Seqera acquires tinybio to Advance Science for Everyone - Now Through GenAI!

We are thrilled to announce that Seqera is joining forces with tinybio, a NYC-based tech-bio start-up known for its AI-integrated scientific tools focused on executing pipelines and analyses via natural language. We are happy to welcome the tinybio team and community into the Seqera family.

Empowering All Scientists with Advanced Data Tools

Scientists spend a significant proportion of their time transforming and structuring data for analysis. In fact, a lessons learned piece on the COVID-19 pandemic underscored how issues in data analysis and study design can significantly impact scientific breakthroughs. As biological data continues to grow exponentially, there is an urgent need to manage large-scale data more rapidly for accelerated scientific breakthroughs. To achieve this, we are partnering with tinybio to harness the power of GenAI, lowering the barrier for scientists to fully leverage advanced computational tools to achieve their research goals.

tinybio: Specialized ChatGPT for Researchers

Motivated by challenges faced as researchers experimenting with different bioinformatics packages, Sasha and Vishal founded tinybio in 2022, convinced there had to be a better, easier way to get started with bioinformatics. The initial goal of tinybio was to remove the barrier to entry for running bioinformatics packages, a mission that gained significant momentum with the announcement of ChatGPT in November 2022. The tinybio co-founders recognized the potential of leveraging GenAI for empowering all scientists to effectively utilize bioinformatics tools, regardless of their experience or research background. Ever since, tinybio have focused on applying GenAI to drive bioinformatics innovation.

"After seeing the amazing traction around our chat-based pipeline execution and analysis tool, Vishal and I knew that we needed to partner with the leader in bioinformatics pipelines to enable our vision for more open science and to onboard millions more to computational biology. We are truly excited to be joining the Seqera team and contributing to advancing science for everyone through their Nextflow, Wave, MultiQC, and Fusion products." - Sasha Dagayev, Co-founder at tinybio

tinybio’s authentic and pragmatic approach to leveraging LLMs for bioinformatics is essential in bridging the gap between scientists and advanced computational capabilities to accelerate scientific discovery. By incorporating this technology, we aim to significantly enhance our existing pipelines, containers and web resources, making high-quality, reproducible bioinformatics tools more accessible to researchers worldwide. Our goal is to empower the global scientific community with the resources they need to drive innovation and advance our understanding of complex biological systems.

A New Era for AI-enabled Bioinformatics

The biotech and bioinformatics landscape is rapidly evolving, driven in-part by technological advances in AI. The ability to analyze massive datasets, identify patterns, and generate predictive models is revolutionizing scientific research. We also believe that AI is a powerful tool to democratize and amplify access to the most sophisticated bioinformatics tools out there. By leveraging human-centric AI, we can enable the 10x scientist to translate complex biological data into actionable insights, thereby expediting scientific discovery and innovation.

Our partnership with tinybio represents a significant milestone in our journey to advance science for everyone through software. This collaboration will lower the barrier of entry for a broader range of researchers to utilize bioinformatics tools effectively, facilitating groundbreaking innovations and transforming the future of genomics.

"New interaction models with powerful computational platforms are transforming not just how scientists work but also what they discover. By empowering scientists with modern software engineering practices, we are enabling the next generation of innovations in personalized therapeutics, sustainable materials, better drug delivery methodologies, and green chemical and agricultural production. This acquisition marks a significant step towards accelerating scientific discoveries and enabling researchers with better software." - Evan Floden, CEO at Seqera

Enhancing our Open Science Core

Our mission at Seqera is to make science accessible to everyone through software. As research becomes increasingly digitized, there is a critical need to access all available scientific research to make informed R&D decisions and ultimately accelerate the impact on patients. Central to achieving this is Open Science, which ensures reproducibility, validation and transparency across the scientific community. With AI, we want to further enhance our Open Science core, by lowering the barrier of adoption of bioinformatics tools for millions more researchers worldwide, driving more rapid advancements in science and medicine.

What’s Next for Seqera and tinybio?

Seqera is excited to collaborate closely with tinybio’s founders Sasha Dagayev and Vishal Patel to further its mission of advancing science for everyone through software. Their expertise will be instrumental in driving the development of community-centric tools on Seqera.io, empowering scientists worldwide to leverage modern software capabilities on demand.

We will first focus on leveraging AI to solve the cold start problem for the next generation of scientists and removing barriers to entry to bioinformatics. Existing powerful frameworks and resources, such as Nextflow, nf-core, Seqera Pipelines and Containers, have been significantly enhancing the research productivity of bioinformaticians, but come with a steep learning curve that prevents newcomers from getting started fast.

We want to free the next generation of scientists from wasting time in the nitty gritty of setting up various bioinformatics packages and infrastructure. We believe future scientists should be able to focus on understanding the “what” and “why” of their analysis, while the “how” is generated for them in an understandable and verifiable way. Our tools and resources provide already powerful building blocks to enable this, and we cannot wait to bring these new updates to users in the coming months. Stay tuned!

Interested in finding out more? Watch the Nextflow Channels podcast on GenAI for bioinformatics or subscribe to our newsletter to stay tuned!

About tinybio

tinybio is a New York City based startup focused on the application of generally available generative AI technologies to help bioinformaticians and researchers. It was started by Sasha Dagayev and Vishal Patel in 2022. To date, the company has helped thousands of researchers to resolve hundreds of thousands of bioinformatics issues.