Dividing biological data into manageable fragments

Using ScalaBLAST, a highly sophisticated sequence alignment tool, data cam be run on many processors at one time, meaning that problems like the analysis of an organism may be solved in minutes rather than weeks.

Developed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), ScalaBLAST can enable researchers to analyze 13 organisms in nine hours rather than the 10 days it previously took to analyze one organism.

While PNNL's supercomputer has 1,960 processors, without any special modifications, software won't run on it any faster than it does on a personal computer. Lab researchers "parallelized" software through the use of a powerful programming toolkit, Global Arrays, in order to create algorithms that allow work to be divided and run simultaneously. The potential for results from the development of ScalaBLAST is great. T.P. Straatsma, a PNNL senior research scientist notes, "Access to and understanding the pieces of genome sequences will allow researchers to understand the body's cellular machinery and discover clues to some types of cancer and will help in developing drugs or detection methods to be used for particular diseases."