United Kingdom
February 13, 2015
- £7.5M funding from BBSRC for bioscience big data infrastructure
- Improved access to enormous datasets that will unlock untold discoveries
- Projects will harness the power of some of the world's fastest supercomputers
The UK's Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council has invested £7.5M in new infrastructure to tackle bioscience big data challenges. The new funding will improve the storage and curation of enormous datasets that will unlock untold discoveries in important areas like health, agriculture and sustainable fuels.
Biological discovery is increasingly being driven by ground-breaking technologies, such as high-throughput genomic analysis and next generation biological imaging, which generate massive and complex datasets. In order to investigate complex biological phenomena, researchers need access to comprehensive, integrated data resources that are accessible for the whole community.
Access to primary research data is vital for the advancement of science; to validate existing observations and provides the raw materials for new discoveries. Sharing data in a standardised way can enable exciting breakthroughs as researchers interrogate big data sets to spot undiscovered patterns of biological importance.
However, many biologists, and in some areas the community as a whole, struggle to take full advantage of the data generated because of a lack of computing resource, appropriate support and technical skill.
To meet these challenges, BBSRC is strengthening investment in bioinformatics and biological resources, focusing on the needs of the research community, and facilitating the development of sustainable models of operation.
Professor Jackie Hunter, BBSRC Chief Executive, said: "This recent funding is one example of BBSRC strengthening investment in big data infrastructure so that scientists can access vast quantities of data to create the knowledge that will be needed to tackle the challenges of tomorrow.
"We experience problems coping with our own local data storage – videos, picture and other media take up huge amounts of space on our home computers. In life sciences, the data required for research is unimaginably larger and growing at unprecedented rates. The reference wheat genome takes up about 6 Gigabytes, for example, and a high resolution video of the human heart of just one patient can be around 50 Gigabytes, or the equivalent of 50 feature length films at standard definition.
"This data provides a mine of information that will help us now and in the future but it needs to be properly stored, curated and made easily accessible. These investments will help us achieve this in important areas, from discovering new drugs to breeding crops that are more resistant to climate change."
The projects are:
£1.79M to build a next generation image repository
- To make available original scientific image data that underpins life sciences research
- Professor Jason Swedlow, University of Dundee, with EMBL – European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) and the University of Cambridge
£2M for big data infrastructure for crop genomics
- Stimulating new opportunities in crop development to help improve some of the world's most important crops.
- Dr Sarah Ayling, The Genome Analysis Centre (TGAC), with EMBL-EBI
£1.9M to establish infrastructure for functional annotation of farmed animal genomes
- To help feed us in the future by providing an important framework for the discovery of genetic variation in domesticated animals and how that influences their characteristics
- Lead: Professor Alan Archibald, The Roslin Institute at the The University of Edinburgh, with EMBL-EBI and TGAC
£1.78M to create cyber infrastructure for the plant sciences.
- The UK iPlant node that will help to spread expertise and best practice between the UK and US
- Professor Jim Beynon, The University of Warwick, with TGAC, University of Liverpool, The University of Nottingham, University of Arizona and the Texas Advanced Computing Center
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