The Carbon Footprint of Bioinformatics.

ABSTRACT: Bioinformatic research relies on large-scale computational infrastructures which have a nonzero carbon footprint but so far, no study has quantified the environmental costs of bioinformatic tools and commonly run analyses. In this work, we estimate the carbon footprint of bioinformatics (in kilograms of CO2 equivalent units, kgCO2e) using the freely available Green Algorithms calculator (www.green-algorithms.org, last accessed 2022). We assessed 1) bioinformatic approaches in genome-wide association studies (GWAS), RNA sequencing, genome assembly, metagenomics, phylogenetics, and molecular simulations, as well as 2) computation strategies, such as parallelization, CPU (central processing unit) versus GPU (graphics processing unit), cloud versus local computing infrastructure, and geography

SUBMITTER: Grealey J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8892942 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature