BOL: All site bookmarks

HybPiper

Jit — Fri, 04 Nov 2016 05:02:10 -0500

HybPiper was designed for targeted sequence capture, in which DNA sequencing libraries are enriched for gene regions of interest, especially for phylogenetics. HybPiper is a suite of Python scripts that wrap and connect bioinformatics tools in order to extract target sequences from high-throughput DNA sequencing reads.

Targeted bait capture is a technique for sequencing many loci simultaneously based on bait sequences. HybPiper pipeline starts with high-throughput sequencing reads (for example from Illumina MiSeq), and assigns them to target genes using BLASTx or BWA. The reads are distributed to separate directories, where they are assembled separately using SPAdes. The main output is a FASTA file of the (in frame) CDS portion of the sample for each target region, and a separate file with the translated protein sequence.

HybPiper also includes post-processing scripts, run after the main pipeline, to also extract the intronic regions flanking each exon, investigate putative paralogs, and calculate sequencing depth. For more information, please see our wiki.

HybPiper is run separately for each sample (single or paired-end sequence reads). When HybPiper generates sequence files from the reads, it does so in a standardized directory hierarchy. Many of the post-processing scripts rely on this directory hierarchy, so do not modify it after running the initial pipeline. It is a good idea to run the pipeline for each sample from the same directory. You will end up with one directory per run of HybPiper, and some of the later scripts take advantage of this predictable directory structure.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/mossmatters/HybPiper

ART: Set of Simulation Tools

Jit — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 08:28:25 -0500

ART is a set of simulation tools to generate synthetic next-generation sequencing reads. ART simulates sequencing reads by mimicking real sequencing process with empirical error models or quality profiles summarized from large recalibrated sequencing data. ART can also simulate reads using user own read error model or quality profiles. ART supports simulation of single-end, paired-end/mate-pair reads of three major commercial next-generation sequencing platforms: Illumina's Solexa, Roche's 454 and Applied Biosystems' SOLiD. ART can be used to test or benchmark a variety of method or tools for next-generation sequencing data analysis, including read alignment, de novo assembly, SNP and structure variation discovery. ART was used as a primary tool for the simulation study of the 1000 Genomes Project . ART is implemented in C++ with optimized algorithms and is highly efficient in read simulation. ART outputs reads in the FASTQ format, and alignments in the ALN format. ART can also generate alignments in the SAM alignment or UCSC BED file format. ART can be used together with genome variants simulators (e.g. VarSim) for evaluating variant calling tools or methods.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/software/biostatistics/art/

Statistical for biological research

Neel — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 04:59:48 -0500

There is no disputing the importance of statistical analysis in biological research, but too often it is considered only after an experiment is completed, when it may be too late.

This collection highlights important statistical issues that biologists should be aware of and provides practical advice to help them improve the rigor of their work.

Nature Methods' Points of Significance column on statistics explains many key statistical and experimental design concepts. Other resources include an online plotting tool and links to statistics guides from other publishers.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.nature.com/collections/qghhqm

eFORGE.v1.2

Jit — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 09:06:59 -0500

The eFORGE tool provides a method to view the tissue specific regulatory component of a set of EWAS DMPs. eFORGE analysis takes a set of DMPs, such as those hits above genome-wide significance threshold in an EWAS study, and analyses whether there is enrichment for overlap of putative functional elements compared to matched background DMPs. It assesses enrichment on a per cell type basis, since functional elements are differentially active in different cell types, and hence can expose tissue-specific signals of enrichment for the given test DMP set. This can reveal the sites of action underlying the EWAS signal, and provide confirmation of the validity of the EWAS where a tissue-specific mechanism is known or expected for the phenotype. Conversely unknown tissue involvements can also be revealed.

Address of the bookmark: http://eforge.cs.ucl.ac.uk/eFORGE.v1.2/?documentation

Graph Genome Suite

Jit — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 07:59:54 -0500

Seven Bridges is the biomedical data analysis company accelerating breakthroughs in genomics research for cancer, drug development and precision medicine. We build self-improving systems to analyze millions of genomes, including the Graph Genome Suite — the most advanced population genomics tools in the world.

Address of the bookmark: https://www.sbgenomics.com/graph/

PLINK2

Jit — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 11:24:45 -0500

This is a comprehensive update to Shaun Purcell's PLINK command-line program, developed by Christopher Chang with support from the NIH-NIDDK's Laboratory of Biological Modeling, the Purcell Lab at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, and others. (What's new?) (Credits.) (Methods paper.)

