Bioinformatics and Life Sciences

Bioinformatics tools often require installing different dependencies in a controlled environment. Containers allow you to logically package your application (e.g., a bioinformatics tool) together with libraries and other dependencies, providing isolated environments for running your software services. Containerized applications can be run in an isolated runtime environment independent of the actual environment (e.g., private data center, the public cloud, or even a developer’s personal laptop) in which the applications are running in. These are recently gaining popularity as a standard way to distribute, deploy, and run services by developers and system administrators. This course will introduce the basic concepts of containers and their deployment at CSC.

This is a basic level course on containers which are a modern way of deploying complex applications. In this course, the basics of docker container and its containnerised applications in bioinformatics will be discussed. Emphasis will be given to the deployment of different pre-existing dockerised bio-applications. Selected examples from different omics’ disciplines such as genomics, proteomics and metabolomics will be covered. We will introduce HPC-compliant containers in CSC environment.