Searching for SNPs with cloud computing

As DNA sequencing outpaces improvements in computer speed, there is a critical need to accelerate tasks like alignment and SNP calling. Crossbow is a cloud-computing software tool that combines the aligner Bowtie and the SNP caller SOAPsnp. Executing in parallel using Hadoop, Crossbow analyzes data comprising 38-fold coverage of the human genome in three hours using a 320-CPU cluster rented from a cloud computing service for about $85. Crossbow is available from http://bowtie-bio.sourceforge.net/crossbow/.