BOL: Related items

CAR: Reconstructing Contiguous Regions of an Ancestral Genome

Abhimanyu Singh — Thu, 18 May 2017 05:24:01 -0500

We describe a new method for predicting the ancestral order and orientation of those intervals from their observed adjacencies in modern species. We combine the results from this method with data from chromosome painting experiments to produce a map of an early mammalian genome that accounts for 96.8% of the available human genome sequence data. The precision is further increased by mapping inversions as small as 31 bp. Analysis of the predicted evolutionary breakpoints in the human lineage confirms certain published observations but disagrees with others. Although only a few mammalian genomes are currently sequenced to high precision, our theoretical analyses and computer simulations indicate that our results are reasonably accurate and that they will become highly accurate in the foreseeable future. Our methods were developed as part of a project to reconstruct the genome sequence of the last ancestor of human, dogs, and most other placental mammals;

Address of the bookmark: http://www.bx.psu.edu/miller_lab/car/

Tryst with a Bioinformatician # Dr Altan Kara

Jitendra Narayan — Thu, 16 Nov 2017 08:47:52 -0600

Dr Altan Kara is a Bioinformatics specialist at the faculty of Gene Engineering and Biotechnology Institute at TUBITAK MAM Research Center. His research interest revolves around the cancer informatics and computational aided-drug design. I applaud Dr Altan for clearly setting out both his expectations of people that join his lab/university in addition to listing his responsibilities to his research members at TUBITAK MAM Research Institüte. Hopefully, this interview will prove useful to others in the field, especially to those who are just starting their bioinformatics careers.

You can find out more about Dr Altan by visiting his (well documented) lab page (http://gmbe.mam.tubitak.gov.tr/en) and BOL page http://bioinformaticsonline.com/profile/altan . And now, on to the BOL:“Tryst with a Bioinformatician” interview series ...

What push you to join Computational Biology/Bioinformatics?

According to me, bioinformatics is the center of modern biological research and if a researcher wants to discover new biological insights by evaluating the globally produced biological data to derivate unified solutions for specific biological problems, learning bioinformatics is the only way to achieve this goal.

What fascinates you about Computational Biology/Bioinformatics?

It's flexibility. As well known, there are highly diverse and complex biological questions are waiting to be enlightened and it's impossible to bring solutions to this diversity by using similar approaches. Thus, the employed method has to be unique for the targeted biological problem and by using bioinformatics tools this can be easily achieved.

What is the one word you would use to describe yourself?

Bioinformatician. :)

Can you please describe your research work in a nutshell for BOL users.

At my current Institute, I am working in the field of cancer bioinformatics. Briefly, the overall aim of the project which I am working for (AKMARK (Project CODE:5153403)) is, applying a bioinformatics-supported genome, transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome analysis to reveal the molecular profile of the disease through an integrated approach, and to develop an early diagnosis and scanning kit based on this profile. Alterations in the gene, transcript, protein, and metabolite profiles between normal tissue, normal tissue adjoined to the tumor (reactive stroma), tumor tissue, lymph node metastasis, and blood samples taken from the same patient and the reflection of these changes in some other selected body fluids will be revealed within the scope of the project. The molecular structures involved in the development and progression of NSCLC will be determined and relations with the clinical, tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) staging and histology will be made. The development of a diagnostic kit for immediate clinical purposes and an electrochemical biosensor for quick on-site applications are targeted through the development of a number of antibody and aptamer formed against the most specific biomarker selected from the panel.

Is there anything else we should know about you and your research?

Besides AKMARK, I am also in preparation of having a side project that aims for the development of a computational method to design inhibitors for prokaryotic two-component systems. In this project, I will be in collaboration with Prof. Maria Kontoyianni, SIUE: Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, School of Pharmacy.

What was your greatest scientific disappointment in life till now?

So far I do not experience any memorable scientific disappointment in my life. :)

What major research challenges and problems did you face yet? How did you handle them?

