BGI, the world’s largest genomics institute, is launching a service that will enable researchers worldwide to perform affordable next-generation sequencing (NGS) bioinformatics analysis in the cloud. The new EasyGenomics service from Shenzhen, China-based BGI combines an intuitive user interface with BGI’s automated pipeline analysis, software and tools. These are integrated with the industry’s largest sequencing platform to provide everything biologists, bioinformaticists and physicians need to submit and receive an automated analysis of DNA sequencing data.
‘By enabling larger numbers of researchers to accelerate DNA sequencing data more easily and affordably, we hope to help facilitate the use of genomics for clinical diagnostics as a practical component of health care, as well as for complex disease research,’ said Dr Lin Fang, vice president at BGI. ‘GPU acceleration enables scientists to analyse DNA sequencing data faster than was ever possible, reducing the time from five days to just five hours. Once fully deployed in the cloud, we anticipate EasyGenomics could one day revolutionise genomics research.’
Accelerated by Nvidia GPUs, which speed the processing of the analysis of DNA Big Data from days to hours, compared with a CPU-based system, EasyGenomics expands the availability of advanced genomics research capabilities to researchers around the world. The cloud service features hybrid computing systems powered by Nvidia Tesla M2070 and M2075 GPUs, which accelerate the DNA sequencing data analysis in conjunction with system CPUs. BGI plans to upgrade EasyGenomics with hundreds of additional Tesla GPUs when it's fully deployed, at which time it is expected to support thousands of users.
