MrBiomics

🚀🧬 MrBiomics: Composable modules and recipes automate bioinformatics for multi-omics analyses

“For many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (the “vital few”).” - The Pareto Principle by Vilfredo Pareto

Get 80% of all standard (biomedical) data science analyses done semi-automated with 20% of the effort, by leveraging Snakemake’s module functionality to use and combine pre-existing workflows into arbitrarily complex analyses.

[!IMPORTANT]
If you use MrBiomics, please don’t forget to give credit to the authors by citing this original repository and the respective Modules and Recipes.

⚡ Quickstart: 5 Commands to Your First Results!

Stop wrestling with complicated setups and start discovering new biology! Get MrBiomics up and running from scratch (assuming conda is installed) with exactly 5 commands:

conda create -y -n snakemake -c conda-forge -c bioconda snakemake=8.25.3
git clone https://github.com/epigen/MrBiomics.git
cd MrBiomics
conda activate snakemake
snakemake --software-deployment-method conda --cores 1

🎉 Boom! You’re analyzing data! This simple snippet creates your Snakemake environment, fetches MrBiomics, and executes the built-in quickstart analysis.

Curious about the magic that just happened? Dive deeper and explore MrBiomics’ capabilities starting with our Quickstart!

⏳ TL;DR - More Time for Science!

“Programming is about trying to make the future less painful. It’s about making things easier for our teammates.” from The Pragmatic Programmer by Andy Hunt & Dave Thomas

• Why: Time is the most precious resource. By taking care of efficiency (i.e., maximum output with limited resources) scientists can re-distribute their time to focus on effectiveness (i.e., the biggest impact possible).
• How: Functional Knowledge Management. Leverage the latest developments in workflow management to (re-)use and combine independent computational modules into arbitrarily complex analyses to benefit from modern innovation methods (e.g., fast prototyping, design thinking, and agile concepts).
• What: Independent and single-purpose computational Modules, implemented as Snakemake workflows, encode standard approaches that are used to scale, automate, and parallelize analyses. Recipes combine modules into end-to-end best practice workflows, thereby accelerating analyses to the point of the unknown. Snakemake’s module functionality enables Projects to combine modules, recipes and custom code into arbitrarily complex multi-omics analyses at scale.

Illustration of MrBiomics Modules, Recipes and Projects applied to a case study on human hematopoiesis

[!NOTE]
Altogether this enables complex, portable, transparent, reproducible, and documented analyses of multi-mics data at scale.

🧠 Functional Knowledge Management

“The best documentation is automation.” - Wise Person on the Internet

Functional Knowledge Management (FKM) is our knowledge-management approach in which validated best practices are captured as executable software functions, modules, or recipes.

• Each artefact simultaneously documents the know-how and performs the task, creating a living, testable, and composable code collection that closes the gap between theory and practice.
• Rigorous modularity and version control keep every function self-contained, tested, and repository-tracked, enabling safe reuse and continuous evolution.
• As a compounding asset base new functions can be built on earlier ones, steadily expanding an ever-richer compendium of trusted solutions.

🧩 Modules

“Is it functional, multifunctional, durable, well-fitted, simple, easy to maintain, and thoroughly tested? Does it provide added value, and doesn’t cause unnecessary harm? Can it be simpler? Is it an innovation?” - Patagonia Design Principles

Modules are Snakemake workflows, consisting of Rules for multi-step analyses, that are independent, single-purpose, and sufficiently abstracted to be compatible with most up- and downstream analyses. A {module} can be general-purpose (e.g., Unsupervised Analysis) or modality-specific (e.g., ATAC-seq processing). Currently, the following eleven modules are available, roughly ordered by their applicability from general to specific:

Module	Type (Data Modality)	DOI	Version	Stars
Unsupervised Analysis	General Purpose (tabular data)
Fetch NGS Data and Metadata using iSeq	Bioinformatics (NGS data)
Split, Filter, Normalize and Integrate Sequencing Data	Bioinformatics (NGS counts)
Differential Analysis with limma	Bioinformatics (NGS data)
Enrichment Analysis	Bioinformatics (genes/genomic regions)
Genome Track Visualization	Bioinformatics (aligned BAM files)
ATAC-seq Processing, Quantification & Annotation	Bioinformatics (ATAC-seq)
RNA-seq Processing, Quantification & Annotation	Bioinformatics (RNA-seq)
scRNA-seq Processing using Seurat	Bioinformatics (scRNA-seq)
Differential Analysis using Seurat	Bioinformatics (scRNA-seq)
Perturbation Analysis using Mixscape from Seurat	Bioinformatics (scCRISPR-seq)

[!NOTE]
⭐️ Star and share modules you find valuable 📤 — help others discover them, and guide our future work!