The major challenge which I faced so far in my scientific career was predicting the interaction between the prokaryotic two-component proteins. To be able to accurately predict the interactions between these proteins, I create a meta-predictor by using a support vector machine. By using this technique I integrated six different protein-protein interaction methods in a way to cover disadvantage of one method with the advantage of another one. The meta-predictor which I developed during this work is accessible via http://metapred2cs.ibers.aber.ac.uk/ and for more detailed information about the system the articles with the PMID IDs; PMID: 27378293 and PMID: 26384938 can be read.

What's your all-time favourite bioinformatics package, and why?

For me, the best bioinformatics package is R/Bioconductor. The reason why I like this package is, it provides lots of useful tools for comprehensive analysis and comparison of high-throughput experimental data in an integrated manner and besides lots of the packages it provides, it is open source and also open for development. As a result, it provides strong and flexible ways to do science.

In bioinformatics, do you see yourself in which of the following roles-scientist, analyst, developer, engineer or pure academician?

Scientist / Developer.

What will you like to accomplish in next five years / ten years?

For my current research, I would like to design a pipeline to automatically integrate and analyse omics data for cancer research which will be specifically aiming for biomarker and novel drug target discovery. In addition to this, I also like to develop another pipeline for prokaryotic TCS protein structure prediction and inhibitor design.

When you will be retired, what would you tell next generation bioinformaticians?

Bioinformatics is not all about scripting and researchers who study in this field should never expect a tool to do their analyses for them. Besides computational skills, a bioinformatician must have a strong biological background in his/her research area which will allow them to understand if anything went wrong during their run by only looking at the results instead of just blindly trusting the output of the bioinformatics tools.

What you always miss in bioinformatics when you will no longer working in this field?

Bioinformatics is open to doing multi-discipliner research with scientists all around the world. As a result, while I studying in this field I can interactively learn a lot from wide range research community. I think this is the one thing which I will miss the most.

If there will be bioinformatics company owned by you in future, What are your company focus and aim?

With the increasing amount of data in databases, there is already a massive need for effective methods to eliminate the manipulated data and reach to clean/useful information. As days pass, the requirement of data mining will be the first step of any research project. For this reason, the major goal of my bioinformatics company will be developing effective tools to eliminate manipulated datasets and information that exist in the literature and provide trustworthy clean information/datasets for researchers.

How much bioinformatics change in 2050, according to your wild imagination?

Bioinformatics is a field that constantly and dynamically changes. As the bioinformatics progress, new tools and methods become available and they provide a better application of existing methods or totally new methods that offer an alternative solution to various biological problems. A long with these updates, developers also provide easy to use GUIs for most of the tools. Considering this, if the field carries on developing like this, every single researcher with a strong biological background can be able to perform bioinformatics analyses by him/herself without needing a professional help. As a result, almost all of the bioinformaticians will be responsible just for development of new methods/tools.

What would one piece of advice you give someone who's trying to reinvent themselves and enter into bioinformatics sector?

Bioinformatics is a wide field with a lot of career options. Thus, if a researcher likes to step into this field first he/she should be clear about the branch of the bioinformatics they like to study in. Following to this decision they should first learn at least one programing language and investigate the ways of how other researcher employed that language in their researches and WHY? A researcher, in this field, should never create and use copy paste scripts but always must understand WHY the other researcher worked in that way. Knowing the answer of this question is the only way to learn bioinformatics. Besides, a researcher in the field of bioinformatics (from any branch) must always be good about the environmental control. In other words, one should always easily control input output directories, modify files or directories, annotate and modify employed scripts during the research and should not allow any confusion during the different stages of the research. Finally, they should not blindly trust the output of a tool/software but do a benchmarking test for each of the tools which they decided to utilise in their research. In addition to this, even if the tools pass the benchmarking, researchers should have a good biological background in their field to tell if anything when wrong during the process by only looking the output(s) of the employed pipelines/packages/tools.

Postdoctoral scholarship in Bioinformatics at KTH

Thu, 21 Dec 2017 03:55:53 -0600

The School of Biotechnology offers a curriculum that reflects the multidisciplinary nature of Biotechnology, integrating theoretical and applied science in undergraduate and graduate courses. The school has six departments with about 300 employees, located at AlbaNova University Center in Stockholm and Science for Life Laboratory in Solna. The Biotechnology research within the school is internationally well recognized.

