Fog Computing

21Fog Computing for Bioinformatics Applications

Hafeez Ur Rehman, Asad Khan, and Usman Habib

Department of Computer Science, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Peshawar, Pakistan

21.1 Introduction

Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary field having a myriad of applications in the area of health and life sciences. Bioinformatics algorithms generally have high computational and storage requirements [1, 2]. Currently, the most apt preference for bioinformatics researchers is to use cloud computing–based services to meet their high computational requirements within a limited budget. However, the scientists need to port their data and algorithms to the cloud environment in order to perform analysis. In recent days, due to the emerging trend of “on-the-fly solutions” for bioinformatics problems, the computational resources need to be brought closer to the users [3–6]. Fog computing, as an extension of cloud computing, brings the services to the edge of the network. This essentially brings the advantages and power of the cloud closer to the place where the data is actually generated, benefiting the resource demanding bioinformatics algorithms.

In the field of bioinformatics, the high-throughput technologies such as next-generation sequencing result into a diverse deluge of sequencing data [7, 8]. These raw sequences are called omics sequences, which include DNA sequences, RNA sequences, and protein sequences, among others. The study of different types of omics ...