Better access to compute, expertise and tools accelerates valuable data generation

The Australian BioCommons is enabling rapid insights into life science community data assets using high end computing through its Australian BioCommons Leadership Share, also known as ABLeS. ABLeS is allowing life science research consortia to jointly access and collaboratively use Australia’s national computing facilities - the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) and Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre - offering computational resources, specialist expertise, centrally supported tools and software through and a shared repository of tools and software, tailored to support the generation of valuable reference data assets.

The benefits of generating  life science reference datasets - such as reference genomes or continental-scale of environmental microbiome analyses - are far-reaching, where research for health, agriculture and the environment all benefit. Bioplatforms Australia and many of its co-funding partners enable the generation of these reference datasets to address themes of national significance through Bioplatforms Australia’s Framework Initiative projects.

To date, these large collaborative efforts have been impeded by challenges around access to appropriate high-powered computational and storage infrastructure. The lack of access, available scale and technical support have limited the ability of research communities to converge on the construction of shared reference datasets from raw data, which also limits the ability to analyse these datasets to generate new scientific insights and knowledge. 

The core purpose of  ABLeS - the Australian BioCommons Leadership Share is to directly address these challenges and accelerate the generation of reference datasets, by facilitating researchers’ use of computational resources at Australia’s national computing facilities, the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) and the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre.

The intention of ABLeS is to grow and accelerate our national ability to construct, maintain and gain insights from community defined and developed data assets (e.g. reference genome assemblies). ABLeS aims to provide communities with access to the necessary infrastructure to create those assets. At this stage, ABLeS is working with selected Framework Initiatives prioritised by Bioplatforms Australia, including Threatened Species Initiative, Genomics for Australian Plants, Australian Amphibian and Reptile Genomics, Plant Pathogen Omics Initiative andAustralian Grasslands and Adaptation Framework, as well as national science consortia such as Zero Childhood Cancer. Other communities and resources will be incorporated as the program matures.

A paper acknowledging ABLeS support has already been published, recognising that the authors accessed the scheme for their assembly of the genome of the Australian lizard, Tiliqua rugosa. University and museum researchers from Australia, New Zealand and the US, combined their ABLeS resources with multiple international grants to publish Comparison of Reptilian Genomes Reveals Deletions Associated with the Natural Loss of γδ T Cells in Squamates in the Journal of Immunology. With many more research communities receiving ABLeS support to generate valuable data assets, important publications across a diverse range of domains will follow.

Find a detailed description of ABLeS in the publication Building community data assets for life sciences through ABLeS - the Australian BioCommons Leadership Share.

For details of the resources, processes, eligible communities and contacts visit the ABLeS website.