Australian researchers are set to make significant strides in discovering, accessing, and analysing human genomics data. The first in-person meeting of a significant new collaboration brought together partners who are committed to implementing the Australian BioCommons’ GUARDIANS program.

A group of Nextflow enthusiasts will come together in Sydney to take part in the global nf-core hackathon in March. By hosting the first Australian satellite site, we hope to unlock new opportunities for both national and international collaboration.

A range of special events for Australian researchers will focus on streamlining the data submission processes for various data types, addressing common challenges, and providing best-practice guidance on interacting with the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA).

Researchers have developed a novel solution to process nanopore sequencing data on any mainstream GPU hardware, expanding computational options for the global bioinformatics community. Slorado is the first open-source software/library solution for nanopore sequencing basecalling on AMD Graphic Processing Units (GPUs). It was developed using Australia’s most powerful supercomputer at the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre with the support of the Australian BioCommons Leadership Share (ABLeS).

The participation of 18 students from around Australia was supported by travel grants to AMSI BioInfoSummer. The annual conference is a valuable opportunity to explore current bioinformatics research and developments, with the most recent meeting hosted by the University of Melbourne.

Transformative genomic technologies can now be leveraged for detecting pathogens thanks to the innovative bioinformatics pipelines developed by bioinformatics experts in Queensland. Their work is helping protect Australian plant industries by making the new capabilities accessible to biosecurity sites nation-wide, and making the pipelines and technical instructions accessible to all researchers and diagnosticians.

A recent workshop explored strategies for the adoption, usage, and optimisation of GPUs and addressed researchers’ challenges to accessing high performance computing.