Genomics Virtual Laboratory

The GVL is a world-leading cloud-based suite of genomics analysis tools designed to take the IT out of bioinformatics.

“Biology is now less about bench work and more about analytics and informatics,” says University of Melbourne Associate Professor and VLSCI director Andrew Lonie said.

Life sciences was a complex discipline even before its transition into a data science. It now requires not only domain knowledge but also the expertise to use analysis tools and compute resources to create research outcomes.

“Just getting hold of best practice tools and sufficient compute resources is challenging.  The GVL, built by University of Queensland and Melbourne experts, is there to bridge that gap and get the latest best practice tools and computing resources into the hands of researchers easily.”

Lonie said that while life sciences researchers are generally comfortable with web-based environments, some genomics tools required a steep learning curve to navigate command line interfaces, dependency installs and other technical challenges.

It is unclear what – if any – payback there is for researchers to know and understand this machinery of research. Rather, it could be seen as a potential distraction when trying to achieve breakthrough outcomes, such as better understanding of diseases through microbial genomics, or when looking for risk genes to better understand cancer.

Lonie said the GVL acted as a pre-configured environment that doesn’t require the researcher to understand how to install the analysis tools or the dependencies within tools.

“It’s designed to get around that.  It’s more about democratising access.”

Though it is architected to be cloud-agnostic, the GVL presently runs on the Australian research cloud NeCTAR on AWS, which is able to be launched anywhere around the world,” Lonie said.

The GVL is a world-leading cloud-based suite of genomics analysis tools designed to “take the IT out of bioinformatics”.

“A Government-backed research cloud can’t be essentially infinite in capacity which is what AWS offers”.

Lonie said that GVL instances have been spun up in the UK, Europe and South Africa, and there are current projects to bring the virtual laboratory technology to North America and Canada. In Australia, the GVL is used by several thousand researchers and sciences training for many more people worldwide.

As the research community embraces virtual laboratories in greater numbers, the GVL is finding itself well-ahead of the adoption curve. However, as with many world-leading research programs in Australia, it operates with some uncertainty over its future funding.

“Virtual laboratories are critical not just for life sciences but in other research disciplines that are also transitioning to data sciences,” Lonie said. “We need to support this area on an ongoing basis. This is about research infrastructure to enable Australia to be up there with the best in the world.”