Genome analyses up to 14 times faster with Cloud

In a proof-of-concept test, researchers at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH), together with industry partners intel and Sentieon, have been able to increase the speed of computationally intensive genome analyses by up to 14 times. The special feature: Long-read single-cell sequencing was performed via a dedicated cloud rather than through dedicated high-performance compute systems using industry-accepted standards.

Single-cell long read sequencing - i.e. the readout of very long DNA fragments from single cells - is extremely computationally intensive and only possible with powerful computers. In view of current and future tasks to process huge amounts of data for therapy development based on genetic information (Big Data), the speed of these sequencings is crucial. Researchers at the BIH Center for Digital Health led by Professor Christian Conrad, head of the "Intelligent Imaging" research group, and Dr. Harald Wagener have now tested a cloud-based process for sequencing - in collaboration with the computer chip manufacturer intel and the software company Sentieon.

Sentieon developed optimized software for long-read single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) analysis that achieved a 14-fold increase in speed on samples sequenced with equipment from Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT). The genomic analysis ran on 4th generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors. After one year, the collaboration between BIH, Intel and Sentieon was completed in July 2023.