SEOUL, Korea, April 4 (Korea Bizwire) – The genome big data that may catalyze the commercialization of biotechnology research such as the development of new crop varieties will be provided by a government agency.
The Rural Development Administration has established a “big data information system for the genome of agricultural organisms” to be accessible on the National Agricultural Biotechnology Information Center’s website.
The genomic information offered by NABIC includes the genomes, Omics, next-generation sequencing of 16 plant and animal species like rice, cabbage, cow, pig and dog which are commonly grown or raised by farmers in Korea. The big data sized up to be 30.8 terabytes which consist of 9,637,000 pieces of information is available on the high-speed network. A total of 43 programs that can be used to analyze the big data are also provided.
In addition, the information is analyzed according to the needs such as verifying genome sequences and predicting unknown genomic functions.
The biotech researchers who are supposed to be the main users of NABIC can incorporate the big data into their own fields of interest to constitute secondary databases and conduct various analyses at NABIC.
Accessing general information regarding genome is open to anyone at NABIC, but the data analysis is only open to the members.
Upon launching the biotech big data information service, RDA expects that the system will serve as the infrastructure for the commercialization of agricultural study findings such as systematic breeding and high-value items by discovering useful information of genome and analyzing the large DNA data faster and more accurately.
RDA Genome Department researcher Kim Chang-kuk said, “As more useful information regarding genomes is provided on the big data information system for the genome of agricultural organisms, it will contribute to commercializing the biotech research including breeding of new varieties, development of diagnostic biomarkers and exploration of functional substances.”
Written by Robin Koo (linguistkoo@koreabizwire.com)
Technology (Follow us @Technews_Korea)