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Microbes & Immunity

PERSPECTIVE ARTICLE
Mx. BIOME: A bioinformatics and big data

analysis platform in a data explosion era

Patrick C. Y. Woo * , Yu-Hsi Lin 3 , Shao-Yu Huang 3 , Mei-Hui Chen 1 ,
1,2
Ming-Hon Hou 4,5,6 , and Chieh-Chen Huang 3,7,8 *
1 Doctoral Program in Translational Medicine and Department of Life Sciences, National Chung
Hsing University, Taichung 402, Taiwan
2 The iEGG and Animal Biotechnology Research Center, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung
402, Taiwan
3 Department of Life Sciences, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 402, Taiwan
4 Institute of Genomics and Bioinformatics and Department of Life Sciences, National Chung Hsing
University, Taichung 402, Taiwan
5 Doctoral Program in Medical Biotechnology, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 402, Taiwan
6 Biotechnology Center, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung 402, Taiwan
7 Innovation and Development Center of Sustainable Agriculture, National Chung Hsing University,
Taichung 402, Taiwan
8 Advanced Plant and Food Crop Biotechnology Center, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung
402, Taiwan

Abstract
*Corresponding authors:
Chieh-Chen Huang With the development of next-generation sequencing and other technologies,
(cchuang@dragon.nchu.edu.tw) there has been an exponential increase in DNA, RNA, and protein sequences and
Patrick C. Y. Woo protein structures in the last two decades, paralleled with the advancement of
(pcywoo@hku.hk)
user-friendly bioinformatics tools. Furthermore, the enormous improvement in
Citation: Woo PCY, Lin Y, Huang S, computational power and accumulation of massive amounts of data has given rise to
Chen M, Hou M, Huang C. Mx.
BIOME: A bioinformatics and the development of big data analysis, which can unveil novel patterns, associations,
big data analysis platform in a and trends. In view of the unprecedented biological data explosion, we have recently
data explosion era. Microbes & developed a platform known as Mx. BIOME, which provides a collection of some of
Immunity. 2025;2(4):61-66.
doi: 10.36922/mi.5077 the most popular and cutting-edge tools in the fields of bioinformatics and big data
analysis. Such a collection would facilitate end-users to identify suitable tools for
Received: October 8, 2024
analyzing their specific datasets. Further studies and reviews on various in silico tools
Revised: December 4, 2024 are necessary to compare the advantages and limitations.
Accepted: January 2, 2025
Published online: February 3, Keywords: Bioinformatics; DNA; Sequencing; Big data; Analysis; SARS-CoV-2
2025
Copyright: © 2025 Author(s).
This is an Open-Access article
distributed under the terms of the The unprecedented explosive growth of DNA sequences and other biological data in the
Creative Commons Attribution past 50 years comes with an ever-growing need for rapid and accurate analysis of vast
License, permitting distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, amounts of data. First developed by Fred Sanger in the 1970s, DNA sequencing entails a
provided the original work is highly labor-intensive process. Also known as Sanger sequencing, this technique works
properly cited. on the principle of the chain termination method, which requires labeling bases with
Publisher’s Note: AccScience radioactive phosphorus, running long polyacrylamide sequencing gel, developing and
Publishing remains neutral with fixing X-ray films, and manually analyzing and interpreting the sequencing results. 1
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional Automation of the traditional Sanger sequencing methods became possible with the
affiliations. development of the automated sequencer toward the end of the last millennium. In

Volume 2 Issue 4 (2025) 61 doi: 10.36922/mi.5077