Accelerating Cloud-Based Transcriptomics: Performance Analysis and Optimization of the STAR Aligner Workflow

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Main Authors: Kica, Piotr, Lichołai, Sabina, Orzechowski, Michał, Malawski, Maciej
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Kica, Piotr
Lichołai, Sabina
Orzechowski, Michał
Malawski, Maciej
author_facet Kica, Piotr
Lichołai, Sabina
Orzechowski, Michał
Malawski, Maciej
contents In this work, we explore the Transcriptomics Atlas pipeline adapted for cost-efficient and high-throughput computing in the cloud. We propose a scalable, cloud-native architecture designed for running a resource-intensive aligner -- STAR -- and processing tens or hundreds of terabytes of RNA-sequencing data. We implement multiple optimization techniques that give significant execution time and cost reduction. The impact of particular optimizations is measured in medium-scale experiments followed by a large-scale experiment that leverages all of them and validates the current design. Early stopping optimization allows a reduction in total alignment time by 23%. We analyze the scalability and efficiency of one of the most widely used sequence aligners. For the cloud environment, we identify one of the most suitable EC2 instance types and verify the applicability of spot instances usage.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_12611
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Accelerating Cloud-Based Transcriptomics: Performance Analysis and Optimization of the STAR Aligner Workflow
Kica, Piotr
Lichołai, Sabina
Orzechowski, Michał
Malawski, Maciej
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
In this work, we explore the Transcriptomics Atlas pipeline adapted for cost-efficient and high-throughput computing in the cloud. We propose a scalable, cloud-native architecture designed for running a resource-intensive aligner -- STAR -- and processing tens or hundreds of terabytes of RNA-sequencing data. We implement multiple optimization techniques that give significant execution time and cost reduction. The impact of particular optimizations is measured in medium-scale experiments followed by a large-scale experiment that leverages all of them and validates the current design. Early stopping optimization allows a reduction in total alignment time by 23%. We analyze the scalability and efficiency of one of the most widely used sequence aligners. For the cloud environment, we identify one of the most suitable EC2 instance types and verify the applicability of spot instances usage.
title Accelerating Cloud-Based Transcriptomics: Performance Analysis and Optimization of the STAR Aligner Workflow
topic Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.12611