Genomics Virtual Laboratory
This project has been completed.
The information below may be out of date,
and is provided for historical purposes only.
Over ten years after the sequencing of the human genome, in 2013 the National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources project (Nectar) funded this project, led out of the University of Queensland by Ron Horst, with partners from the VLSCI (now Melbourne Bioinformatics), the Garvan Institute and CSIRO. With the exponential growth in genomic data being generated, the Australian-made Genomics Virtual Lab (GVL) was built to make genomic data analysis more accessible to biologists. It successfully achieved this goal, paving the way for Galaxy Australia.
The GVL was a computational workbench which provided a highly accessible cloud-based genomics analysis environment preconfigured with best practice genomics tools and supplemented with comprehensive tutorial materials and protocols, managed services and user support.
With large GVL installations at Monash, Melbourne and Queensland universities as well as overseas, the GVL was recognised as a quality platform which helped address the shortage of bioinformatics expertise around the world and manage the complex, multiple-layered data analysis tasks confronting life scientists today. The GVL worked as both a research and a training tool, with life scientists able to undertake self-directed training to then translate this knowledge to their own data. It was also used to deliver content in the Master of Science (Bioinformatics) at the University of Melbourne.
As part of the work undertaken to extend the reach of the GVL, our experts carried out performance analysis testing of GVL-based clusters on the Nectar cloud. Ultimately, GVL provided the foundations for Galaxy Australia to become the successful platform it is today.