MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--DNAnexus, Inc., today announced that it will provide a long-term solution for researchers who require access to the vast repository of DNA sequencing data contained in the public Sequence Read Archive (SRA) database. As a part of this initiative, DNAnexus will provide a freely accessible web-based search interface that simplifies searching and accessing these datasets, and improves their usability for life science research. Google Cloud Storage will support the hosting of the SRA data repository. This new community resource was made publically available today at sra.dnanexus.com.
The SRA has been the primary repository designated for data generated by the latest DNA sequencing technologies. For example, it houses all primary sequence data for National Institutes of Health-sponsored next-generation sequencing projects. In February 2011, the main U.S. source of public genomic data, NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information), announced that it would phase out hosting support of the SRA in its current form due to federal funding cuts. Uncertainty persists about whether there will be a resource available in the future to store and disseminate public DNA sequence data, but DNAnexus is aiming to provide a long-term solution.
“As a public repository of unique DNA sequencing data, the SRA has been an invaluable resource to the research community. However, the ever increasing size of datasets being submitted and the need to easily integrate them into downstream analyses has tested the limits of its utility,” said Richard M. Myers, Ph.D., President, Director and Investigator of the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. “I am very pleased to see private entities such as DNAnexus step in to keep this resource freely accessible and provide a more intuitive and user-friendly portal for searching and retrieving these important genomic datasets.”
Access to a wide range of DNA sequence data and the ability to easily integrate, analyze and manage these data are critical to advancing life science research. The DNAnexus SRA web site provides an intuitive interface for quickly identifying and browsing datasets of interest based on a number of query options. Through this interface, researchers can also download sequence read files including all sequences from the 1,000 Genomes Project for investigation using their own tools.
“The DNAnexus SRA website is an example of a ‘big data’ initiative that benefits from rethinking the interface in a 100% web-enabled world,” said Eric Morse, head of business development, Google Cloud Storage. “Combining Google’s massively scalable data storage infrastructure with DNAnexus’ expertise in web-based interfaces, genomics data analysis, and visualization, researchers can quickly access the world’s genomic information from any web browser.”
Andreas Sundquist, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of DNAnexus, Inc. added: “Life science research will be characterized by the ever growing presence of diverse genomic datasets and the ability to easily integrate them. Through this effort, as well as other initiatives announced today in support of academic users, we’re helping to ensure that scientists can easily access a critical archive of genomics information in a hosted environment that allows them to focus on science, not software.”
Users of the DNAnexus SRA web site can also import SRA datasets into the commercial DNAnexus platform to access additional functionality such as mapping, RNA-seq, ChIP-seq, variant analysis, and data visualization, as well as tools for integrating SRA data with their own sequence data. To further support the academic research community, DNAnexus has also reduced its standard academic pricing by half and allows researchers to import SRA data into DNAnexus, for free.
The company also announced today an investment from Google Ventures, as well as other firms, in its latest funding round. Krishna Yeshwant of Google Ventures has joined the DNAnexus board of directors.
For more information and to access this hosted SRA database, please visit http://sra.dnanexus.com.
About the Sequence Read Archive
In the spring of 2007, the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory submitted the first DNA sequence data — James Watson’s 454 sequencing reads — to what was then called the Short Read Archive at NCBI. The SRA has been considered a critical component of the genomics community infrastructure, providing two-way access to enormous datasets, integrating with European (EBI) and Japanese (DDBJ) repositories. Deposition of data in the SRA is a mandatory requirement of some funding agencies and open-access journals. The most active SRA submitters include the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Washington University in St Louis, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Baylor College of Medicine. The largest individual global project generating next-generation sequence is the 1,000 Genomes Project (http://www.1000genomes.org) which has generated nearly half of all data submitted into the SRA. The most sequenced organisms are Homo sapiens with 65 percent and Mus musculus [house mouse] with 4 percent share of all bases in the SRA.
About DNAnexus
DNAnexus is powering the genomics revolution. The company’s mission is to unlock the potential of DNA-based medicine and biotechnology by creating scalable and collaborative data technologies. The company has created a DNA data management and analysis platform that provides instant online genomics data centers for researchers and sequencing service providers alike. For more information please visit https://dnanexus.com.