DNAnexus

Last updated
DNAnexus
Founded2009
Productscloud-based data analysis
Website www.dnanexus.com

DNAnexus is an American company that provides a cloud-based data analysis and management platform for DNA sequence data. It is based in Mountain View, California, and was founded in 2009 by Stanford University professors Serafim Batzoglou and Arend Sidow and Stanford computer scientist Andreas Sundquist. [1]

Contents

History

DNAnexus was founded in early 2009 as a spin-off from Stanford University to address the need for computing infrastructure in DNA sequence analysis. [1] The company raised $1.55 million in venture capital funding from First Round Capital, K9 Ventures, and SoftTech VC. [2]

In April 2010, DNAnexus launched its cloud-based sequence data service. [1]

In August 2011, the company expanded its recruiting process by offering an incentive of $20,000 plus a full genome sequence to employees who referred a software engineer. [3] [4] [5]

In October 2011, DNAnexus announced that it had raised $15 million from Google Ventures, TPG Biotech, First Round Capital, SoftTech VC, K9 Ventures, and Felicis Ventures. [6] [7]

In 2012, DNAnexus CEO and co-founder Andreas Sundquist was named one of FierceBiotech’s Top 10 Biotech Techies. [8]

In October 2013, the company announced a collaboration with the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine. [9] Through the partnership, DNAnexus and scientists at Baylor performed the largest cloud-based genomics analysis to date, processing 3,751 whole human genomes and 10,771 exomes. [10] Analysis was run using Amazon Web Services infrastructure and conducted for the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium. The effort used 2.4 million core-hours of computational time [11] and generated 430 terabytes of data. [12]

The company announced a series C venture funding round of $15 million in January 2014. [13] [14] Investors included Claremont Creek Ventures, First Round Capital, Google Ventures, and TPG Biotech.

Technology

DNAnexus uses cloud computing from Amazon Web Services. Customers of DNAnexus use those computational resources to run analysis programs on DNA sequence data and to store that data. [15] The product includes applications for read mapping, RNA-seq, ChIP-seq, and genomic variant analysis. [16]

In October 2011, following news that the National Center for Biotechnology Information would phase out funding for its Sequence Read Archive (SRA), DNAnexus said it was working with Google Cloud Storage to host a mirror of the SRA database. The SRA was started by NCBI in 2007 to collect sequence data produced by next-generation sequencing instruments. [17] DNAnexus developed a new web interface for the SRA and worked with Google to host more than 350 terabytes of DNA sequence data. [18] In June 2012, DNAnexus ceased hosting the SRA data after NCBI announced that it would continue funding for the database. [17] The company continues to provide a search and browsing interface for the NCBI-hosted SRA database.

In February 2012, the company announced a partnership with Geisinger Health System and the University of California, San Francisco, to develop the DNAnexus technology for application in clinical medicine. [19] In September 2013, the company began offering its cloud-based platform-as-a-service to clinical testing laboratories for DNA sequence data analysis. [20]

In June 2013, DNAnexus started a program to help software developers build applications that can be used on its platform. [21]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genomics</span> Discipline in genetics

Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dimensional structural configuration. In contrast to genetics, which refers to the study of individual genes and their roles in inheritance, genomics aims at the collective characterization and quantification of all of an organism's genes, their interrelations and influence on the organism. Genes may direct the production of proteins with the assistance of enzymes and messenger molecules. In turn, proteins make up body structures such as organs and tissues as well as control chemical reactions and carry signals between cells. Genomics also involves the sequencing and analysis of genomes through uses of high throughput DNA sequencing and bioinformatics to assemble and analyze the function and structure of entire genomes. Advances in genomics have triggered a revolution in discovery-based research and systems biology to facilitate understanding of even the most complex biological systems such as the brain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DNA sequencer</span> A scientific instrument used to automate the DNA sequencing process

A DNA sequencer is a scientific instrument used to automate the DNA sequencing process. Given a sample of DNA, a DNA sequencer is used to determine the order of the four bases: G (guanine), C (cytosine), A (adenine) and T (thymine). This is then reported as a text string, called a read. Some DNA sequencers can be also considered optical instruments as they analyze light signals originating from fluorochromes attached to nucleotides.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BGI Group</span> Chinese genome sequencing company

BGI Group, formerly Beijing Genomics Institute, is a Chinese genomics company with headquarters in Yantian District, Shenzhen. The company was originally formed in 1999 as a genetics research center to participate in the Human Genome Project. It also sequences the genomes of other animals, plants and microorganisms.

