Bangalore, July 24, 2007: To help extinguish effects of the ancient parasite, the Schistosoma japonicum or blood fluke – one of the major infectious parasites to a wide range of hosts including primates, rodents, carnivores, and humans – Chinese Scientists at the China National Human Genome Center (CHGC) in Shanghai are using SGI computing technology running a Mitrion-accelerated bioinformatics application to improve early disease diagnosis and discover new drugs to effectively treat disease caused by this parasite.

 

Blood fluke has evolved for thousands of years. Currently, existing drugs target disease caused by blood fluke found in South America. In the past few years the Schistosoma japonicum has been re-found in some lakes and rivers in the east and south China area. To study the parasite evolution, improve disease diagnosis in the very early stages, and to develop effective drugs to treat the disease, Chinese scientists have decided to discover the secrets of the blood fluke genome.

 

CHGC implemented the first phase of blood fluke genomics sequencing using the new SGI RASC Appliance and SGI InfiniteStorage 350 storage solution, installed in February. CHGC bioscientists achieved faster query times – up to 10 times faster – with the combination of SGI RASC (Reconfigurable Application-Specific Computing) technology, an accelerated version of BLAST-n software developed by Mitrionics, and the acclaimed SGI Altix server platform.

 

SGI InfiniteStorage 350 ensures that the data generated by the CHGC research is both protected and available to maximize analysis. A cost effective solution, the initial purchase of 8TB allows plenty of capacity for future expansion as the need arises. With integrated controllers, the density of the SGI InfiniteStorage 350 contributes to the mobility of Bioinformatics solution.

 

"Shortened time to results is critical to our success. With the blood fluke genome research, we have 300 million base pairs to study, and have 6-7 times more calculations in each step. The large shared memory and ease-of-use with the SGI RASC Appliance for BioInformatics enables our scientists to focus on achieving results faster and not spending valuable time on computer science," said Dr.Zhou, Deputy Director of Bioinformatics Department, CHGC.

 

The SGI RASC Appliance for Bioinformatics is a pre-configured solution that dramatically simplifies nucleotide sequence queries using BLAST-n. The industrial-scale appliance addresses productivity problems in a range of bioinformatics environments – from those that serve thousands of users running BLAST queries against a single database, to others with smaller numbers of users running complex queries against databases that are hundreds of Gigabytes in size.

 

“The accelerating pace of genomics research means scientists are running more and larger sequence queries. The turnkey solution SGI and Mitrionics makes the genomic sequencing faster and easier, and the power consumption per BLAST-n query is as little as one-tenth," said Mr Alex Lee, country manager of SGI Greater China Region. "CHGC's successful implementation of this solution is tantamount to their leadership position in China and the world.”