TTRSIS: A Cloud Computing Platform for Rice Functional Genomics Research through a Reverse Genetics Approach

For the purpose of promoting the utilization of T-DNA mutant seeds generated by the Taiwan Rice Insertional Mutagenesis (TRIM) program for academic research, Academia Sinica contracted Asia University to establish a T-DNA Tagged Rice Service Center (TTRSC) to handle the management, conservation and distribution of mutant rice seeds inventory. To also efficiently handle the huge amount of genomic data generated from TRIM project for those mutant seeds, a cloud computing based platform named T-DNA Tagged Rice Service Information System (TTRSIS, http:t_dna@asia.edu.tw), was built within the Asia Academic Cloud to accomplish this task. Currently, four functional modules had been established in TTRSIS: Align module took in PCR sequence, used BLASTN to search and align with Rice coding sequence (CDS) database to find the insertion point in the Rice genome. Rice gene functional characterization module kept functional characterizations of Rice genome as currently available in academic publications. Then Search module provided TTRSIS users with search options of gene names, gene id, or mutant line numbers, while Physical distribution module provided mutant line rice seed inventory and distribution for academic research. An example of using OsGA20ox1 as gene name to identify is demonstrated. TTRSIS supports researcher to query interested genes located 21 kb upstream or downstream of T-DNA insertion sites, and to rapidly search candidate mutant lines in the inventory of TTRSC. With this platform, TTRSIS offers a convenient approach for researches to use the resources in TTRSC.