BOL: Related items

Scientists post at Monsanto

Wed, 11 May 2016 07:58:44 -0500

Sustainable agriculture is at the core of Monsanto. We develop technologies that enable farmers to produce more crops while conserving natural resources. Monsanto scientists are conducting research and development (R&D) to revolutionize plant breeding and biotechnology.

Monsanto is seeking a very talented Genomics Scientistto become an integral member of our Global Pipeline Analytics team with a focus on quantitative genetics. The ideal candidate will have familiarity with modeling and analysis of genetic data sets using a variety of statistical techniques.

Major Responsibilities:
- Provide guidance on experimental design for genomic-related experiments
- Familiarity with analysis of the following methods: GWS, QTL, eQTL, RNA-Seq
- Provide written and oral presentations of methods, results, conclusions, and recommendations to peer and management groups.
- Ensure timely delivery and clear communication of results
- Develop strong and successful collaborations among various Monsanto enabling teams.

Required Skills:

- PhD degree in Statistics, Biostatistics, Statistical Genetics, Quantitative Genetics, Breeding, Bioinformatics or a related field with 2 years of experience
- Working knowledge and experience with one of the following quantitative languages:R, Python, Perl, SAS
- Background in Windows and Linux operating systems
- Very strong problem solving skills will be required to work well as a member of a dynamic team
- Strong verbal and written communication skills.
- Demonstrated ability to deliver timely results and be results oriented.
- Extensive knowledge of quantitative genetics and experimental design.
- Demonstrated track record of solving challenging and complex problems.

Desired Skills/Experience:

- Excellent communication skills, with the ability to summarize complex concepts in language understandable by scientists from a variety of disciplines.
- Experience in agronomy and/or plant breeding in vegetables or row crops.

Please apply to
https://jobs.monsanto.com/job/st-louis/genomics-scientist/769/2081771

Andi

Jit — Fri, 13 May 2016 05:16:35 -0500

This is the andi program for estimating the evolutionary distance between closely related genomes. These distances can be used to rapidly infer phylogenies for big sets of genomes. Because andi does not compute full alignments, it is so efficient that it scales even up to thousands of bacterial genomes.

This readme covers all necessary instructions for the impatient to get andi up and running. For extensive instructions please consult the manual.

More at https://github.com/evolbioinf/andi/

Address of the bookmark: http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2015/01/13/bioinformatics.btu815.full

PolyPhen-2: Prediction of functional effects of human nsSNPs

Anjana — Mon, 23 May 2016 02:27:25 -0500

PolyPhen-2 (Polymorphism Phenotyping v2) is a tool which predicts possible impact of an amino acid substitution on the structure and function of a human protein using straightforward physical and comparative considerations.

Address of the bookmark: http://genetics.bwh.harvard.edu/pph2/

GKNO

Neel — Fri, 20 May 2016 18:56:37 -0500

gkno opens the world of complex bioinformatic analysis to people of all level of computational expertise. This site contains documentation, tutorials and information on all the tools that comprise gkno.

http://gkno.me/how-to/install.html

http://gkno.me/software.html

Address of the bookmark: http://gkno.me/

Tools for Searching Repeats And Palindromic Sequences

Radha Agarkar — Sat, 21 May 2016 22:32:25 -0500

What are genomic interspersed repeats?

In the mid 1960's scientists discovered that many genomes contain stretches of highly repetitive DNA sequences ( see Reassociation Kinetics Experiments, and C-Value Paradox ). These sequences were later characterized and placed into five categories:

Simple Repeats - Duplications of simple sets of DNA bases (typically 1-5bp) such as A, CA, CGG etc.
Tandem Repeats - Typically found at the centromeres and telomeres of chromosomes these are duplications of more complex 100-200 base sequences.
Segmental Duplications - Large blocks of 10-300 kilobases which are that have been copied to another region of the genome.
Interspersed Repeats
Processed Pseudogenes, Retrotranscripts, SINES - Non-functional copies of RNA genes which have been reintegrated into the genome with the assitance of a reverse transcriptase.
DNA Transposons
Retrovirus Retrotransposons
Non-Retrovirus Retrotransposons ( LINES )

Currently up to 50% of the human genome is repetitive in nature and as improvements are made in detection methods this number is expected to increase.

On the other hand; In genetics, the term palindrome refers to a sequence of nucleotides along a DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) or RNA (ribonucleic acid) strand that contains the same series of nitrogenous bases regardless from which direction the strand is analyzed. Akin to a language palindrome—wherein a word or phrase is spelled the same left-to-right as right-to-left (e.g., the word RADAR or the phrase "able was I ere I saw elba")—with genetic palindromes it does not matter whether the nucleic acid strand is read starting from the 3' (three prime) end or the 5' (five prime) end of the strand.

