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Last active March 28, 2017 15:12
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WhyGalaxy.md

Why is it called Galaxy

Once upon a time there was the Genome ALignment and Annotation database or GALA, which allowed for analysis of genomic elements alongside comparative genomic information. However, this tool supported only a few analyses. What-would-be-galaxy was born from the idea of being able to easily take any existing analysis tool and quickly integrate it into this platform. But what should we call this next direction? Bob Harris suggested the use of X/Y to represent this "next dimension" of analysis. GALA + XY ⟶ GALAXY ⟶ Galaxy.

Or at least this is how I remember it.

#usegalaxy

@moskalenko
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Cool bit of history. Thanks for sharing.

@rsharris
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Yeah, that's kinda the way it happened. Ross Hardison was meeting with the GALA team in one corner of the lab area. I was at the other corner working away, heard them talking about names like GALA2 or GALA3, did a word list search for words containing "gala", and made a semi-snarky comment over my shoulder "gala-x-y".

I wasn't thinking of X and Y as dimensional coordinates -- I was just being my usual sarcastic self. As I remember it, Ross liked the idea that a galaxy encompasses everything or has a broad scope or something like that.

If I'd gone a little further down the list, the question might be "why is it called rugalach?"

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