The global Galaxy Project has been awarded a US$190,000 grant by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) to extend Galaxy—a web-based computational platform—so that it can analyse large biomedical datasets and integrate with other analysis tools.

The grant will be used to

• extend Galaxy to allow easy browsing and importing of datasets from large data repositories

• enable Galaxy to efficiently use cloud computing resources for large-scale, near-data computing

• extend Galaxy integration with other data science environments.

Many of the Australian BioCommons team and partners working on our projects will be presenting at the next eResearch conference. Here’s a grab of ways to hear about our ongoing developments…

Australian researchers can now rapidly analyse their SARS-CoV-2 data using published tools and workflows by using a new dedicated Galaxy COVID-19 compute node hosted at Pawsey Supercomputing Centre. The ability of Galaxy Australia and Pawsey to jointly deliver this enabling data analytics platform has been made possible as part of the COVID-19 Accelerated Access Initiative in which Australia’s national HPC facilities responded quickly to the pandemic with streamlined, prioritised and expedited access to computation and data resources. NCI Australia and the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre have now announced that the Galaxy COVID-19 compute node would be hosted on Pawsey’s newly deployed Nimbus Cloud, guaranteeing tailored resources for urgent public health research.

Researchers from universities in Germany, Belgium, Australia and the USA, have used publicly available novel coronavirus (COVID-19) genome data and published their analyses using Galaxy, an open source research platform.

The joint paper, written by the international Galaxy team, demonstrates how the COVID-19 genome data can be shared, analysed and reproduced in an efficient and transparent way. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the researchers showed how Galaxy could facilitate the exchange of data and reproducible workflows between authorities, institutes and laboratories dealing with the virus. The international Galaxy platform, through the provision of highly accessible, globally shared data and analytics platforms, has the potential to transform the way biomedical research is performed. By offering access to data and an open and reproducible analytics environment, the Galaxy platform ensures that progress is no longer limited by access to samples and data.

The recent public health emergency arising from the COVID-19 outbreak has demonstrated the necessity for a rapid, collaborative and international response. The development of fast and effective countermeasures relies on the global research community’s ability to share data and perform fast and reproducible analyses.

A joint paper by Galaxy teams from Australia, Europe and the United States demonstrated how the COVID-19 genome data can be shared, analysed and reproduced in an efficient and transparent way. The study “No more business as usual: agile and effective responses to emerging pathogen threats require open data and open analytics” re-analysed all COVID-19 genomic data available in the public domain using Galaxy platforms and open software tools. The publication highlighted the inadequate accessibility of raw data associated with COVID-19 research, and described how the work completed on Galaxy opened up the possibility for any researcher worldwide to perform their own analyses with the data, analysis pipelines and public computational infrastructure freely available.

A new investment from the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) will enable significant expansion of the Australian BioCommons ‘Bring Your Own Data (BYOD)’ Platform.

Earlier this year, discipline-focussed research-orientated platforms were invited to apply for investment to support better connections between data-related resources, industry and researchers. The Australian BioCommons submitted an application involving eight partner organisations: Bioplatforms Australia, Australian Access Federation, AARNet, National Computational Infrastructure, University of Sydney, University of Melbourne, QCIF and Pawsey Supercomputing Centre. The proposal, BioCommons Bring Your Own Data (BYOD) Expansion Project, detailed how this group would work together to build on the foundational work already being coordinated through the BioCommons.