Bioinformatics Application on Android
Cloud computing system has made processing biological data easier to do. Applications such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and Skydrive can be used to save those data, so it can be analyzed anywhere. Meanwhile, bioinformatics tools can be accessed on Android-based gadgets, so that the computing process is easier to do anywhere, as long as there is access to cloud computing.
To this date, bioinformatics analysis can only be done on a PC or big computer. But, as gadget technology is developing, simpler analysis can be done on the gadget (smartphones and tablets), especially the ones with an Android base. Why Android? Because it’s an open-source base so that it doesn’t need much cost to develop scientific applications. However, the user has to be patient in using bioinformatics applications on a gadget, as big data, or very complicated computing, can’t be analyzed on this mini platform. It’s better if these mini-applications can be run on a tablet because it needs a bigger screen display. In the long run, ‘on the go’ applications can be the front end to submit data on a bioinformatics cloud system. Now, Amazon has installed Genome Browser engine on their cloud, so it made the possibility for gadget application as the front end bigger.
A few examples of bioinformatics applications on Android, if we open Google Play, we will find quite a lot of bioinformatics applications. But, if we examine more deeply, there are only some apps that can be used easily and have the ability closer to its desktop version, as long as the computed data is limited. BAK4BIO (Brazilian Army Knife for Bioinformatics) App, is a front end that is designed to access bioinformatics database. What can be accessed? For example, NCBI, DDBK, KEGG, EBI, and PDBJ. BAK4BIO can be used to integrate data management into genomic, proteomic, and metabolomics data.
And then, DNA Alignment app, which is very useful to do pairwise sequence alignment. However, with its limited features on the gadget, the alignment can only be done on two sequences, and not more.
Another interesting application is MENTHA, which can be used to examine interactions between proteins on some organisms. Then, SimAlign and SimGene apps can also be used to do pairwise sequence alignment and browsing gen.