We are now seeking a postdoc scholarship holder with strong background in transcriptomics to use this large collection of data for integrative studies. Focus will be on advanced bioinformatics and statistical analysis of data from high-throughput sequencing including integration with the other platforms.

The scholarship holder must have a PhD with an outstanding research and publication record and will be selected based on her/his excellence and her/his skills. A PhD should have been awarded less than five years before the deadline of the application. The scholarship holder must have a strong background in bioinformatics, computer science, computational biology or equivalent with a profound knowledge about biology and biostatistics.

Your complete application must be received at KTH no later than 2018-01-15.

https://www.kth.se/en/om/work-at-kth/stipendier/postdoctoral-scholarship-in-bioinformatics-with-focus-on-transcriptomics-and-data-integration-1.779571

An Introduction to Applied Bioinformatics

Jit — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 04:26:38 -0600

IAB is primarily being developed by Greg Caporaso(GitHub/Twitter: @gregcaporaso) in the Caporaso Lab at Northern Arizona University. You can find information on the courses I teach on my teaching website and information on my research and lab on my lab website.

Address of the bookmark: http://readiab.org/

SciLifeLab tutorial for bioinformatics analysis !

Jit — Tue, 17 Apr 2018 04:33:00 -0500

SciLifeLab is a national center for molecular biosciences with focus on health and environmental research.

Courses

Old courses (2012-2014)

Bioinformatics -- Understanding of living systems through information science

Wed, 14 Aug 2013 11:50:17 -0500

Recently, the progress of the Human Genome Project, aiming to decode all human DNA sequences, has highlighted a research field called bioinformatics. In this new field, computers and techniques from information science are not just used as tools to advance life science research; they're expected to have a major impact on how we think about the life sciences. Q. The main feature of bioinformatics is, it utilizes computers to analyze life. One is example is the genome. In all organisms, DNA contains genetic information, and this is called the genome. But the amount of information involved is huge, so recently, it's been read using next-generation sequencers, and analyzed by computers. In bioinformatics research, what we do is utilize those genome information to investigate the principles of life. As an organism evolves, its genome sequence changes through sudden mutations. Additionally, at the genome level, mutations called rearrangements, such as inversions, transpositions, and duplications, occur. The genome comparison system developed by the Sakakibara Lab calculates homologous sequences called anchors, which are conserved between species. If the genome is considered as a long text, then anchors can be thought of as words. Q. We're coming to understand the genomes of various organisms - not just humans, but monkeys, chimpanzees, bacteria, and so on. The first method used to analyze a genome is comparing it with the genomes of other organisms, to see where it's the same and where it's different. In that way, the content of the genome is decoded bit by bit, using computers. By contrast, in our method, we've developed software called Murasaki, which we also use to analyze large genomes, by comparing them with those of other organisms. The Sakakibara Lab uses a next-generation sequencer at Keio University, along with a cluster machine with hundreds of CPUs. In this way, the Lab is analyzing genome mutations that cause cancer, and the genome of the natto production strain Bacillus subtilis. Until now, genome analysis could only be done in national-scale projects. But now, next-generation sequencer development has made genome analysis possible in an ordinary lab. In a world-first achievement, the Sakakibara Lab has decoded the natto bacillus genome, through analysis using Keio's next-generation sequencer. Q. In the future, biology and the life sciences may become almost entirely information science and computer science. And in healthcare, that may enable us, for example, to predict whether individuals are susceptible to cancer, or to certain lifestyle-related diseases, by understanding their personal genome data. So, I think it's amply possible that we can make use of such information effectively, to help people live longer and be free from disease, by thinking about their lifestyle habits. Bioinformatics is only two decades old. In this field, many areas are still unknown. Professor Sakakibara, having been involved since the beginning, will continue tackling new, challenging research projects.

Jvarkit : Java utilities for Bioinformatics

Jit — Fri, 08 Jun 2018 09:31:55 -0500

Collection of Java tool kits for bioinformatics works: Jvarkit : Java utilities for Bioinformatics

Address of the bookmark: http://lindenb.github.io/jvarkit/

Thank You Email After Bioinformatics Interview !

