The i5k Workspace@Nal

The i5k initiative is a transformative project that aims to organize the sequencing and analysis of the genomes of 5,000 arthropod species. Decreases in sequencing costs have brought the sequencing and assembly of non-model genomes in reach of individual research groups with little bioinformatics or big data infrastructure experience. There is a significant gap between the data generation phase (genome sequencing and assembly and automated feature prediction) and the dissemination of data through a portal or platform for widespread access, data querying, and community-based curation. The National Agricultural Library (NAL) has implemented the i5k Workspace@NAL (https://i5k.nal.usda.gov/) as a centralized platform to help meet the i5k initiative's genome hosting needs.

The i5k Workspace@NAL includes organism pages and tools for creating a project, downloading data, sequence search, genome visualization and manual annotation. All of our resources are open source, and include the use of Tripal for content management, a customized interface sequence search using BLAST, Clustal and HMMer, JBrowse and Apollo for genome visualization and manual annotation, and OGS generation services. All of our internally generated code is available at https://github.com/NAL-i5K.

As of November 2017, the i5k Workspace@NAL incorporates 55 arthropod species, including species relevant to agriculture, invasion biology, systematics, ecology, evolution, and developmental research. Any research group with an arthropod genome in need of a home is encouraged to contact the i5k Workspace with their genome project details.