Affordable biocomputing for everyone

[编者的话]

本文介绍了生物研究相关的一些自由软件的情况。

Public institutions such as hospitals and universities often have limited resources and until recently they have been unable to use the full power of computers as an integral part of the design and analysis of experiments. The high cost of bioanalytical software and the hardware necessary to run it, meant that only private companies or well-funded organizations could afford professional biocomputing systems. Even standard office and reference management software is very costly; reference management software is priced at around $300, and the typical office package starts at $400 per license. However, the global adoption of the Internet, particularly within the biological and medical research community, has made a large number of professional tools freely available. Furthermore, with the availability of inexpensive, high-powered desktop computers and several advances both in accessibility and maturation of  freeware and open-source software (see Glossary), there is little need for customized computing platforms running proprietary and expensive office and bioinformatics software. It is now possible to create highly capable computer systems that enable the user to set up a complete working biocomputing platform with nothing more than a desk-top computer and an Internet connection.

Here I describe how such a computer system could be created using Microsoft Windows or Macintosh OS, given that many computers come pre-configured with these operating systems. All of the software mentioned here is free, except for Microsoft Windows, and almost all of the software has reached a mature and stable development status (i.e. at least version 1.0). Links and details on the software presented can be found at http://www.madswichmann.dk/biocomputing.html.

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