Wednesday 29 September 2010

SeqCentral not just another company using Cloud computing for genomics

It is not everyday you see a bioinformatics company get featured on Techcrunch. Not by my count anyway. SeqCentral's website hasn't officially launched yet but they did launch on Techcrunch disrupt (check their twitter).
SeqCentral, LLC, aims to provide and harness the high-performance computational power of the cloud as a usable, collaborative, online service to all members of the computational genomics community.


Using the cloud to do computational genomics isn't terribly new. But the collaborative aspect is. 


SeqCentral will allow scientists to compare their data to others to see if their sequencing is new or if it is “known.” The startup will bring in public data from universities, research organizations, and companies and allow you compare your sequencing to this existing data.

And SeqCentral, which costs $99 per year for scientists, wants to help you do more than just be able to find additional data, but also aims to connect members of the genomics community, encouraging collaboration around sequencing.

Other than the cheap price, which is 'democratizing', I find the idea of asking scientists to share their new sequencing data using their platform daring!

Granted that it only speeds up the sharing process if the data is due to be in public domain (due to public research funding). I had the crazy idea that if the clients would allow sequencing providers can share info that they have clients sequencing same samples (cancer cell lines for example) this way both Client A and Client B can save $ on sequencing coverage. Ultimately, I felt that it wouldn't work out as MTAs are such a hassle. Good Luck to SeqCentral though! I am rooting for ya..

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