Community-led design helps create Galaxy Australia’s Proteomics Lab

Galaxy Australia’s Proteomics Lab interface.

The new Galaxy Australia Proteomics Lab is now offering a customised, user-friendly view of Galaxy Australia that provides rapid access to a range of sophisticated proteomics resources alongside the compute proteomics researchers need.

Analysing proteomics data within Proteomics Lab is a smooth experience, with common tools conveniently sorted into categories. Each tool comes with descriptions and examples of required inputs, and includes links to tutorials and support. There’s also pre-organised test data available for key tools, making it faster to get started!

The Australian Proteomics Bioinformatics Community championed the development of Galaxy Australia’s Proteomics Lab, sharing their needs in quarterly meetings, including an in-person community forum held earlier this year. Assoc Prof Matt Padula, Director of the Lipidomics and Metabolomics Core Facility within the School of Life Sciences and Proteomics at University of Technology Sydney, and proteomics community member, found the community-led design approach particularly valuable:

It’s helped us realise the breadth of requirements from researchers with varying levels of proteomics knowledge. This field's complexity has led to misunderstandings about its capabilities and how to analyse data effectively. We’ve been able to design Proteomics Lab to assist researchers analyse proteomics data appropriately, with rapid access to guidance.

Matt expects Proteomics Lab will particularly benefit researchers who are beginning their proteomics journey:

The Lab will be an efficient training tool for both researchers and coursework students learning proteomics. It provides a lower barrier to entry, and the interfaces are streamlined compared to those of the desktop versions of the software, hiding complicated and potentially unnecessary settings that should often be left alone.

Proteomics Lab pairs perfectly with the computing power of Galaxy Australia, which is underpinned by computational resources provided by AARNet, ARDC Nectar Research Cloud, the University of Melbourne, QCIF, Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre, National Computational Infrastructure, and Microsoft Azure. Access to this fully-subsidised compute via the Galaxy Australia Proteomics Lab is expected to improve efficiency for researchers using proteomics services like those accessing Matt’s Facility:

Now researchers at my Facility won’t have to wait for desktop computers to become free, and facility staff won’t have to manage access, freeing up everyone’s time.

Proteomics Lab is the latest release in a series of Labs that support different research domains. If you are an Australian researcher with an interest in proteomics, be sure to try out the new Galaxy Australia Proteomics Lab now!