NVIDIA is deepening its foothold in healthcare after teaming up with Harvard University on a new AI-based toolkit designed to help researchers gain more access and insights into DNA. Researchers also boast of being able to run a whole genome analysis in 30 minutes.

The new tool, dubbed AtacWorks, is able to identify specific sequencing data and pinpoint areas with easy-access DNA, meaning functional DNA that isn't surrounded by proteins.

According to NVIDIA, "cells pull out only the subsection of genetic apparel that [they need] to function, with each cell type — such as liver, blood or skin cells — activating different genes." Additionally, DNA regions that control a cell's particular function are opened up for easier access.

AtacWorks works with ATAC-seq technology, which is a technique used to determine genome chromation accessibility.

"ATAC-seq is a widely-applied assay used to measure genome-wide chromatin accessibility. However, its ability to detect active regulatory regions can depend on the depth of sequencing coverage and the signal-to-noise ratio.

"Here we introduce AtacWorks, a deep-learning toolkit to de-noise sequencing coverage and identify regulatory peaks at base-pair resolution from low cell count, low-coverage or low-quality ATAC-seq data," researchers wrote in a study published on the technology in Nature.

"Models trained by AtacWorks can detect peaks from cell types not seen in the training data, and [that] are generalizable across diverse sample preparations and experimental platforms."

WHAT IT'S FOR

NVIDIA has often discussed the future of genomics. This development signals the company's intentions to develop tools in the space.

"There are some great things brewing in genomics," Kimberly Powell, the vice president of healthcare at NVIDIA, told MobiHealthNews in 2019.

"Deep learning in genomics research is on the same sort of acceleration curve for deep learning overall, which means what happens in research is going to start translating into the rest of the world. I think AI and genomics [are] going to be a concentration moving forward, and a real opportunity."

THE LARGER TREND

Over the last year NVIDIA has rolled out a number of health-related initiatives. In September, the company rolled out its automated speech recognition and natural language processing technology that can transcribe and organize information from a telemedicine visit for patients and clinicians.

More recently the tech giant announced it would build a supercomputer for U.K. healthcare researchers.