Jit — Tue, 08 Jan 2019 15:37:33 -0600

A good interview thank you email or note should contain three essential pieces:

a) Show appreciation for their time and thank them

b) Mention something specific you talked about in the interview, so they know it’s not a cut & paste email

c) Express interest in the position and tell them you’re excited to learn more

d) Invite them to contact you if they have any questions/concerns, or need clarification on anything discussed

First sample:

Dear Dr XYZ
I enjoyed speaking with you today about the XXX position at the X Lab, Uni. The job seems to be an excellent match for my skills and interests.

The lab loaded with new updated technology and international experts, that you informed while interviewing confirmed my desire to work with X lab.

In addition to my enthusiasm, I will bring to the position strong writing skills, assertiveness, and the ability to encourage others to work cooperatively with the group

I appreciate the time you took to interview me. I am very interested in working with you and look forward to hearing from you regarding this position.

Sincerely,
XXX

Second sample:

Dear Dr XXX,
I wanted to take a second to thank you for your time . I enjoyed our conversation about and enjoyed learning about the position overall.
It sounds like an exciting opportunity, and an opportunity I could succeed and excel in! I’m looking forward to hearing any updates you can share, and don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns in the meantime.
Thanks again for the great conversation .
Best Regards,
XXX

Translational Bioinformatics: Transforming 300 Billion Points of Data

Tue, 20 Aug 2013 19:03:47 -0500

Translational Bioinformatics: Transforming 300 Billion Points of Data into Diagnostics, Therapeutics, and New Insights into Disease Air date: Wednesday, June 20, 2012, 3:00:00 PM Time displayed is Eastern Time, Washington DC Local Description: There is an urgent need to translate genome-era discoveries into clinical utility, but the difficulties in making bench-to-bedside translations haven't been well described. The nascent field of translational bioinformatics may help. Dr. Butte's lab at Stanford University builds and applies tools that convert more than 300 billion points of molecular, clinical, and epidemiological data (measured by researchers and clinicians over the past decade) into diagnostics, therapeutics, and new insights into disease. Dr. Butte, a bioinformatician and pediatric endocrinologist, will highlight his lab's work on using publicly available molecular measurements to find new uses for drugs, discovering new treatable mechanisms of disease in type 2 diabetes, and evaluating patients presenting with whole genomes sequenced. The NIH Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series includes weekly scientific talks by some of the top researchers in the biomedical sciences worldwide. For more information, visit: The NIH Director's Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series Author: Atul Butte, M.D., Ph.D., Stanford University Runtime: 01:07:42 Permanent link: http://videocast.nih.gov/launch.asp?17321

Bioinformatics Services / CRO Services

RASA Life Sciences — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 00:33:11 -0600

RASA is set to provide premium technical and scientific services in a form of solutions, product development and training. .We are also very proficient in providing the high quality Research & Development services in life science informatics field like Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) Data Analysis,Computational Drug Discovery, Bioinformatics, Chemo-informatics and BIO-IT.

RASA offers faster, better and cost effective cutting edge technology solutions to chemical and life science research and industry. We provide our customers with A seamless model of wide expertise and comprehensive platforms. Our Value is to take our customers

BOL: Related items

CAR: Reconstructing Contiguous Regions of an Ancestral Genome

Tryst with a Bioinformatician # Dr Altan Kara

Postdoctoral scholarship in Bioinformatics at KTH

An Introduction to Applied Bioinformatics

SciLifeLab tutorial for bioinformatics analysis !

Courses

Metagenomics Workshop

Introduction to Bioinformatics Using NGS Data

Introduction to Genome Annotation

De Novo Genome Assembly

RNA-seq course

R Programming Foundations for Life Scientists

Single cell RNA sequencing analysis

Bioinformatics -- Understanding of living systems through information science

Jvarkit : Java utilities for Bioinformatics

Thank You Email After Bioinformatics Interview !

Translational Bioinformatics: Transforming 300 Billion Points of Data

Bioinformatics Services / CRO Services