The Chinese New Year is almost upon us — and the Year of the Horse has us thinking about what 2014 will bring to the world of DNA sequencing. We believe that this will turn out to be the year of cloud computing. Here are a
Availability of large-scale genome studies. At one point, the 1000 Genomes Project was operating on a scale all its own. Today, many organizations are participating in large-scale sequencing projects to study thousands or even millions of people. As that data makes its way into the public realm, the demand for computational resources will soar. Accessing, querying, and manipulating these data sets will present a real challenge to IT teams with bursty episodes of unusually high demand mixed with the regular stream they normally see. That’s precisely the kind of environment where cloud computing makes the most sense: having unlimited on-demand compute resources allows IT teams to meet any infrastructure needs without having to spend the money on scaling up internal resources.
The new human reference genome. The Genome Reference Consortium has released build 38 of the human genome (known as GRCh38). This is a major improvement over the last build. Once the reference has been fully annotated, scientists around the world will want to dust off their existing human data sets and realign them to the updated reference to see if there are any new insights to be had. That will mean a short-term, high-intensity spike in demand for computational resources as these massive alignments are processed — in other words, the perfect occasion to try out cloud computing. It’s the cheapest possible way to add extensive computational resources without the long-term commitment to on-premises infrastructure.
Sequencing costs keep falling. The massive genomic studies underway have all been enabled by the rapidly falling cost of DNA sequencing — a trend that promises to continue, thanks to Illumina’s recent announcement and efforts from startups still working to commercialize innovative new methods for sequencing. As sequencing a genome gets ever more affordable, demand for the resources to process and analyze that data will grow at a faster and faster pace. Trying to keep up with this demand will be an uphill battle for IT teams focused only on internal infrastructure, so we see this leading to interest in how cloud computing can help relieve the pressure from those teams to add boxes and storage components.
Growing number of analysis apps. The ecosystem of available tools for performing specific steps or types of DNA analysis is expanding rapidly. As scientists and bioinformaticians find a growing need to build pipelines utilizing a number of these tools, the ease of doing so in a cloud environment will make this option even more appealing.
Here at DNAnexus, we’re eager for what’s to come in 2014. We have a number of collaborations underway with academic and commercial R&D organizations, and we look forward to sharing details about them with our blog readers in the months ahead. Here’s to the Year of the Cloud and a great and productive year for the biomedical community!
