The National Center for Cardiovascular Research Carlos III (CNIC) and the Biomedical Research Network Center for Cardiovascular Diseases (CIBERCV) have launched "TurbOmics," a tool created to combine different types of data and assist in the detection of biological mechanisms related to various pathologies.
This is an open-access web platform that makes it possible to integrate and examine information from various omics technologies in a simple and intuitive way, and that is within reach of researchers from multiple specialties.
From the CNIC, they detail that, to unravel the functioning of cells and organisms, scientists handle large volumes of biological data from numerous sources. In recent years, massive analysis technologies, known as omics, have become widespread, allowing for a global view of biological processes and diseases within the framework of Systems Biology.
However, specialists remind that combining information derived from different omics to interpret it in an integrated way remains a technical challenge that, in most cases, requires advanced knowledge of programming and statistics.
With this objective, the CNIC and CIBERCV have developed "TurbOmics," a work recently published in the journal "Genome Biology." In this context, the head of the Metabolomics platform at the CNIC and co-director of the study, Alessia Ferrarini, highlights that one of the main challenges in metabolomics is that, "unlike other omics, the identification of the compounds detected by this technology is not immediate and requires laborious subsequent validation."
Moreover, "when attempting to combine this data with genomic or proteomic information, the complexity increases significantly," adds Jesús Vázquez, co-director of the study.
"The platform incorporates tools to prepare, normalize, and explore the data, as well as advanced algorithms capable of identifying shared biological patterns among different layers of information," detailed researcher José Manuel Rodríguez, principal co-author of the work. Thanks to these capabilities, users can convert large amounts of complex data into much more direct interpretative results through exportable graphs and tables.
"TurbOmics" has been conceived precisely to overcome these difficulties and facilitate the joint analysis of different types of biological data from a single graphical interface. According to Annalaura Mastrangelo, co-director of the study, "the platform allows researchers from very diverse disciplines to apply advanced methodologies of multi-omic integration without the need for specialized knowledge in programming."
Integration with TurboPutative and validation on real data
Another of the strengths of "TurbOmics," as pointed out by Ferrarini and Mastrangelo, is its connection with "TurboPutative," a tool previously developed by the same team to simplify the identification of metabolites in untargeted metabolomics studies. This integration streamlines the entire workflow, from the initial annotation of compounds to the biological interpretation of the findings.
To test its performance, the researchers applied "TurbOmics" to two multi-omic datasets, in collaboration with the B lymphocyte Biology group of the CNIC, led by Almudena Ramiro. The analyses showed that the joint study of different types of information allowed the discovery of relevant biological processes that had gone unnoticed when each layer of data was examined in isolation.
According to the authors, the platform represents a significant advance in democratizing the use of multi-omic integration methodologies and facilitating the scientific community to fully leverage the potential of metabolomic data.
In this line, they emphasize that the collaboration of several CNIC groups in the project drives the development of open bioinformatics tools that support biomedical research and contribute to accelerating the generation of new knowledge about biological mechanisms and diseases.