BOL: All site news

NCBI to assist in Virus Hunting Data Science Hackathon

BioStar — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 12:55:01 -0600

NCBI Hackathon are pleased to announce the second installment of the SoCal Bioinformatics Hackathon. From January 9-11, 2019, the NCBI will help run a bioinformatics hackathon in Southern California hosted by the Computational Sciences Research Center at San Diego State University!

NCBI Hackathon specifically looking for folks who have experience in computational virus hunting or adjacent fields to identify known, taxonomically-definable and novel viruses from a few hundred thousand metagenomic datasets that we’ll put on cloud infrastructure. This event is for researchers, including students and postdocs, who are already engaged in the use of bioinformatics data or in the development of pipelines for virological analyses from high-throughput experiments. If this describes you, please apply! The event is open to anyone selected for the hackathon and willing to travel to SDSU (see below).

https://ncbiinsights.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2018/11/09/ncbi-sdsu-virus-hunting-data-science-hackathon-january-2019/

Illumina to Acquire Pacific Biosciences for Approximately $1.2 Billion !

Rahul Nayak — Fri, 02 Nov 2018 09:57:48 -0500

Illumina and Pacific Biosciences announced they have signed an agreement for Illumina to acquire Pacific Biosciences at a price of $8.00 per Pacific Biosciences share in an all-cash transaction.

The agreement has been approved by the board of directors of Illumina and Pacific Biosciences. The acquisition complements Illumina sequencing solutions with accurate long-read sequencing capabilities to answer a set of complex genomic questions. While Illumina's accurate and economic short-read sequencing platforms address the majority of sequencing applications optimally, select applications, such as de novo sequencing and sequencing of highly homologous regions of genomes, are better addressed with accurate long-reads.

Reference https://www.pacb.com/press_releases/illumina-to-acquire-pacific-biosciences-for-approximately-1-2-billion-broadening-access-to-long-read-sequencing-and-accelerating-scientific-discovery/

Ensembl 94 is out!

Jit — Fri, 26 Oct 2018 08:14:24 -0500

The latest version of Ensembl, release 94, is out and have we got some treats for you. As well as GENCODE updates for human and mouse, we’ve also got loads of new fish. Plus, we have brand new transcription factor binding motifs, additional predictors of variant pathogenicity and updated gene tree pipelines.

more at http://www.ensembl.info/2018/10/03/ensembl-94-is-out/

You can't hide from Genome Hackers

Neel — Sat, 13 Oct 2018 14:17:28 -0500

Young computational biologist named Yaniv Erlich shocked the research world by showing it was possible to unmask the identities of people listed in anonymous genetic databases using only an Internet connection

Paper: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2018/10/10/science.aau4832

More at https://www.wired.com/story/genome-hackers-show-no-ones-dna-is-anonymous-anymore/

Phased Human Genome Assembly !

Rahul Nayak — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 09:10:54 -0500

The new publicly available assembly (PacBio HG00733) has the fewest gaps of any human genome assembly, with more than half of the genome contained in gapless sequence at least 27 Mb long. The primary contig assembly is 2.89 Gb long and consists of 865 contigs that were assembled with PacBio data generated with the company’s Sequel® System. Using the FALCON-Unzip assembler, maternal and paternal haplotypes were resolved over more than 80% of the genome. Maternal and paternal haplotype blocks were then further phased using Hi-C technology and the FALCON-Phase methoddeveloped in collaboration with Phase Genomics. The genome was then de novo scaffolded using Phase Genomics’ Proximo Hi-C platform, resulting in the first chromosome-scale diploid assembly of a single individual accomplished with only two technologies. More specific details about the assembly are included on the PacBio blog.

The data are available using NCBI accession IDs: BioProject: (PRJNA483067), assembly: [RBJD00000000] and sequence data (SRP155659).

Additional Resources

Interactive map showcasing global initiatives underway to generate reference-quality human genome assemblies for diverse populations
BioReport Podcast on the value of ethnic-specific reference genomes
Nature Reviews Genetics paper from NHGRI: Prioritizing diversity in human genomics research
Article in The Journal of Precision Medicine: “Minority Report – Ethnic Diversity and the Real Promise for Precision Medicine”
Article in Bio-IT World: “Genomic Data Standards Are a Necessity”
NHGRI Project Award: High Quality Human and Non-Human Primate Genome Assemblies

More details are available on the PacBio website:

Blog post: Data Release: Highest-Quality, Most Contiguous Individual Human Genome Assembly to Date
Blog post: For Reference-Grade Human Genome Assemblies, SMRT Sequencing Yields Optimal Results
Webinar: Assembling High-Quality Human Reference Genomes for Global Populations
FALCON-Phase press release and article preprint
PacBio research focus webpage about Human Population Genetics

Ref: https://stockguru.com/2018/10/08/pacific-biosciences-releases-highest-quality-most-contiguous-individual-human-genome-assembly-to-date/

Custom R charts coming to Excel !

