The current status and challenges in computational analysis of genomic big data

Abstract

DNA, RNA and protein are three major kinds of biological macromolecules with up to billions of basic elements in such biological organisms as human or mouse. They function at molecular, cellular and organismal levels individually and interactively. Traditional assays on such macromolecules are largely experimentally based, which are usually time consuming and laborious. In the past few years, high-throughput technologies, such as microarray and next-generation sequencing (NGS), were developed. Consequently, large genomic datasets are being generated and computational tools to analyzing these data are in urgent demand. This paper reviews several state-of-the-art high-throughput methodologies, representative projects, available databases and bioinformatics tools at different molecular levels. Finally, challenges and perspectives in processing genomic big data are discussed.