Forecast: Cloudy

David Dooling, of the Genome Center at Washington University and the blog PolITiGenomics, has written a thoughtful post about the nexus of cloud computing and bioinformatics. Dooling does a fine job summarizing the cloud computing and Big Data conversation that’s happening in bioinformatics circles, so I won’t repeat it here.

The post essentially argues that bioinformaticians are — to mix metaphors — too quick to jump on the cloud computing band wagon. It often makes more sense — and cents — to analyze genomic data locally (or privately). His cost-benefit analysis is spot on, but applies to the state of the art. The state of bioinformatics is, however, changing very rapidly and the scale (pun very much intended) is likely to tip.

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HDF5 and next-gen data

I’ve realized that over the last few months I have become de-sensitized to large numbers. It’s either because of the time spent working on the next-generation sequencing data or the never-ending 0s being added to the bailout package.

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