Surabhi Chaudhary — Sat, 12 May 2018 07:30:28 -0500

This week at the BUILD conference, Microsoft announced that Power BI custom visuals will soon be available as charts with Excel. You'll be able to choose a range of data within an Excel workbook, and pass those data to one of the built-in Power BI custom visuals, or one you've created yourself using the API.

Since you can create Power BI custom visuals using R, that means you'll be able to design a custom R-based chart, and make it available to people using Excel — even if they don't know how to use R themselves. There also many pre-defined custom visuals available, including some familiar R charts like decision trees, calendar heatmaps, and hexbin scatterplots.

For more details on how you'll be able to use custom R visuals in Excel, check out the blog post linked below.

PowerBI Blog: Excel announces new data visualization capabilities with Power BI custom visuals

PHP, MySQL, AJAX, Wordpress, jQuery, API integration, xml parsing,json parsing,CodeIgniter

Ram Yash Pal — Sun, 29 Apr 2018 01:03:17 -0500

My name is Ram Yash Pal. I’m web developer. I have 5+ years of experience on web development, specially on developing large scale web application with complex business logic.

My main expertises are on PHP, jQuery, Ajax, CodeIgniter, Wordpress Plugin Development and Wordpress theme customization.

PHP, MySQL, AJAX, Wordpress, jQuery, API integration, xml parsing,json parsing,CodeIgniter

https://phpajaxhtml.blogspot.in/

R 3.5.0 has been Released!

Jit — Thu, 26 Apr 2018 11:31:58 -0500

The latest version of R is a major release! It comes with a ton of new features, including performance and speed improvements
All R packages will now be byte-compiled, hence boosting packages installed from GitHub
You may need to re-install all previously installed R packages; old scripts however will continue to work normally

More at https://cran.r-project.org/doc/manuals/r-release/NEWS.html

Earth BioGenome Project

Jit — Wed, 25 Apr 2018 07:48:56 -0500

The central goal of the Earth BioGenome Project is to understand the evolution and organization of life on our planet by sequencing and functionally annotating the genomes of 1.5 million known species of eukaryotes, a massive group that includes plants, animals, fungi and other organisms whose cells have a nucleus that houses their chromosomal DNA. To date, the genomes of less than 0.2 percent of eukaryotic species have been sequenced.

More at https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/earth-biogenome-project-aims-sequence-dna-all-complex-life

BINC (Bioinformatics National Certification) Examination 2018

Jit — Mon, 23 Apr 2018 03:34:53 -0500

Bioinformatics National Certification (BINC) was instituted by Department of Biotechnology, Government of India in 2005 at Savitribai Phule Pune University, formerly University of Pune, Pune to certify bioinformatics professionals and recognizing candidate's theoretical and practical ability and fostering interdisciplinary research. Later on, it was transferred to Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and then to Pondicherry University, Puducherry. Pondicherry University conducted the BINC examination in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

Biotech Consortium India Limited (BCIL), New Delhi is conducting the BINC 2018 examination on behalf Department of Biotechnology, Government of India.

BINC is a certification programme for graduate and post-graduate students for recognizing their exceptional bioinformatics knowledge and skills and to improve their employment opportunities. There is a growing need for trained manpower in the area of Bioinformatics. Currently, various universities and institutions, both government and private, impart Bioinformatics education in India. The qualifying candidates will be awarded a lifetime certificate. This certification would facilitate industries and potential employers in recruitment of Bioinformatics professionals having exceptionally good bioinformatics skills.

The certification under Bioinformatics National Certification (BINC) scheme is given to the candidates after three tier selection process. The successful candidates are also eligible for availing Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) for pursuing Ph.D. in Bioinformatics at recognized Indian universities/institutes. The research fellowships of all BINC qualified Indian nationals are funded by DBT. BINC qualified candidates are called DBT certified Bioinformaticians while the individuals availing the fellowships are called as DBT-BINC Junior Research Fellows (DBT-BINC-JRF). Cash prize of 10,000/- each is awarded to the top 10 BINC qualifiers.

Eligibility

i) Bachelor's/Master's degree in Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, Chemical Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Agriculture, Veterinary, Medicine, Pharmacy, Engineering and Technology.

ii) No formal training, diploma or certificate in bioinformatics is required.

iii) Candidates in final year of Bachelor's/ Master's degree are also eligible to apply.

Pattern of Examination

Syllabus

The syllabus consists of six sections - Bioinformatics, Biology, Physical Science, Chemical Science, Mathematics & Statistics, and Information Technology.

Note: Paper-III will be computer based practical and will include programming on Bioinformatics

Important Dates

Examination Centers

BINC Fellowship

Forms & Downloads

FAQs

Contact Us

Nisha Singh
Biotech Consortium India Limited
(CIN: U73100DL1990PLC041486)
5th Floor, Anuvrat Bhawan 210, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg New Delhi - 110 002
Tel.: 011-2321 9064-67 Ext. 231, 236
Email - For general BINC queries:binc.dbt@biotech.co.in
Helpline for Application submission related queries:binchelpdesk@biotech.co.in
Website: www.bcil.nic.in/BINC.html