Distributed Data Management for Cell Biology

细胞生物学的研究正在通过向数据驱动计算的范式转变而发生革命性变化。使用最先进的显微镜通过自动测量过程生成大量（TB）数据。不幸的是，社区内研究合作的分布式性质在试图管理此图像数据时引入了重大问题。例如，在一个机构获得显微镜图像，然后在另一个机构进行分析，这种情况并不少见。这就需要在两个有关机构都能获得数据，克服这种地理分隔的一个典型办法是将数据复制到外部磁盘驱动器（或磁带）上，然后运送到分析机构。然而，这种方法既不可靠也不可扩展。利用为计算粒子物理社区开发的专业知识和技术，项目团队将提供一个分布式数据管理系统，使研究人员能够以简单，安全和有效的方式共享生物图像。

Research in Cell Biology is being revolutionised by a paradigm shift towards data-driven computing. Vast quantities (Terabytes) of data are being generated by automated measurement processes using state of the art microscopes. Unfortunately, the distributed nature of research collaborations, within the community, introduces significant problems when attempting to manage this image data. For example, it is not uncommon for microscope images to be acquired at one institution and then analysed at another. This necessitates access to the data at both of the institutions involved, and a typical approach to overcome this geographic separation is to copy the data onto external disk drives (or tapes) and ship it to the analysing institution. However, this approach is neither reliable or scalable. Utilising expertise and technology developed for the Computational Particle Physics community, the project team will deliver a distributed data management system, enabling the sharing of biological images between researchers in a simple, secure, and effective manner.