At Zetta Genomics, we recognise the significant impact of today’s data in terms of its scale, complexity, and sheer volume, while users must still be able to handle, manipulate and investigate with maximum efficiency. This is why we created XetaBase, a universal operating system for analysing genomic data. A complete and secure environment for clinicians and researchers, creating wider access to analysis and data management for an ever-increasing usership.
Integrating a new system presents many challenges, including processes that you know work for you may be changed, you may feel that there would be downtime with set up and retraining, or work lost in using a new system.
“I love the flexibility of XetaBase. Not only does it massively simplify and expedite variant prioritisation for disease analysis, even in massive datasets (which is something I personally would have very much appreciated 12 years ago when I was trying to identify causal variants in patients with Severe Insulin Resistance), it can be adapted to easily integrate with both new and existing custom data processing and analysis pipelines, so that everything can happen in the same, secure environment.” Felicity Payne, Zetta Bioinformatician.
In understanding these circumstances, we put users first: making sure to add features that help to streamline and interlink work processes as efficiently as possible. To achieve this, have made our system user-friendly, and employ industry-standard tools to support smooth user adoption.
3 Features about XetaBase that will make your Genomic analysis easier:
- Workflow Management:Supporting the rapid growth in genomics usership demands adherence to gold-standard practices that are both accessible and user-centric. Prioritising user experience, the industry-standard Nextflow framework has been incorporated within XetaBase, providing a familiar and powerful workflow management tool that meets users’ needs for reliability and scalability.
In XetaBase, users can now import, build and run complex Nextflow workflows in the cloud for seamless secondary, tertiary and multi-omic analysis. Effortlessly manage diverse data formats and dependencies, all in a single, unified environment—built for users of all levels.
Takeaway highlights:- Comprehensive end-to-end solution
- Reproducible and scalable
- Customisable pipelines
- Integrated Notebooks:
Workflows offer excellent standardisation and reproducibility in pipelines, but there are times when data investigation requires a more ad-hoc approach. Jupyter Notebooks provide users with the utility to create custom scripts on-the-fly in Python, enabling deeper dives into their data, and the creation of bespoke visualisations. Running these locally often necessitates exporting data from the cloud, which can be time-consuming, and may potentially jeopardise data security.
We circumvent this from the outset by hosting Jupyter Notebooks within our system. Ensuring instant access to secure, hosted Jupyter Notebooks within XetaBase – no setup required! Effortlessly connect to your data and computing resources to generate, execute, and share scripts for fast, seamless analysis and visualisation. Work smarter, and keep your data safe without importing or exporting data. It’s faster, safer, and designed for ultimate productivity.
Takeaway highlights:
- No data export required
- Import existing scripts
- Secure, within platform access
- Multi-Omics Data Management:Historically, our data management has focussed on storing DNA sequence data (VCF, BAM etc), normalising and extracting the aggregated information within our highly efficient and advanced variant database. Having mastered this, we recognised that the potential for the inclusion of other omics data was unlimited.
With a completely flexible and cloud-based data management system (DMS), our users are free to store any type of omics data. With the support of integrated Nextflow workflows and Jupyter notebooks, we have created a truly universal space for genomic analysis. Users can now go far beyond working with BAM and VCF files alone, effortlessly storing and processing a wide range of data types, empowering their research like never before.
Takeaway highlights:
- Multi-omic data support
- Flexible DMS
- Workflow integration
By centralising secondary, tertiary, and multi-omic analyses in a single solution supported by integrated workflows and notebooks, our users gain a highly efficient pathway to expand their research scope and bypass the need to invest in additional tools or platforms to achieve their goals. This approach offers a substantial cost-saving advantage, and serves as a key driver for productivity in your organisation.
Bryony Burrows, Zetta CFO notes the financial impact, “Centralising workflows and analyses in a single hub offers significant cost savings—not just through streamlined platforms, but also by simplifying user experiences. This approach allows bioinformaticians to focus on high-value analytical work instead of manual data management and organisation. Additionally, customers benefit from substantial reductions in compute costs. By running analyses on aggregated data, we can decrease the required compute power by up to 300 times, resulting in tangible savings on cloud computing expenses.”
