The eBioKit is a stand-alone educational platform that hosts numerous tools and databases for bioinformatics research and allows training to take place in a controlled environment. A key advantage of the eBioKit over other existing teaching solutions is that all the required software and databases are locally installed on the system, significantly reducing the dependence on the internet. Furthermore, the architecture of the eBioKit has demonstrated itself to be an excellent balance between portability and performance, not only making the eBioKit an exceptional educational tool but also providing small research groups with a platform to incorporate bioinformatics analysis in their research. As a result, the eBioKit has formed an integral part of training and research performed by a wide variety of universities and organizations such as the Pan African Bioinformatics Network (H3ABioNet) as part of the initiative Human Heredity and Health in Africa (H3Africa), the Southern Africa Network for Biosciences (SAnBio) initiative, the Biosciences eastern and central Africa (BecA) hub, and the International Glossina Genome Initiative.
The eBioKit has been developed by the SLU Global Bioinformatics Centre at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.
The eBioKit was published at PLOS Computational Biology in September 2017, you can find an open-access version for the article here.
- Citation:
Hernández-de-Diego R, de Villiers EP, Klingström T, Gourlé H, Conesa A, et al. (2017) The eBioKit, a stand-alone educational platform for bioinformatics. PLOS Computational Biology 13(9): e1005616. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005616
The eBioKit is distributed at no cost, except those derived from the purchase of the necessary hardware to run the system (i.e. the Mac mini or Mac pro machines) and transportation. All software tools and data included in eBioKit are open source and free to use. In addition, the eBioKit web interface and included tutorials are also open source and under Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.
For more information you can visit our website http://ebiokit.eu/ or contact us at [email protected].
Rafael Hernández de Diego, PhD, Main Developer, [email protected].
Erik Bongcam-Rudloff, PhD., Head of the SLU Global Bioinformatics Centre.