Bioconda – a community resource for bioinformatics software installation

The myriad of bioinformatics software opens great possibilities for biological and biomedical research, but with many programs and dependencies, software installations and updates often put a significant burden on Life Science researchers. Bioconda (https://bioconda.github.io/) is an emerging public resource, aiming to make software installations easier and analyses more reproducible.

In order to promote reproducible research and to provide easy access to bioinformatics tools, SciLifeLab staff at the National Bioinformatics Infrastructure Sweden (NBIS) and the National Genomics Infrastructure (NGI) are active developers of Bioconda. Today, the tool includes almost 3,000 software packages downloaded over 6 million times, as described in a recently released Bioconda bioRxiv preprint article.  “Bioconda has simplified our day-to-day work, and we strongly recommend Life Science researchers to explore its possibilities”, says Per Unneberg, a staff bioinformatician at NBIS and one of the coauthors of the Bioconda article.