Genome sequencing to enhance biomarker discovery
Singapore: Technology firms AB SCIEX and Illumina have partnered to develop a cloud computing environment for genome sequencing. The platform will help enhance biomarker discovery and aid research into diseases such as cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer's, and heart disease.
AB SCIEX and Illumina have come together for the OneOmics project, a SWATH-based next-generation proteomics (NGP) and next-generation sequencing (NGS) tools in a cloud computing environment. AB SCIEXs' SWATH Proteomics Cloud Tool Kit suite of applications will be hosted in BaseSpace, Illumina's applications store and cloud-based informatics community dedicated to advancing genomic analysis. This partnership makes BaseSpace a single location for the collection of genomics and proteomics big data. With fast, secure, and streamlined analysis of complex multi-omics data sets, this solution is designed to help advance biomarker discovery.
"The integration of proteomic and genomic data analysis through a partnership with AB SCIEX and Illumina is an exciting collaboration that will bring democratization of computational efforts, general access and standardization of data analysis, and provide a platform for systems biology in life sciences," said Mr Leroy Hood, president, Institute for System Biology.
The patented AB SCIEX SWATH Proteomics software solves the "missing data problem" wherein traditional "shotgun" proteomics measures an incomplete set of proteins that are difficult to reproduce. SWATH makes reproducible proteome research feasible for the first time across many samples and is further enhanced through integration with Illumina NGS technologies.
"SWATH software is a patented innovation that allows thousands of proteins to be examined at once with almost no method development, and now with our cloud-based applications, customers can process data 50 times faster," said Mr Rainer Blair, president, AB SCIEX. "The OneOmics project will enable better outcomes in omics research. We have developed four SWATH apps to support processing, analyzing, and visualization of proteomics mass spec data to extract biological insights."
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As NGP and NGS generate ever-increasing volumes of data, this partnership addresses a bottleneck in biomedical research by helping to securely store, retrieve, and manage large-scale, complex data sets, and visualize them in a biological context. Dr Ruedi Aebersold, professor at Institute of Molecular Biology at ETH in Zurich, commented, "Using this platform, researchers will be able to make predictable, actionable, and testable models of diseases more quickly and efficiently. In essence, it moves the focus of multilevel analysis of biological systems from wet-lab data acquisition into the computational domain, where large data sets can be shared globally".
"These new proteomics tools add systems biology capabilities to BaseSpace, creating an easy-to-use, cloud-based environment that enables rapid data analysis for a growing range of applications," said Mr Nicholas Naclerio, senior vice president, Corporate Development and general manager, Enterprise Informatics for Illumina. "Now, BaseSpace is making informatics accessible to anyone searching for a truly interdisciplinary, systems-level understanding of biology."
