Communications of the ACM
Kbase Harnesses Gene Data For Researchers
The U.S. Department of Energy's national research laboratories are moving the Systems Biology Knowledgebase from a scientific pilot phase to a production phase.
Credit: U.S. Department of Energy
A large-scale computational platform developed by the U.S. Department of Energy's national research laboratories will make complex analysis of gene data more efficient and less time-consuming.
The Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase) is an open software and data platform designed to pull available data on plants and other biological entities into a centralized repository that is more accessible for researchers. The pooled data, computational tools, and shared resources will enable researchers to conduct database searches that previously took months, and they will not need to learn how to write their own software. The cooperative environment facilitates sharing and feedback among researchers so the programs, tools, and annotation of datasets can improve with other users' input.
The labs are moving KBase from a scientific pilot phase to a production phase and will gradually expand from the limited functionality available now. Officials are encouraging researchers to upload their data and programs to KBase so other users can mine them.
"KBase allows research groups to share and analyze data generated by their project, put it into context with data generated by other groups, and ultimately come to a much better quantitative understanding of their results," says Brookhaven National Laboratory's Sergei Maslov.
From Federal Computer Week
View Full Article
Abstracts Copyright © 2014 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA
No entries found