Strengthening our biology backbone – the NCRIS-funded RDS Omics project
Building upon three existing NCRIS-funded capabilities, the Nectar Research Cloud, RDS data services and the Genomics Virtual Laboratory (GVL), RDS Omics empowers the modern biologist to go from raw data to complex, collaborative, downstream analyses without the need to purchase expensive compute or pay for scarce bioinformaticians.
Modern biology is being revolutionised by high-throughput molecular techniques, such as DNA sequencing and other ‘omics’ technologies. RDS Omics is the first Australian platform to allow genomics (DNA), transcriptomics (RNA), proteomics (proteins) and metabolomics (small molecules) data to be efficiently co-analysed, stored, shared and published from one common interface.
What’s been built so far?
A structured data environment, as well as tools and workflows encompassing genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics – and cross-omics systems biology, have now been incorporated into the Platform and deployed on RDS storage and the Nectar Research Cloud.
An online suite of self-directed training materials has already been used in a series of workshops to introduce users to the full capabilities of the platform.
What’s next?
Data from the national Antibiotic Resistant Pathogens Initiative (funded by Bioplatforms Australia) is being uploaded to the Platform through 2017. This will enable timely research on infectious blood pathogens responsible for antibiotic resistant sepsis (blood poisoning). The reference data can then be: co-analysed and stored in one system; managed through a common data management system; have bioinformatics analysis performed on it via a common interface; made accessible to biology researchers in Australia and internationally; and, published to international repositories.
Future releases of the platform are scheduled throughout 2017.