Genomics in the AWS Cloud

Introduction

Welcome to Genomics in the AWS Cloud!

From its title, you can conclude that this book is about two things: genomics (the science of sequencing and interpreting genetic data) and Amazon Web Services (one of the three big hosted computing platforms). Genomics in the AWS Cloud, therefore, is meant to appeal either to people from a biology background who want to learn how to do genomics work with AWS or to people with a computer background who want to find out how to apply their skills to genomics.

Both of these areas, genomics and cloud computing, are evolving constantly, and practically no one can claim to be completely au fait with either. This book, therefore, aims at not one but two separate moving targets. Our goal as authors is not to teach you everything there is to know about AWS and genomics—or even about the intersection of the two fields—but rather to show you the following:

• Enough of the general concepts of cloud computing and genomics that you understand the problems to be solved and the technologies available to work on those problems
• Enough specifics to enable you to work through actual genomics tasks and see results

Who Should Read This Book

This book is intended for people who aren't content to use commercial genome sequencing services and want to do their own analysis. We walk you through the process of getting raw data from a blood sample via a lab and then using the AWS services to analyze it—learning which genes are present in the sample and ...