6533b873fe1ef96bd12d4c99
RESEARCH PRODUCT
Analyzing big datasets of genomic sequences: fast and scalable collection of k-mer statistics
Raffaele GiancarloSimona E. RomboMara SorellaUmberto Ferraro PetrilloGiuseppe Cattaneosubject
Data AnalysisFOS: Computer and information sciencesTime FactorsTime FactorComputer scienceStatistics as TopicBig dataApache Spark; distributed computing; performance evaluation; k-mer countinglcsh:Computer applications to medicine. Medical informaticsBiochemistryDomain (software engineering)Databases03 medical and health sciences0302 clinical medicineStructural BiologyComputer clusterStatisticsSpark (mathematics)Molecular Biologylcsh:QH301-705.5030304 developmental biology0303 health sciencesGenomeSettore INF/01 - InformaticaBase SequenceNucleic AcidApache Sparkbusiness.industryResearchApache Spark; Distributed computing; k-mer counting; Performance evaluation; Algorithms; Base Sequence; Software; Time Factors; Data Analysis; Databases Nucleic Acid; Genome; Statistics as TopicApplied Mathematicsk-mer countingDistributed computingComputer Science ApplicationsAlgorithmData AnalysiComputer Science - Distributed Parallel and Cluster Computinglcsh:Biology (General)030220 oncology & carcinogenesisScalabilityPerformance evaluationlcsh:R858-859.7Algorithm designDistributed Parallel and Cluster Computing (cs.DC)Databases Nucleic AcidbusinessAlgorithmsSoftwaredescription
Abstract Background Distributed approaches based on the MapReduce programming paradigm have started to be proposed in the Bioinformatics domain, due to the large amount of data produced by the next-generation sequencing techniques. However, the use of MapReduce and related Big Data technologies and frameworks (e.g., Apache Hadoop and Spark) does not necessarily produce satisfactory results, in terms of both efficiency and effectiveness. We discuss how the development of distributed and Big Data management technologies has affected the analysis of large datasets of biological sequences. Moreover, we show how the choice of different parameter configurations and the careful engineering of the software with respect to the specific framework under consideration may be crucial in order to achieve good performance, especially on very large amounts of data. We choose k-mers counting as a case study for our analysis, and Spark as the framework to implement FastKmer, a novel approach for the extraction of k-mer statistics from large collection of biological sequences, with arbitrary values of k. Results One of the most relevant contributions of FastKmer is the introduction of a module for balancing the statistics aggregation workload over the nodes of a computing cluster, in order to overcome data skew while allowing for a full exploitation of the underlying distributed architecture. We also present the results of a comparative experimental analysis showing that our approach is currently the fastest among the ones based on Big Data technologies, while exhibiting a very good scalability. Conclusions We provide evidence that the usage of technologies such as Hadoop or Spark for the analysis of big datasets of biological sequences is productive only if the architectural details and the peculiar aspects of the considered framework are carefully taken into account for the algorithm design and implementation.
| year | journal | country | edition | language |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-04-01 |