Address of the bookmark: https://www.cog-genomics.org/plink2/

IMPUTE2

Jit — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 11:21:44 -0500

IMPUTE2 is a computer program for phasing observed genotypes and imputing missing genotypes. Most people use just a couple of the program's basic functions, but we have also built up a collection of specialized and powerful options. If you are new to IMPUTE2, or indeed to phasing and imputation in general, we suggest that you start by learning the basics.

You should begin by downloading the program from here. You will need to choose the link that matches your computing platform and then follow the instructions for opening the download package.

Once you have done this, you will be ready to try some example analyses on the test data that are provided with the download. The section on Examples shows how to use the most common IMPUTE2 functions. We suggest that you work through these examples and try to understand what the elements of each command are doing. If you don't understand something or would like to know if the program can perform a function that isn't listed, you can read our FAQ or submit a question to our mail list.

When you have learned the basic functionality of the program, you can use several features of this website to prepare your own analysis:

Learn about best practices for imputation.
Download reference data that you can use to impute genotypes in your study.
Look through a complete list of program options.

Address of the bookmark: https://mathgen.stats.ox.ac.uk/impute/impute_v2.html

Beagle

Jit — Thu, 27 Oct 2016 11:19:00 -0500

Beagle is a software package that performs genotype calling, genotype phasing, imputation of ungenotyped markers, and identity-by-descent segment detection.

Beagle version 4.1 has a more accurate genotype phasing algorithm and a very fast and accurate genotype imputation algorithm. Version 4.1 also has several changes to the command line arguments which are described in the release notes. The "ped" argument has no effect in version 4.1. If your data contains nuclear families and you want to model the parent-offspring relationships when phasing genotypes, please use version 4.0.

If you use Beagle 4.1 in a published analysis, please report the program version and cite the appropriate article.

The citation for Beagle's phasing algorithm is:

S R Browning and B L Browning (2007) Rapid and accurate haplotype phasing and missing data inference for whole genome association studies by use of localized haplotype clustering. Am J Hum Genet 81:1084-1097.doi:10.1086/521987

The citation for Beagle's genotype imputation algorithm is:

B L Browning and S R Browning (2016). Genotype imputation with millions of reference samples. Am J Hum Genet 98:116-126.doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2015.11.020

The citation for Beagle's IBD detection algorithm is:

B L Browning and S R Browning (2013). Improving the accuracy and efficiency of identity-by-descent detection in population data. Genetics 194(2):459-71.doi:10.1534/genetics.113.150029

Address of the bookmark: http://faculty.washington.edu/browning/beagle/beagle.html

GenomeScope: open-source web tool to rapidly estimate the overall characteristics of a genome, including genome size, heterozygosity rate, and repeat content from unprocessed short reads

Jit — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 05:46:43 -0500

Summary: GenomeScope is an open-source web tool to rapidly estimate the overall characteristics of a genome, including genome size, heterozygosity rate, and repeat content from unprocessed short reads. These features are essential for studying genome evolution, and help to choose parameters for downstream analysis. We demonstrate its accuracy on 324 simulated and 16 real datasets with a wide range in genome sizes, heterozygosity levels, and error rates. Availability and Implementation: http://qb.cshl.edu/genomescope/, https://github.com/schatzlab/genomescope.git

Address of the bookmark: http://qb.cshl.edu/genomescope/

Shinyheatmap

Jit — Fri, 21 Oct 2016 05:12:11 -0500

Background: Transcriptomics, metabolomics, metagenomics, and other various next-generation sequencing (-omics) fields are known for their production of large datasets. Visualizing such big data has posed technical challenges in biology, both in terms of available computational resources as well as programming acumen. Since heatmaps are used to depict high-dimensional numerical data as a colored grid of cells, efficiency and speed have often proven to be critical considerations in the process of successfully converting data into graphics. For example, rendering interactive heatmaps from large input datasets (e.g., 100k+ rows) has been computationally infeasible on both desktop computers and web browsers. In addition to memory requirements, programming skills and knowledge have frequently been barriers-to-entry for creating highly customizable heatmaps. Results: We propose shinyheatmap: an advanced user-friendly heatmap software suite capable of efficiently creating highly customizable static and interactive biological heatmaps in a web browser. shinyheatmap is a low memory footprint program, making it particularly well-suited for the interactive visualization of extremely large datasets that cannot typically be computed in-memory due to size restrictions. Conclusions: shinyheatmap is hosted online as a freely available web server with an intuitive graphical user interface: http://shinyheatmap.com. The methods are implemented in R, and are available as part of the shinyheatmap project at: https://github.com/Bohdan-Khomtchouk/shinyheatmap.

More at http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/09/21/076463

Address of the bookmark: http://shinyheatmap.com/