User-centric genomics infrastructure: trends and technologies

Abstract

Genomics is both a data- and compute-intensive discipline. The success of genomics depends on an adequate informatics infrastructure that can address growing data demands and enable a diverse range of resource-intensive computational activities. Designing a suitable infrastructure is a challenging task, and its success largely depends on its adoption by users. In this article, we take a user-centric view of the genomics, where users are bioinformaticians, computational biologists, and data scientists. We try to take their point of view on how traditional computational activities for genomics are expanding due to data growth, as well as the introduction of big data and cloud technologies. The changing landscape of computational activities and new user requirements will influence the design of future genomics infrastructures.

Keywords: big data; bioinformatics; bioinformatique; calcul haute performance; cloud; données massives; genomics; génomique; high performance computing; infrastructure; nuage.