Although disease and health ailments can be the sum of many contributing causes, family history is often considered one of the most significant risk factors. The genes of a parent, or even a more distant relative, can provide an outline of what a person should look out for in terms of their own health down the line. Currently, gathering that genetic data is the easy part, but understanding what it means gets a little hazy. Google and the Cambridge, Mass.-based Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have a plan to change that.
Google Genomics was formed with the purpose of helping the life science community organize the world's genomic information and make it accessible and useful, Jonathan Bingham, product manager of Google Genomics, wrote in a post on Google's Cloud Platform Blog. The technological infrastructures that act as a backbone for Google services such as Search and Maps, along with the immense amount of genetic data the Broad Institute has collected in the past decade, and the advanced processing methods it has developed, make the collaboration a promising fit, he wrote.
"In order to scale up by the next order of magnitude, Broad and Google will work together to explore how to build new tools and find new insights to propel biomedical research, using deep bioinformatics expertise, powerful analytics and massive computing infrastructure," Mr. Bingham wrote. "Collaboration between the world's premier genomics and biomedical research center and the most advanced computing infrastructure can help develop a new generation of tools and services that will enable scientists — from large academic institutions, commercial organizations, or small research labs in remote corners of the world — to uncover a wealth of biological insight."
The collaboration's first joint product is Broad Institute GATK on Google Cloud Platform, a Genome Analysis Kit that converts raw genomic data into reliable information about genetic variants.
"We believe we can make a difference in improving human health," Mr. Bingham wrote. "By making it easier for researchers to ask big questions and find answers amid complexity, we hope to unleash scientific creativity that could significantly improve our understanding of health and disease."