Recent research on palindromes centers on understanding palindrome formation during gene amplification. Other studies have attempted to relate palindrome formation to molecular mechanisms involved in double stranded breaks and in the formation of inverted repeats. Assisted by high speed computers, other groups of scientists link palindrome formation to the conservation of genetic information.

Related to the direction of transcription by RNA polymerase, DNA strands have upstream and downstream terminus defined by differing chemical groups at each end. The ends of each strand of DNA or RNA are termed the 5' (phosphate bound to the 5' position carbon) and 3' (phosphate bound to the 3' carbon) ends to indicate a polarity within the molecule. Using the letters A, T, C, G, to represent the nitrogenous bases adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine found in DNA, and the letters A, U, C, G to represent the nitrogenous bases adenine, uracil, cytosine, guanine found in RNA (Note that uracil in RNA replaces the thymine found in DNA), geneticists usually represent DNA by a series of base codes (e.g., 5' AATCGGATTGCA 3'). The base codes are usually arranged from the 5' end to the 3' end.

Because of specific base pairing in DNA (i.e., adenine (A) always bonds with (thymine (T) and cytosine (C) always bonds with guanine (G)) the complimentary stand to the sequence 5' AATCGGATTGCA 3' would be 3' TTAGCCTAACGT 5'.

With palindromes the sequences on the complimentary strands read the same in either direction. For example, a sequence of 5' GAATTC3' on one strand would be complimented by a 3' CTTAAG 5' strand. In either case, when either strand is read from the 5' prime end the sequence is GAATTC. Another example of a palindrome would be the sequence 5' CGAAGC 3' that, when reversed, still reads CGAAGC.

Palindromes are important sequences within nucleic acids. Often they are the site of binding for specific enzymes (e.g., restriction endobucleases) designed to cut the DNA strands at specific locations (i.e., at palindromes).

Palindromes may arise from brakeage and chromosomal inversions that form inverted repeats that compliment each other. When a palindrome results from an inversion, it is often referred to as an inverted repeat. For example, the sequence 5' CGAAGC 3', if inverted (reversed 180°), still reads CGAAGC.

The European Molecular Biology Open Software Suite (EMBOSS) includes some basic tools for finding tandem repeats and inverted repeats (see B.6.22. Applications in group Nucleic:repeats). There are many on-line services providing the EMBOSS tools, for example:

Wageningen Bioinformatics Webportal EMBOSS explorer
Mobyle@Pasteur
Soaplab2 Web Services at Vital-IT

For more sophisticated repeat finding you will want to look at tools using Repbase for example:

Other nucleotide repeat finding methods found by a couple of web searches:

Project Assistant/Junior Research Fellow Position at Centre of Biomedical Research, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences Campus, Lucknow.

Mon, 23 May 2016 01:31:29 -0500

Applications are invited from eligible candidates willing to join in a Department of Science and Technology (DST) project entitled “"Mapping neural regions involved in reading process in skilled adult Deaf reader: From neuroimaging perspective (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and Diffuse Tensor Imaging (DTI.)" as a Project Assistant/Junior Research Fellow (JRF) at Centre of Biomedical Research, Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences Campus, Lucknow.

Essential Qualification:

1. Master's degree in Bioinformatics / Computer Applications / Cognitive Science /Neuroscience/ Neuropsychology or equivalent. (Advantage will be given to NET JRF qualified candidate) Additional

Desirable Skills:

1) Programming skills (e.g., C++, Matlab, Python) 2) Experience/competent in working Window and Linux based programme.

Please mail your CV and covering letter to dr.uttam.kumar@gmail.com.

To know more about lab works please visit http://uttambrainlab.co.in/lab/.

Last date: 15/06/16

Advertisement: http://cbmr.res.in/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Advertisement-19-5-2016.pdf

BBMap/BBTools package: Multipurpose tool designed for converting reads or other nucleotide data between different formats.

Jit — Mon, 13 Jun 2016 05:47:21 -0500

Reformatis a member of the BBMap/BBTools package. It is a multipurpose tool designed for converting reads or other nucleotide data between different formats. It supports, and can inter-convert:

fastq
fasta
fasta+qual
sam
scarf (an old Illumina format)
bam (if samtools is installed)
gzip
zip
ascii-33 (sanger)
ascii-64 (old Illumina)
paired files
interleaved files

It is multithreaded and can process data at over 500 megabytes per second, and can accept streams from standard in and write to standard out, allowing it to be easily dropped into the middle of a pipeline for format conversion. Reformat autodetects formats based on file extensions and content, making it very easy to use; and the autodetection can be overridden, allowing flexibility for people who don't like to follow naming conventions, or out-of-spec fastq files with qualities values like -17 or 120.

The program has been gradually expanded, and can now perform various other functions. None of these will break pairing, if the input is paired.

