UBC postdoc identifies over 100,000 new RNA viruses using the power of cloud computing

January 26, 2022

An international team led by a former UBC postdoctoral fellow in medical genetics has uncovered almost ten times more RNA viruses than were previously known—including several new species of coronaviruses.

The team made the discovery by re-analyzing all publicly available RNA sequencing data. The planetary-scale database of RNA viruses they developed could help rapidly identify virus spillover into humans, as well as those viruses that affect livestock, crops, and endangered species.

Dr. Artem Babaian is behind the Serratus Project collaboration, which published stunning results in the prestigious scientific journal Nature this week.

Working with the Cloud Innovation Centre (CIC), a public/private collaboration between UBC and Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Serratus Project was able to build a “ridiculously powerful” supercomputer equivalent in power to 22,500 CPUs, said Dr. Babaian.

The supercomputer analyzed 20 million gigabytes of publicly available gene sequence data from 5.7 million biological samples around the world, searching for a specific gene that indicated the presence of an RNA virus. The samples have been collected and freely shared within the world research community over 13 years and include everything from ice-core samples to animal dung.

https://www.med.ubc.ca/news/ubc-postdoc-identifies-over-100000-new-...