Nvidia has announced that leading genomics institute, BGI, will launch 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, a statement from the company said.

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 dramatically expands the availability of advanced genomics research capabilities to researchers around the world, bringing science closer to an era of affordable and viable personalised medicine.

BGI is launching a limited free trial of the new service today for qualified biologists and bioinformaticists at the 2012 Bio-IT World Conference and Expo, the statement said.

“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 healthcare, 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 five hours. Once fully deployed in the cloud, we anticipate Easy Genomics could one day revolutionise genomics research.”

The EasyGenomics 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 the service with hundreds of additional Nvidia Tesla GPUs when it is fully deployed, at which time it is expected to support thousands of users, the statement said.

“This could be the year of the $1,000 genome due to rapid decline in sequencing costs.  We will soon be drowning in a deluge of data from the genome sequencers,” said Sumit Gupta, senior director of the Tesla business at Nvidia. “BGI’s EasyGenomics service uses the power of GPU computing to provide an affordable and easy-to-use method for scientists to crunch through this new genomics big data problem and get us that much closer to effective and affordable individualised treatments.” – TradeArabia News Service