Quality trimming (either or both ends)
Quality filtering
Fixed-length trimming
Generation of histograms (base composition, quality, etc)
Subsampling (to a fraction of input reads, or an exact number of reads or bases)
Changing fasta line-wrapping length
Reverse-complementing (all reads or only read 2)
Adding /1 and /2 suffix to read names
GC-content filtering
Length-filtering
Testing for corrupted interleaved files

Reformat is compatible with any platform that supports Java 1.7 or higher. It also has a bash shellscript for simpler invocation. Typical usage examples:

Reformat fastq into fasta:
reformat.sh in=x.fq out=y.fa

Interleave paired reads:
reformat.sh in1=x1.fq in2=x2.fq out=y.fq

Note - you can actually use a shortcut if paired read files have the same name with a 1 and a 2. This is equivalent to the above command:
reformat.sh in=x#.fq out=y.fq

De-interleave reads:
reformat.sh in=x.fq out1=y1.fq out2=y2.fq

Verify that interleaving appears correct, assuming Illumina namimg conventions:
reformat.sh in=x.fq vint

Convert ASCII-33 to ASCII-64:
reformat.sh in=x.fq out=y.fq qin=33 qout=64

Quality-trim paired reads to Q10 on the left and right ends and discard reads shorter than 50bp after trimming:
reformat.sh in1=x1.fq in2=x2.fq out1=y1.fq out2=y2.fq outsingle=singletons.fq qtrim=rl trimq=10 minlength=50

Subsample 10% of the first 20000 pairs in an interleaved file:
reformat.sh in=x.fq out=y.fq reads=20000 samplerate=0.1 int=t
(in this case "int=t" overrides interleaving autodetection, to ensure reads are treated as pairs)

Pipe in a gzipped sam file and pipe out fasta:
reformat.sh in=stdin.sam.gz out=stdout.fa

Reverse-complement reads:
reformat.sh in=x.fq out=y.fq rcomp

For reformatting a file with very long sequences, Reformat will need more memory; just add the additional flag "-Xmx2g". For example, to change the line-wrapping length on the human genome (which has individual sequences over 200Mbp long) to 70 characters:
reformat.sh -Xmx2g in=HG19.fa.gz out=HG19_wrapped.fa.gz fastawrap=70

For additional functions, please run the shellscript with no arguments, or just read it with a text editor. If you have any questions, please post them in this thread.

For people using a non-bash terminal, you may need to type "bash reformat.sh" instead of just "reformat.sh".
For users of Windows or other platforms that do not support bash shellscripts, replace "reformat.sh" with "java -ea -Xmx200m /path/to/bbmap/current/ jgi.ReformatReads"
for example,
java -ea -Xmx200m C:\bbmap\current\ jgi.ReformatReads in=x.fq out=y.fa

Reformat can be downloaded with BBTools here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/bbmap/

Blobsplorer

Jit — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 10:28:58 -0500

Blobsplorer is a tool for interactive visualization of assembled DNA sequence data ("contigs") derived from (often unintentionally) mixed-species pools. It allows the simultaneous display of GC content, coverage, and taxonomic annotation for collections of contigs with a view to separating out those belonging to different taxa.

Blobsplorer is unlikely to be of use on its own as it requires contig data to be supplied in a format that involves considerable preprocessing (see below for a description). The easiest way to use Blobsplorer is as part of a workflow using scripts from here.

Address of the bookmark: http://nematodes.org/martin/blobsplorer/blobsplorer.html

CNIDARIA: fast, reference-free phylogenomic clustering

Shruti Paniwala — Thu, 16 Jun 2016 17:55:17 -0500

Motivation: Identification of biological specimens is a major requirement for a range of applications. Reference-free methods analyse unprocessed sequencing data without relying on prior knowledge, but these do not scale to arbitrarily large genomes and arbitrarily large phylogenetic distances.

Results: We present Cnidaria, a practical tool for clustering genomic and transcriptomic data with no limitation on ge-nome size or phylogenetic distances. We successfully simultaneously clustered 169 genomic and transcriptomic datasets from 4 kingdoms, achieving 100% accuracy at supra-species level and 78% accuracy for species level.

Availability and Implementation: Cnidaria is written in C++ and Python and is available at http://www.ab.wur.nl/cnidaria.

Contact: Saulo Aflitos - sauloal@gmail.com

Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/sauloal/cnidaria/wiki

Greengenes database

Jit — Wed, 29 Jun 2016 10:03:31 -0500

The greengenes web application provides access to the 2011 version of the greengenes 16S rRNA gene sequence alignment for browsing, blasting, probing, and downloading. The data and tools presented by greengenes can assist the researcher in choosing phylogenetically specific probes, interpreting microarray results, and aligning/annotating novel sequences. If you are an ARB user, you can use greengenes to keep your own local database current.

Address of the bookmark: http://greengenes.lbl.gov/cgi-bin/nph-index.cgi