How Are Large Data Sets Analyzed in Life Sciences?

By Sarah MooreReviewed by Megan Craig, M.Sc.

Here, AZoLifeSciences reviews some of the most common methods used by the life sciences to analyze large datasets.

Big Data in the Life Sciences

Research in the life sciences often requires handling large datasets. Studies that generate such vast amounts of information require sophisticated computational and statistical methods to distill the wealth of data into meaningful insights. Without such methods, patterns and key takeaways would be lost in the numbers.

As research techniques in the life sciences have become more advanced, the volume of data generated from these studies has continued to grow, which has driven demand for reliable tools to process, analyze, and interpret this information.

Data Pre-Processing

Data pre-processing is vital to the analysis of large datasets because it cleans and prepares the data. Processes used in data pre-processing include normalizing data, removing noise, reducing data dimensionality, handling missing values, and more. By cleaning up the data before it is analyzed, scientists can ensure more accurate and reliable analyses.

Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics uses computer technology to collect, store, and analyze large sets of biological data. The field combines biology, computer science, and statistics to analyze vast amounts of data and pull out key insights. Usually, bioinformatics relies on developing algorithms and databases to analyze data that usually comes in the form of genetic and genomic information, such as DNA sequences and gene expression profiles.

Statistical Analyses

There are a wide number of statistical analyses that can be applied to the analysis of large datasets in life sciences. Many computer programs have been designed to run these analyses on inputted data. The type of statistical analysis used on a given dataset depends on the type of data and the design of the study; it will consider what hypotheses are being explored and what the assumptions are.

Psychological testing often relies on statistical analysis from hypothesis testing, regression analysis, and more. Now, with the integration of machine learning algorithms, statistical analysis is becoming more powerful.

Network Analysis

Complex biological systems, including gene regulatory networks and protein-protein interaction networks, can be analyzed with network analysis. Using graph theory and network algorithms, network analysis can be applied to extract key information about the relationships and interactions between the components studied.

High-Performance Computing

As datasets have become larger, they have demanded increasingly powerful computing frameworks to perform analyses. The high-performance computing (HPC) systems that have been established in recent years are powerful enough to process and analyze data in parallel.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has also stepped in to handle increasingly large data sets. The storage requirements of the vast datasets produced by life sciences are frequently too large to be stored on the computer’s hard drive. A simple solution is to keep this data in the cloud. This also makes information sharing between research institutions easier, although it has significant implications for data security.

Machine Learning

Machine learning has emerged as a powerful tool for data analysis. It is widely used in the life sciences to produce predictive models as well as to identify patterns in datasets. Learning methods can be classed as supervised or unsupervised. Each type is used for different tasks. Supervised learning methods, e.g. support vector machines and random forests, are used for classification tasks. On the other hand, unsupervised learning methods, such as clustering and dimensionality reduction, are used to help identify patterns and groupings in datasets.

Visualization

Data visualization brings large datasets to life. By converting data into visual figures such as scatter plots, Kaplan-Meier curves, heatmaps, bar charts, network graphs, and more, scientists can more easily spot patterns and trends in the data. Data visualization is commonly used within publications to illustrate the findings of a study.

Data Mining and Text Mining

Data mining can be used to spot patterns and relationships in large datasets. Text mining can extract important information from textual data, such as publications or medical records.

Overall, there are many methods currently used in the life sciences to analyze the increasingly large datasets that are being produced. Scientific fields such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and pharmacogenomics are those with perhaps the greatest demand for analytical techniques suitable for large datasets. Other fields, such as medical imaging, structural biology, and psychology, also benefit from advances in analytical techniques.

In the future, it is likely that analytical techniques for large datasets will increasingly integrate artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and cloud computing to enable faster, more reliable, and more intuitive data analysis.

Advances in this area will be important in allowing scientists to gain deeper insights into biological systems, such as the workings of the human body. This will, hopefully, translate to meaningful changes in healthcare that lead to better health outcomes and improved quality of life. In the coming years, data analysis is expected to continue to improve as AI, machine learning, and cloud computing continue to advance.

Further Reading

• All Bioinformatics Content
• Circular RNA profiles could serve as a biomarker of ovarian cancer
• Potential biomarker for lung cancer prognosis revealed
• Study reveals significant neighborhood preferences of tumor cells in Hodgkin lymphoma
• Bioinformatics in Research