RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 ETDB-Caltech: a blockchain-based distributed public database for electron tomography
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 453662
DO 10.1101/453662
A1 Davi R. Ortega
A1 Catherine M. Oikonomou
A1 H. Jane Ding
A1 Prudence Rees-Lee
A1 Alexandria
A1 Grant J. Jensen
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/10/25/453662.abstract
AB Three-dimensional electron microscopy techniques like electron tomography provide valuable insights into cellular structures, and present significant challenges for data storage and dissemination. Here we explored a novel method to publicly release more than 11,000 such datasets, more than 30 TB in total, collected by our group. Our method, based on a peer-to-peer file sharing network built around a blockchain ledger, offers a distributed solution to data storage. In addition, we offer a user-friendly browser-based interface, https://etdb.caltech.edu, for anyone interested to explore and download our data. We discuss the relative advantages and disadvantages of this system and provide tools for other groups to mine our data and/or use the same approach to share their own imaging datasets.