Abstract
As the scale of biological data generation has increased, the bottleneck of research has shifted from data generation to analysis. Researchers commonly need to build computational workflows that include multiple analytic tools and require incremental development as experimental insights demand tool and parameter modifications. These workflows can produce hundreds to thousands of intermediate files and results that must be integrated for biological insight. Data-centric workflow systems that internally manage computational resources, software, and conditional execution of analysis steps are reshaping the landscape of biological data analysis and empowering researchers to conduct reproducible analyses at scale. Adoption of these tools can facilitate and expedite robust data analysis, but knowledge of these techniques is still lacking. Here, we provide a series of strategies for leveraging workflow systems with structured project, data, and resource management to streamline large-scale biological analysis. We present these practices in the context of high-throughput sequencing data analysis, but the principles are broadly applicable to biologists working beyond this field.
Highlights
We present a guide for work ow-enabled biological sequence data analysis, developed through our own teaching, training and analysis projects
Building upon the rich literature of “best” and “good enough” practices for computational biology [8,9,10], we present a series of strategies and practices for adopting work ow systems to streamline data-intensive biology research
This manuscript is designed to help guide biologists towards project, data, and resource management strategies that facilitate and expedite reproducible data analysis in their research. We present these strategies in the context of our own experiences working with highthroughput sequencing data, but many are broadly applicable to biologists working beyond this eld
Summary
We present a guide for work ow-enabled biological sequence data analysis, developed through our own teaching, training and analysis projects. We recognize that this is based on our own use cases and experiences, but we hope that our guide will contribute to a larger discussion within the open source and open science communities and lead to more comprehensive resources. Our main goal is to accelerate the research of scientists conducting sequence analyses by introducing them to organized work ow practices that bene t their own research and facilitate open and reproducible science
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