Pyrosequencing is a method of DNA sequencing based on the "sequencing by synthesis" principle, in which the sequencing is performed by detecting the nucleotide incorporated by a DNA polymerase. Pyrosequencing relies on light detection based on a chain reaction when pyrophosphate is released. Hence, the name pyrosequencing.

454 Life Sciences was a biotechnology company based in Branford, Connecticut that specialized in high-throughput DNA sequencing. It was acquired by Roche in 2007 and shut down by Roche in 2013 when its technology became noncompetitive, although production continued until mid-2016.

Illumina, Inc. is an American biotechnology company, headquartered in San Diego, California. Incorporated on April 1, 1998, Illumina develops, manufactures, and markets integrated systems for the analysis of genetic variation and biological function. The company provides a line of products and services that serves the sequencing, genotyping and gene expression, and proteomics markets.

Personal genomics or consumer genetics is the branch of genomics concerned with the sequencing, analysis and interpretation of the genome of an individual. The genotyping stage employs different techniques, including single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) analysis chips, or partial or full genome sequencing. Once the genotypes are known, the individual's variations can be compared with the published literature to determine likelihood of trait expression, ancestry inference and disease risk.

GeneDx is genetic testing company that was founded in 2000 by two scientists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Sherri Bale and John Compton. They started the company to provide clinical diagnostic services for patients and families with rare and ultra-rare disorders, for which no such commercial testing was available at the time. The company started in the Technology Development Center, a biotech incubator supported by the State of Maryland and Montgomery County, MD. In 2006, BioReference Laboratories acquired GeneDx. Since then, GeneDx has operated as a subsidiary of this parent company under the leadership of Bale and Compton. In October 2016, Benjamin D. Solomon was appointed as managing director.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Whole genome sequencing</span> Determining nearly the entirety of the DNA sequence of an organisms genome at a single time.

Whole genome sequencing (WGS), also known as full genome sequencing, complete genome sequencing, or entire genome sequencing, is the process of determining the entirety, or nearly the entirety, of the DNA sequence of an organism's genome at a single time. This entails sequencing all of an organism's chromosomal DNA as well as DNA contained in the mitochondria and, for plants, in the chloroplast.

Cancer genome sequencing is the whole genome sequencing of a single, homogeneous or heterogeneous group of cancer cells. It is a biochemical laboratory method for the characterization and identification of the DNA or RNA sequences of cancer cell(s).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hybrid genome assembly</span>

In bioinformatics, hybrid genome assembly refers to utilizing various sequencing technologies to achieve the task of assembling a genome from fragmented, sequenced DNA resulting from shotgun sequencing. Genome assembly presents one of the most challenging tasks in genome sequencing as most modern DNA sequencing technologies can only produce reads that are, on average, 25-300 base pairs in length. This is orders of magnitude smaller than the average size of a genome. This assembly is computationally difficult and has some inherent challenges, one of these challenges being that genomes often contain complex tandem repeats of sequences that can be thousands of base pairs in length. These repeats can be long enough that second generation sequencing reads are not long enough to bridge the repeat, and, as such, determining the location of each repeat in the genome can be difficult. Resolving these tandem repeats can be accomplished by utilizing long third generation sequencing reads, such as those obtained using the PacBio RS DNA sequencer. These sequences are, on average, 10,000-15,000 base pairs in length and are long enough to span most repeated regions. Using a hybrid approach to this process can increase the fidelity of assembling tandem repeats by being able to accurately place them along a linear scaffold and make the process more computationally efficient.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pacific Biosciences</span> American biotechnology company

Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc. is an American biotechnology company founded in 2004 that develops and manufactures systems for gene sequencing and some novel real time biological observation. PacBio describes its platform as single-molecule real-time sequencing (SMRT), based on the properties of zero-mode waveguides.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sequence Read Archive</span>

The Sequence Read Archive is a bioinformatics database that provides a public repository for DNA sequencing data, especially the "short reads" generated by high-throughput sequencing, which are typically less than 1,000 base pairs in length. The archive is part of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC), and run as a collaboration between the NCBI, the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), and the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ).

uBiome Biotechnology company

uBiome, Inc. was a biotechnology company based in San Francisco that developed technology to sequence the human microbiome. Its main product analyzed gut microbes in patients with long-term intestinal disorders. Founded in 2012, the company shut down in 2019 following an investigation into possible insurance fraud.

