The National Center for Genome Analysis Support at Indiana University has launched three new infrastructure initiatives that provide new tools, services, and partners to help biological research communities with their projects.
First, it is now partnering with Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center to provide additional genome analysis applications that will run Blacklight — PSC’s supercomputer — and which will benefit from the system's large memory architecture.
Next, IU has partnered with Penguin Computing to provide researchers with access to a high-performance cluster with large-memory nodes that is configured for genome assembly and equipped with genome analysis and bioinformatics software. The Penguin On-Demand service is available to researchers on a fee-for-service basis.
Finally, NCGAS has updated some of the bioinformatics tools it offers. For example, it now offers an improved version of the Trinity RNA assembly software, which is used by scientists studying gene expression in agricultural pests and human parasites among other organisms.
IU launched NCGAS in 2011 with a three-year $1.4 million grant from the National Science Foundation to provide software, computational resources, and consulting services to NSF-funded researchers (BI 10/7/2011).