SHENZHEN, China and BOSTON, May 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, at Bio-IT World Conference & Expo held in Boston, BGI announced that it will work with the Broad Institute, Intel and Alibaba Cloud to provide cloud-based free access to the latest version of the Genome Analysis Tool Kit (GATK4) software package on the BGI Online platform.

With this agreement, the GATK Best Practices pipeline will be freely available to users of BGI Online in China around the world. The agreement also includes support of the well-established Workflow Definition Language (WDL) and the workflow execution engine Cromwell in the future version of BGI Online.

"As one of the world's largest genome centers, we are delighted to see users in China and around the world get access to state-of-the-art genome analysis tools through the BGI Online platform," said Xin Jin, Deputy Director of Research and Development Center at BGI and director of the BGI Online platform. "We are processing millions of samples each year through BGISEQ-500 sequencers. By providing the cloud-based solution, we can greatly expand access and accelerate both scientific research and clinical applications with cutting-edge genomics technology."

"In our global effort to drive breakthroughs in human health, high-quality data is paramount," said Eric Banks, Senior Director of Data Sciences and Data Engineering at the Broad Institute. "We want to help ensure that every researcher, scientist, and analyst has access to the best genomic analysis tools. We are pleased that GATK best practices will be used in the BGI Online platform."

"BGI Online offering the newest version of GATK, including optimizations developed through Intel's collaboration with the Broad Institute, means two of the world's top genomics centers will use common open source tools," said Jason Waxman, corporate vice president of the Intel Data Center Solutions Group. "This is a big step toward making state-of-the-art genomic data analysis available worldwide."

"As one of the world's leading cloud computing company, Alibaba Cloud looks forward to leveraging our data intelligence and computing power, and accelerating the development of bioinformatics. We are excited to be part of this collative effort in bringing GATK4 to Chinese users and making genome analysis technology more inclusive," said Jin Li, Senior Director at Alibaba Cloud.

About BGI Online
BGI Online is a powerful and secure cloud platform for genomics data analysis. The platform exploits the powerful computing and unlimited storage capabilities of Amazon Web Services and Alibaba Cloud. BGI Online provides easier and more effective solutions to institutions from data storage, automated analysis, and data delivery to project partnership and bioinformatics methods development. For more information please visit www.bgionline.com (Global) and www.bgionline.cn (China).

SOURCE BGI