Informatics
The final consideration in integrating instrumen- tation effectively with a LIMS is results tracking. Most labs today have accumulated massive direc- tories on their local area network dedicated to stor- ing information associated with sequencing runs. Often this high level information appears in reports and summaries, while the underlying, gran- ular information is stored for future reference. Unfortunately, locating necessary detail can take staff hours or even days, leading some labs to rerun experiments rather than sift through directories for archived files. Multiplexing can also require an additional data management step; in some cases, those pooled samples must be ‘unpooled’ or ‘demultiplexed’ before the results can be analysed and interpreted.
A LIMS can eliminate some of the most tedious aspects of NGS for lab managers and bioinfor- maticians. Intuitive query tools enable labs to quickly collect information on sequencing runs, whether it was obtained last week or last year.
Best-in-class LIMS also provide simple ways to cre- ate automated workflows that can demultiplex reads, create sample sheets for sequencing instru- mentation, or incorporate specific open source and commercial analysis pipelines. Freed from the need to sort through and organise data, lab staff can spend more time on analysing data, making deci- sions, publishing results and envisioning creative research projects.
Selection criterion #2: How easy is the LIMS to configure and customise? Change is the operative word in next-generation genomics labs. Methods used one day are practi- cally obsolete the next. Or they may not exist at all – analytics and methods created specifically to handle unique science are also key outputs of next-generation genomics labs. In this environ- ment, labs succeed by pushing the boundaries of innovation—and they cannot afford to be con- strained in their vision by the software they
Table 1: Overview of information required to track next-generation sequencing research 76 Drug Discovery World Summer 2011
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