Two university computer scientists will spend the next two years developing software that can analyze genetic information in parallel using a large computer network thanks to a $380,000 grant they received from the National Science Foundation last month.
Analyzing the vast amount of genetic information within a single genome - the set of genes/chromosomes that make up the full DNA sequence of a living being - usually takes a large amount of time and requires an expensive set of computers to be on hand. University computer science professors Mihai Pop and Steven Salzberg will attempt to use cloud computing - a method with which the researchers may purchase computing power on a distributed network of computers without needing to invest in a large amount of hardware - to speed up the DNA sequencing process. If they succeed, scientists will have an easier path to knowing the genetic makeup of more of the Earth's creatures.
