title: Bioinformatics clouds for big data manipulation.
abstract: As advances in life sciences and information technology bring profound influences on bioinformatics due to its interdisciplinary nature, bioinformatics is experiencing a new leap-forward from in-house computing infrastructure into utility-supplied cloud computing delivered over the Internet, in order to handle the vast quantities of biological data generated by high-throughput experimental technologies. Albeit relatively new, cloud computing promises to address big data storage and analysis issues in the bioinformatics field. Here we review extant cloud-based services in bioinformatics, classify them into Data as a Service (DaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and present our perspectives on the adoption of cloud computing in bioinformatics.
  
  
  METHODS
  This article was reviewed by Frank Eisenhaber, Igor Zhulin, and Sandor Pongor.
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No.7 Beitucheng West Road, Building G, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100029, China.
authors.forename: Lin
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Dai
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.forename: Yan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: Jingfa
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.forename: Zhang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D022126:Access to Information; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D003625:Data Collection; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000145:classification / Q000379:methods*; D020407:Internet; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface