What is Nephele? The Microbiome Project Team Citing Nephele Release Notes What is Nephele? Nephele is a web-based platform for microbiome data analysis. It was developed by scientists at the National Institutes of Health to make microbiome analysis easier, streamlined, and more accessible for a variety of users. Microbiome analysis is a growing area of science and medicine. It generates an enormous amount of raw data and requires advanced quantitative analysis. Technical capacity to analyze microbiome data – namely, analyzing, transferring, and storing biomedical "big data"— is a major challenge in this type of research. Nephele addresses these challenges through cloud-based computing, integrating open source microbiome data analysis and visualization tools into an intuitive user interface. Like its namesake, a Greek mythological nymph who was molded from a cloud by Zeus, Nephele (pronounced ne-FEH-lee) is a powerful scientific tool created from a cloud-based environment. For more information on Nephele, please see our publication on Nephele version 1.8. A publication of the current Nephele version 2 is coming soon. For changes from version 1.8 to version 2, please see the Release Notes.