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Bioinformatics

SNPs while you wait

Nature Reviews Genetics volume 11, page 4 (2010)Cite this article

Computational power is struggling to keep pace with the amount of genome variation data that are being collected. One solution is offered by an open access software tool, Crossbow, that allows billions of bases of sequence to be compared and SNP-genotyped accurately and cheaply in a few hours.

Currently the only way to accelerate genome analysis time is to run many computers in parallel. This approach involves costly resources that are available only in dedicated sequencing centres; parallelization sometimes demands custom-made software, which can prevent peers from repeating the analyses. Crossbow overcomes these issues by using 'cloud computing', an increasingly popular approach in which computing space and central processing unit cycles are 'rented' from idle server capacity on the web, allowing large-scale analyses to be carried out on a virtual computer cluster from any online terminal.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Langmead, B. et al. Searching for SNPs with cloud computing. Genome Biol. 10, R134 (2009)

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Authors
  1. Tanita Casci
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Casci, T. SNPs while you wait. Nat Rev Genet 11, 4 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg2726

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