Tute Genomics is a genomics startup that provides a cloud-based web application for rapid and accurate annotation of human genomic data. Built on the expertise of ANNOVAR, Tute assists researchers in identifying disease genes and biomarkers, and assists clinicians/labs in performing genetic diagnosis. Based in Provo, Utah, Tute was co-founded by Dr. Kai Wang, an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California (USC); and Dr. Reid J. Robison, a board-certified psychiatrist with fellowship training in both neurodevelopmental genetics and bioinformatics.

PrecisionFDA is a secure, collaborative, high-performance computing platform that has established a growing community of experts around the analysis of biological datasets in order to advance precision medicine, inform regulatory science, and enable improvements in health outcomes. This cloud-based platform is developed and served by the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA). PrecisionFDA connects experts, citizen scientists, and scholars from around the world and provides them with a library of computational tools, workflow features, and reference data. The platform allows researchers to upload and compare data against reference genomes, and execute bioinformatic pipelines. The variant call file (VCF) comparator tool also enables users to compare their genetic test results to reference genomes. The platform's code is open source and available on GitHub. The platform also features a crowdsourcing model to sponsor community challenges in order to stimulate the development of innovative analytics that inform precision medicine and regulatory science. Community members from around the world come together to participate in scientific challenges, solving problems that demonstrate the effectiveness of their tools, testing the capabilities of the platform, sharing their results, and engaging the community in discussions. Globally, precisionFDA has more than 5,000 users.

Foresite Capital is an American venture capital and growth equity firm headquartered in San Francisco. As of March 2021, the company had raised four funds: Foresite Capital Fund I, II, III, IV and V.

DNA encryption is the process of hiding or perplexing genetic information by a computational method in order to improve genetic privacy in DNA sequencing processes. The human genome is complex and long, but it is very possible to interpret important, and identifying, information from smaller variabilities, rather than reading the entire genome. A whole human genome is a string of 3.2 billion base paired nucleotides, the building blocks of life, but between individuals the genetic variation differs only by 0.5%, an important 0.5% that accounts for all of human diversity, the pathology of different diseases, and ancestral story. Emerging strategies incorporate different methods, such as randomization algorithms and cryptographic approaches, to de-identify the genetic sequence from the individual, and fundamentally, isolate only the necessary information while protecting the rest of the genome from unnecessary inquiry. The priority now is to ascertain which methods are robust, and how policy should ensure the ongoing protection of genetic privacy.

SOPHiA GENETICS is a data-driven medicine software company with headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland and Boston, Massachusetts. It provides genomic and radiomic analysis for hospitals, laboratories, and biopharma institutions. The company was ranked among the 50 smartest companies by the MIT Technology Review in 2017. The company went public on the Nasdaq in 2021, floating at $1.1B.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helmy Eltoukhy</span> American scientist and entrepreneur

