Researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have developed a tool that speeds up the analysis RNA-seq data from many months or years to mere minutes, according to a report published in Cell Systems today. The new tool, BioJupies, relies on cloud technologies to analyze and visualize large amounts of data.
Traditionally, RNA sequencing analysis requires extensive computer programming skills and access to local high performance computing facilities, slowing down the speed at which biomedical data can be analyzed, shared, and published.
With BioJupies, users can now upload and analyze their RNA sequencing data in a fraction of the time as done previously. The platform utilizes a cloud computing pipeline that reduces the cost of RNA-sequencing data processing to less than one cent per sample. BioJupies also produces a complete, open source, interactive report from the processed data allowing for 300,000 publicly available RNA sequencing datasets to be fetched, reanalyzed, and reused to bolster biomedical research.
"As the amount of biomedical data generated continues to climb exponentially, so should the tools used to analyze and share them," said senior author Avi Ma'ayan, Ph.D., Director of the Mount Sinai Center for Bioinformatics. "BioJupies not only accelerates the manner in which we analyze and interpret data, but it also provides a completely new way to share results with the global research community."