📋 Projects using multiple Modules

“Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own.” - Bruce Lee

You can (re-)use and combine pre-existing workflows within your projects by loading them as Modules since Snakemake 6. The combination of multiple modules into projects that analyze multiple datasets represents the overarching vision and power of MrBiomics.

Three components are required to use a module within your Snakemake workflow (i.e., a project).

• Configuration: The config/config.yaml file has to point to the respective configuration files per dataset and workflow.

  #### Datasets and Workflows to include ###
  workflows:
      MyData:
          other_workflow: "config/MyData/MyData_other_workflow_config.yaml"
  

• Snakefile: Within the main Snakefile (workflow/Snakefile) we have to:
  • load all configurations;
  • include the snakefiles that contain the dataset-specific loaded modules and rules (see next point);
  • and add all modules’ outputs to the target’s rule input.
• Modules: Load the required modules and their rules within separate snakefiles (*.smk) in the rule/ folder. Recommendation: Use one snakefile per dataset.

    module MyData_other_workflow:
      # here, plain paths, URLs and the special markers for code hosting providers (e.g., github) are possible.
      snakefile: "other_workflow/Snakefile"
      config: config["MyData_other_workflow"]
  
    use rule * from MyData_other_workflow as MyData_other_workflow_*
  

📜 Recipes

“Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.” - Alfred North Whitehead, author of Principia Mathematica

Recipes are combinations of existing modules into end-to-end best practice analyses. They can be used as templates for standard analyses by leveraging existing modules, thereby enabling fast iterations and progression into the unknown. Every recipe is described and presented using a wiki page by application to a publicly available dataset.

Recipe	Description	# Modules used
RNA-seq Analysis	From raw BAM files to enrichments of differentially expressed genes.	7
ATAC-seq Analysis	From raw BAM files to enrichments of differentially accessible regions.	7
Integrative ATAC-seq & RNA-seq Analysis	From count matrices to enrichments of epigenetic potential and transcriptional abundance.	4(-7)
scRNA-seq Analysis (WIP)	From count matrix to enrichments of differentially expressed genes.	5(-6)
scCRISPR-seq Analysis (WIP)	From count matrix to knockout phenotype enrichments.	6(-7)

[!NOTE]
⭐️ Star this repository and share recipes you find valuable 📤 — help others find them, and guide our future work!

📚 Resources

• MrBiomics Wiki for instructions & tutorials
• GitHub list of MrBiomics modules
• My Data Science Setup - A tutorial for developing Snakemake workflows and beyond
• GitHub Page of this repository
• Curated and published workflows that could be used as modules:
  • Snakemake Workflow Catalog
  • WorkflowHub
  • SnakePipes
  • Seq2Science
• Software
  • Snakemake
  • Conda
  • Docker
  • Singularity

⭐ Star History of Modules

Click on the image for an interactive view.

📑 Publications

The following publications have successfully used MrBiomics Modules (red) and/or Recipes (blue):

• Datlinger, Pankevich, Arnold et al. (2025) Nature - Systematic discovery of CRISPR-boosted CAR T cell immunotherapies
• Haladik et al. (2025) Cell Reports Medicine - Image-based drug screening combined with molecular profiling identifies signatures and drivers of therapy resistance in pediatric AML
• Traxler, Reichl et al. (2025) Cell Systems - Integrated time-series analysis and high-content CRISPR screening delineate the dynamics of macrophage immune regulation
• Troester et al. (2025) Nature Communications - Transcriptional and epigenetic rewiring by the NUP98::KDM5A fusion oncoprotein directly activates CDK12
• Casteels et al. (2022) Cell Reports - SMNDC1 links chromatin remodeling and splicing to regulate pancreatic hormone expression