title: Distributed computing and data storage in proteomics: many hands make light work, and a stronger memory.
abstract: Modern day proteomics generates ever more complex data, causing the requirements on the storage and processing of such data to outgrow the capacity of most desktop computers. To cope with the increased computational demands, distributed architectures have gained substantial popularity in the recent years. In this review, we provide an overview of the current techniques for distributed computing, along with examples of how the techniques are currently being employed in the field of proteomics. We thus underline the benefits of distributed computing in proteomics, while also pointing out the potential issues and pitfalls involved.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Protein Research, VIB, Ghent, Belgium; Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Kenneth
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Verheggen
authors.forename: Harald
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Barsnes
authors.forename: Lennart
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Martens
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D003201:Computers; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval; D020407:Internet; D040901:Proteomics / Q000379:methods*; D012984:Software
keywords: Bioinformatics; Cloud computing; Crowdsourcing; Distributed computing; Parallelized computing