reportedly working to adapt Taverna to allow non-IT experts to easily add and extract information and share it with their colleagues.