Helmy Eltoukhy is an American scientist, entrepreneur, and investor best known for his contributions to genomics, semiconductor DNA sequencing, and personalized medicine. The co-founder of startups Avantome and Guardant Health, Eltoukhy was named to Time Magazine’s inaugural 50 Most Influential People in Healthcare (2018) and Fortune’s 40 under 40 (2017). Acquired by Illumina in 2008, Avantome was founded to develop and commercialize semiconductor-based DNA sequencing, during the race for the $1,000 genome. Guardant Health was founded to pioneer non-invasive liquid biopsy approaches for cancer diagnosis, monitoring, personalized medicine treatment, and research.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Karow, Julia. "DNAnexus Aims to Alleviate Next-Gen Sequence Analysis Headache with Cloud-based Service." In Sequence, April 20, 2010. http://www.genomeweb.com/sequencing/dnanexus-aims-alleviate-next-gen-sequence-analysis-headache-cloud-based-service
  2. Ricketts, Camille. "DNAnexus raises $1.55M for DNA sequencing." VentureBeat, August 3, 2009. https://venturebeat.com/2009/08/03/dnanexus-raises-155m-for-dna-sequencing/
  3. In Silicon Valley, it's boom time again - Page 2 - Los Angeles Times
  4. The Complete List of Employee Referral Program Best Practices (Part 1 of 2) - ERE.net
  5. An Interesting Referral Incentive | Careers | GenomeWeb
  6. Kincaid, Jason. "DNAnexus Raises $15 Million, Teams With Google To Host Massive DNA Database." TechCrunch, October 12, 2011. https://techcrunch.com/2011/10/12/dnanexus-raises-15-million-teams-with-google-to-host-massive-dna-database/
  7. Carroll, John. "Google steps in to back a flag bearer in the genomics revolution." FierceBiotech, October 12, 2011. http://www.fiercebiotech.com/story/google-steps-back-flag-bearer-genomics-revolution/2011-10-12
  8. "Andreas Sundquist - Fierce's Top 10 Biotech Techies." FierceBiotech, March 2012. http://www.fiercebiotechit.com/special-reports/fierce-s-top-10-biotech-techies/andreas-sundquist-fierces-top-10-biotech-techies
  9. "GEN | News Highlights:Baylor's HGSC, DNAnexus, Amazon Team Up in Cloud-Based Analysis of DNA Data". genengnews.com. Archived from the original on 2013-12-16.
  10. Grens, Kerry. "Cloud-Based Genomics." The Scientist, October 28, 2013. http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/38044/title/Cloud-Based-Genomics/
  11. Thomas, Uduak Grace. "DNANexus, Baylor Project Shows Cloud's Efficacy for Large-Scale Clinical, Research Analysis Studies." BioInform, October 25, 2013. http://www.genomeweb.com/informatics/dnanexus-baylor-project-shows-clouds-efficacy-large-scale-clinical-research-anal
  12. Wheatley, Mike. "Inside the DNA of Big Data: The future of medicine & storage." Silicon Angle, November 25, 2013. http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/11/25/inside-the-dna-of-big-data-the-future-of-medicine-storage/
  13. "Google Ventures backs DNAnexus' $15M round for R&D cloud platform".
  14. "DNAnexus builds online hub for scientists to store and share genetic data". 3 January 2014.
  15. Harris, Derrick. "Major investments show promise of big data in biotech." GigaOm, Oct. 12, 2011. http://gigaom.com/cloud/dnanexus-cloudant-biotech-deals/
  16. Thomas, Uduak. "DNAnexus Adds Variant Analysis Tool, Joins PacBio Partner Program amid Mounting Interest in Cloud." BioInform, February 04, 2011. http://www.genomeweb.com/informatics/dnanexus-adds-variant-analysis-tool-joins-pacbio-partner-program-amid-mounting-i
  17. 1 2 Announcements : Main : Sequence Read Archive : NCBI/NLM/NIH Archived February 8, 2013, at the Wayback Machine
  18. "Company Helps Researchers Unravel DNA Mysteries Faster with Google Cloud Storage." http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/www.google.com/en/us/enterprise/cloud/cases/pdf/dnanexus.pdf Archived 2012-05-25 at the Wayback Machine
  19. McBride, Ryan. "Google Ventures-backed DNAnexus forms alliance to provide genomics software to docs." FierceBiotechIT, February 14, 2012. http://www.fiercebiotechit.com/story/google-ventures-backed-dnanexus-forms-alliance-provide-genomics-software-do/2012-02-14
  20. Thomas, Uduak Grace. "Sensing New Market Opportunities, DNANexus Launches PaaS for Clinical Testing Market." BioInform, September 27, 2013. http://www.genomeweb.com/informatics/sensing-new-market-opportunities-dnanexus-launches-paas-clinical-testing-market
  21. "Downloads and Upgrades: DNANexus' Developer Program, Active Infrastructure for HPC Life Sciences, and more". 7 June 2013.