Cyberinfrastructure Resources Supporting Genomics Research

The eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) is a series of NSF-funded supercomputing centers with a mission to provide computational resources to science researchers. This poster will present a number of genomics-related resources provided by XSEDE and its partners, focusing mainly on the National Center for Genome Analysis Support (NCGAS), which provides technical support and consulting expertise for genome assembly projects, and relevant cyberinfrastructure (including a number of high-performance computing resources developed specifically with genomics in mind). One of our strengths has been the de novo assembly of transcriptomes. Now that researchers are moving beyond the realm of model organisms, there are many cases when there is little genomic information, or only low-quality next generation assemblies. Under these circumstances, the most economical way forward is often to turn to RNAseq projects. While these have traditionally been undertaken to characterize changes in transcription, frequently replacing microarrays, they are also now the easiest way to assembly a gene catalog. We will present an on-going project of Malissa Pespeni’s (lab of Armin Moczek) that examines the developmental and comparative biology of horned beetles, to illustrate how researchers are currently making use of XSEDE resources.

The poster will include contact information for researchers interested in these services; please note that while these services are funded by the NSF, you do not necessarily need to be an NSF-funded project to make use of them.  Consultation is available to determine whether we can be of assistance in your project.