The Galaxy platform for accessible, reproducible and collaborative biomedical analyses: 2016 update

TLDR

High‑throughput technologies, especially next‑generation DNA sequencing, have transformed biomedical research, generating large datasets that demand sophisticated statistical and computational methods and substantial computational power, creating a crisis for researchers lacking informatics training. The Galaxy project aims to make advanced computational tools usable by non‑experts, thereby making data‑intensive research more accessible, transparent, and reproducible, and this report highlights newly added features for large‑scale biomedical analyses. Galaxy provides a web‑based environment that lets users perform computational analyses while automatically tracking all details for later inspection, publication, or reuse.

Abstract

High-throughput data production technologies, particularly 'next-generation' DNA sequencing, have ushered in widespread and disruptive changes to biomedical research. Making sense of the large datasets produced by these technologies requires sophisticated statistical and computational methods, as well as substantial computational power. This has led to an acute crisis in life sciences, as researchers without informatics training attempt to perform computation-dependent analyses. Since 2005, the Galaxy project has worked to address this problem by providing a framework that makes advanced computational tools usable by non experts. Galaxy seeks to make data-intensive research more accessible, transparent and reproducible by providing a Web-based environment in which users can perform computational analyses and have all of the details automatically tracked for later inspection, publication, or reuse. In this report we highlight recently added features enabling biomedical analyses on a large scale.