An ASU supercomputer being used by a local nonprofit group to analyze biomedical data can treat and potentially cure life-threatening diseases.
The Translational Genomics Research Institute or “T-Gen,” a Phoenix based nonprofit organization dedicated to understanding the genetic components of diseases, extended its longtime partnership with ASU this week as it began using an ASU supercomputer to analyze genetic data.
Steve Yozwiak, T-Gen’s senior science writer, said T-Gen is in the process of analyzing the similarities and differences that form in both healthy and diseased genomes.
“We hope to be able to translate our research into clinical drug trials that will hopefully be able to treat or someday cure diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease,” Yozwiak said.
Yozwiak said because of the nature of the research, T-Gen needs a computer with a large amount of computational power and that computer is at ASU.
“Everyone’s genome is different, there are millions of possibilities,” he said. “We need a computer capable of analyzing that amount of information.”
Dan Stanzione, affiliate professor at the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering and director of the high performance computing initiative, said that ASU’s supercomputer, the Saguaro 2, is one of the largest computers in the world and is being used by T-Gen to analyze gene sequences.
Stanzione said Saguaro 2 is capable of performing nearly 50 trillion operations per second because of its large number of processors.
“The Saguaro 2 runs on 5,000 processors,” Stanzione said. “To put that into perspective, your laptop probably uses two.”
The computer went into production last August and was first put into use on Oct. 1, Stanzione said.
“The Saguaro 2 is currently the 64th largest computer in the world and in the top ten of academic computers,” he said. “Technology is changing, but Saguaro 2 will probably stay in use for about four years.”
Stanzione said Saguaro 2 is used by nearly 100 different faculty groups at ASU analyzing everything from proteins for bio-design to aircraft technology to golf ball simulation.
According to the T-Gen Web site, the new system doubles the capabilities of ASU's High Performance Computing Initiative. The system consists of Intel microprocessors, servers from Dell, storage from Data Direct Networks and components from a number of other partners, including fiber optic cables from Phoenix-based Zarlink.
The Saguaro 2 came to ASU as the product of a $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health last July that was a result of scientific activities proposed by T-Gen, the Ira Fulton School of Engineering and ASU’s Bio-design Institute.
“We are very glad to be partnered with ASU on this project,” Yozwiak said.
Reach the reporter at jaking5@asu.edu
