Introduction
In collaboration with a leading pharmaceutical company’s R&D department, we have embarked on an ambitious journey to revolutionize the field of single-cell genomics. This partnership combines our cutting-edge computational expertise with their extensive knowledge in pharmaceutical research, enabling us to push the boundaries of data pipelines.
Advancements and Challenges in Single-Cell Genomics Analysis
Breakthroughs in single-cell genomics have been made possible by the simultaneous advancement of experimental and computational technologies. While experimental techniques standardize quickly, computational analysis pipelines are more challenging to compare and thus vary. Analysis platforms such as Seurat and Scanpy have facilitated pipeline building and introduced basic quality standards. Furthermore, we have made first attempts at standardizing workflows for scRNA-seq to bridge the language-gap between these platforms and their users.
Being able to easily adopt new and updated methods in a systematic and predictable way is what Viash is made for: every computational step is defined as a Viash component that is built into a Nextflow module by Viash. The Nextflow module is generated such that it can easily plugged into an existing pipeline flow.
The Need for New Analysis Standards in Evolving Single-Cell Omics
As new analysis methods are being proposed at an increasing rate and novel multi-omic sequencing technologies are becoming commonplace, there is an urgent need for new analysis standards for single-cell (multi-) omics data.
OpenPipelines is an active project and collaboration aimed precisely at delivering best-practice workflows for single-cell single- and multi-omics data.