iMicrobe: Tools and Data-Driven Discovery Platform for the Microbiome Sciences
Publisher
The University of Arizona.Rights
Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.Abstract
Background: Scientists have amassed a wealth of microbiome datasets making it possible to study microbes in biotic and abiotic systems on a population- or planetary-scale; however, this potential hasn’t been fully realized given that the tools, data sets, and computation are available in diverse repositories and locations. To address this challenge, we developed iMicrobe.us, a community-driven microbiome data marketplace and tool exchange for users to integrate their own data and tools with those from the broader community. Findings: The iMicrobe platform brings together analysis tools and microbiome data sets by leveraging National Science Foundation-supported cyberinfrastructure and computing resources from CyVerse, Agave, and XSEDE. The primary purpose of iMicrobe is to provide users with a freely available, web-based platform to (1) maintain and share project data, metadata, and analysis products, (2) search for related public datasets, and (3) use and publish bioinformatics tools that run on highly-scalable computing resources. Analysis tools are implemented in containers that encapsulate complex software dependencies and run on freely available XSEDE resources via the Agave API which can retrieve datasets from the CyVerse Data Store or any web-accessible location (e.g., FTP, HTTP). Conclusions: iMicrobe promotes data integration, sharing, and community-driven tool development by making open source data and tools accessible to the research community in a web-based platform.Type
textElectronic Thesis
Degree Name
M.S.Degree Level
mastersDegree Program
Graduate CollegeBiosystems Engineering