Abstract/Summary

Because of the ever-increasing application of next-generation sequencing (NGS) in research, and the expectation of faster experiment turn-around, it is becoming unfeasible and unscalable for analysis to be done exclusively by existing trained bioinformaticians. Instead, researchers and bench biologists are performing at least parts of most analyses. In order for this to be realized, two conditions must be satisfied: (1) well designed and accessible tools need to be made available, and (2) researchers and biologists need to be trained to use such tools in order to confidently handle high volumes of NGS data. Bio-Linux is a fully featured, powerful, configurable and easy to maintain bioinformatics workstation and helps on both counts by offering well over one hundred bioinformatics tools packaged into a single distribution, easily accessible and readily usable. Bio-Linux is also accessible in the form of virtual images or on the cloud, thus providing researchers with immediate access to scalable compute infrastructure required to run the analysis. Furthermore this paper discusses how bioinformatics training on Bio-Linux is helping to bridge the data production and analysis gap.