The IGOR Cloud Platform: Collaborative Scalable and Peer-Reviewed NGS Data Analysis

摘要

Technical challenges facing researchers performing next-generation sequencing (NGS) analysis threaten to slow the pace of discovery and delay clinical applications of genomics data. Particularly for core laboratories, these challenges include: (1) Computation and storage have to scale with the vase amount of data generated. (2) Analysis pipelines are complex to design, set up, and share. (3) Collaboration, reproducibility, and sharing are hampered by privacy concerns and the sheer volume of data involved. Based on hands-on experience from large-scale NGS projects such as the 1000 Genomes Project, Seven Bridges Genomics has developed IGOR, a comprehensive cloud platform for NGS Data analysis that fully addresses these challenges: class="unordered" style="list-style-type:disc">IGOR is a cloud-based platform for researchers and facilities to manage NGS data, design and run complex analysis pipelines, and efficiently collaborate on projects.Over a dozen curated and peer-reviewed NGS data analysis pipelines are publicly available for free, including alignment, variant calling, and RNA-Seq. All pipelines are based on open source tools and built to peer-reviewed specifications in close collaboration with researchers at leading institutions such as the Harvard Stem Cell Institute.Without any command-line knowledge, NGS pipelines can be built and customized in an intuitive graphical editor choosing from over 50 open source tools.When executing pipelines, IGOR automatically takes care of all resource management. Resources are seamlessly and automatically made available from Amazon Web Services and optimized for time and cost.Collaboration is facilitated through a project structure that allows researchers working in and across institutions to share files and pipelines. Fine-grained permissions allow detailed access control on a user-by-user basis for each project. Pipelines can be embedded and accessed through web pages akin to YouTube videos.Extensive batch processing and parallelization capabilities mean that hundreds of samples can be analyzed in the same amount of time that a single sample can be processed. Using file metadata, batch processing can be automated, e.g., by file, library, sample or lane.The IGOR platform enables NGS research as a “turnkey” solution: Researchers can set up and run complex pipelines without expertise in command-line utilities or cloud computing. From a lab and facility perspective, the cloud-based architecture also eliminates the need to set up and maintain a large-scale infrastructure, typically resulting in at least 50% cost savings on infrastructure. By facilitating collaboration and easing analysis replication, the IGOR platform frees up the time of core laboratories to emphasize and focus on the research questions that ultimately guide them.