Cloud Analytics for Life Sciences

High-throughput technologies, such as microarrays or Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), are revolutionising life science research. These technologies are already having an impact on plant and animal breeding, research into crop protection and more importantly in human health. The cost of generating these data is falling, but the ongoing cost of supplying locally the substantial compute and associated resources required for their analysis remains high. As an efficient and scalable alternative to local provision, this proposal will develop infrastructure that will harness the power of cloud computing and UK e-research expertise in scientific workflows to provide an on-line analytics service, in the first instance, for DNA analysis. It is an innovative use of existing commercial Amazon EC2 cloud computing technologies to deliver computationally intensive analyses without the financial overhead of local computational infrastructure. It is also innovative in the analysis pipelines it will offer, providing new, leading-edge scientific methods. We will operate an analysis on-demand service via a web portal. Customers will be charged for their compute time on the cloud and for the maintenance of the service. Bespoke solutions for individual clients can be developed and deployed in consultation.