The system needs to be changed!
Biologists Need a New Global Information System
A huge number of studies fail because they "do not keep up" with the constantly incoming and changing scientific data. New research conducted around the world provides such a huge amount of information that modern databases cannot process. Therefore, researchers need to think about creating a fundamentally new global information system. John Boyle, Director of the Bioinformatics department at the biopharmaceutical company Kymab, UK, is convinced of this.
Most academic organizations have developed their own internal databases through trial and error, to which, however, a researcher from another institute or another country does not have access. At the same time, the number and complexity of research conducted around the world is constantly increasing, providing a lot of extremely important data. If we combine these data into one global information system, it will save many scientists from repeating other people's mistakes and help speed up many developments. Currently, several scientific databases have been created, but there is no ideal global data storage system.
The most acute problem of the lack of such a global database is in genomics, the author of the article Biology must develop its own big-data systems (Nature, 03 July 2013) is convinced. The research carried out in this area provides a huge amount of information – for example, on the expression of genes and the profile of proteins synthesized by them. And only a complex multi-level system can process this entire array of information. Previous attempts to create a global database have failed – but Boyle is ready to explain why this happened. In particular, such systems assumed data storage in one specific format, as a result of which researchers were forced to redo a large amount of information so that it corresponded to the database format.
The author is sure that the new system should accept and store data in any format – be it all kinds of files, blogs, or even scanned entries from a researcher's notebook. It should also provide easy round-the-clock access to them for researchers anywhere in the world. But at the same time, such a database should provide the highest level of secrecy and data protection from prying eyes. It is especially important that the model of such a system is developed not by employees of IT corporations, but by researchers themselves - they know better than others what kind of database such a database should be.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru10.07.2013