NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) — Baylor College of Medicine's Human Genome Sequencing Center has won $262,000 in federal stimulus funds toward a new high performance computing facility designed to help carry out better-quality genome assembly computation.
The center's new Massive RAM Genomic Analysis Cluster consists of two nodes, each having 1 terabyte of random access memory. The cluster's increased computing capacity will allow researchers to assemble short-reads generated by next-generation sequencing into long sequences at higher speeds with fewer errors, according to BCM.
Jeffrey Reid, assistant professor in the BCM Human Genome Sequencing Center, led the effort to obtain the computers. Reid is leading the center's development of new sequence analysis methods using the cluster.
Collaborating with Reid on the project are Rui Chen, assistant professor in the center, for research on the genetics of early onset retinal diseases; Joseph Petrosino, assistant professor of molecular virology and microbiology at BCM, for studies as part of the Human Microbiome Project; and Jeffrey Rogers, associate professor of molecular and human genetics at BCM, a member of the center, and an expert in primate genomics who will work with researchers nationwide on various primate genome sequencing projects.
Also using the cluster will be Richard Gibbs, director of the BCM Human Genome Sequencing Center, for his research into disease genes, especially those related to cancer.
BCM won the grant from the National Center for Research Resources, funded through the $814 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.