Professionally, Python is great for backend web development, data analysis, artificial intelligence, and scientific computing. Many developers have also used Python to build productivity tools, games, and desktop apps, so there are plenty of resources to help you learn how to do those as well.

For pros and cons visit http://www.bestprogramminglanguagefor.me/why-learn-python and http://bioinformaticsonline.com/discussion/view/459/python-vs-perl

More resources at https://github.com/CodementorIO/Python-Learning-Resources

Following are the list of useful python programming resources:

• 20 Python Libraries You Aren't Using (But Should) (Just fill the fields with any values)
• A Beginner's Python Tutorial
• A Byte of Python (3.x) (HTML, PDF, EPUB, Mobi)
• A Guide to Python's Magic Methods - Rafe Kettler
• A Whirlwind Tour of Python - Jake VanderPlas (PDF) (EPUB, MOBI)
• Automate the Boring Stuff - Al Sweigart
• Biopython (PDF)
• Build applications in Python the antitextbook (3.x) (HTML, PDF, EPUB, Mobi)
• Building Machine Learning Systems with Python - Willi Richert & Luis Pedro Coelho, Packt. (Just fill the fields with any values)
• Building Skills in Object-Oriented Design (Python) (PDF) (2.1.1)
• Building Skills in Python (PDF) (2.6)
• Code Like a Pythonista: Idiomatic Python
• CodeCademy Python
• Composing Programs (3.x)
• Data Structures and Algorithms in Python - B. R. Preiss (PDF)
• Dive into Python 3 - Mark Pilgrim (3.0)
  • Dive into Python - Mark Pilgrim (2.3)
• From Python to NumPy
• Full Stack Python
• Functional Programming in Python (Just fill the fields with any values)
• Fundamentals of Python Programming - Richard L. Halterman (PDF) (3.2)
• Google's Python Class (2.4 - 2.x)
• Google's Python Style Guide
• Hacking Secret Cyphers with Python - Al Sweigart (3.3)
• Hadoop with Python (Just fill the fields with any values)
• High Performance Python (PDF)
• Hitchhiker's Guide to Python! (2.6)
• How to Make Mistakes in Python - Mike Pirnat (PDF) (1st edition)
• How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python, Interactive Edition (3.2)
  • How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python - Allen B. Downey, Jeff Elkner and Chris Meyers (2.4)
  • Think Python - Allen B. Downey (2.x & 3.0)
• Intermediate Python - Muhammad Yasoob Ullah Khalid (1st edition)
• Introduction to Programming with Python (3.3)
  • Introduction to Programming Using Python - Cody Jackson (1st edition) (2.3)
• Introduction to Python - Kracekumar (2.7.3)
• Invent Your Own Computer Games With Python - Al Sweigart (3.1)
• Learn Python, Break Python
• Learn Python in Y minutes
• Learn Python The Hard Way (2.5 - 2.6)
• Learn to Program Using Python - Cody Jackson (PDF)
• Learning Python - Fabrizio Romano, Packt. (Just fill the fields with any values)
• Learning to Program
• Lectures on scientific computing with python - J.R. Johansson (2.7)
• Making Games with Python & Pygame - Al Sweigart (2.7)
• Modeling Creativity: Case Studies in Python - Tom D. De Smedt (PDF)
• Natural Language Processing with Python (3.x)
• Non-Programmer's Tutorial for Python 3 (3.3)
  • Non-Programmer's Tutorial for Python 2.6 (2.6)
• Picking a Python Version: A Manifesto (Just fill the fields with any values)
• Porting to Python 3: An In-Depth Guide (2.6 - 2.x & 3.1 - 3.x)
• Practical Programming in Python - Jeffrey Elkner (PDF)
• Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures using Python - Bradley N. Miller and David L. Ranum
• Program Arcade Games With Python And Pygame (3.3)
• Programming Computer Vision with Python (PDF)
• Python 2 Official Documentation (PDF, HTML, TEXT) (2.x)
• Python 2.7 quick reference - New Mexico Tech (2.7)
• Python 3 Official Documentation (PDF, EPUB, HTML, TEXT) (3.x)
• Python Cookbook - David Beazley
• Python Data Science Handbook - Jake VanderPlas (HTML, Jupyter Notebooks)
• Python for Econometrics - Kevin Sheppard (PDF) (2.7.5)
• Python for Everybody Exploring Data Using Python 3 - Charles Severance (PDF, EPUB, HTML)
  • Python for Informatics: Exploring Information (2.7.5)
• Python for you and me (2.7.3)
• Python for you and me (3.x)
• Python Idioms (PDF)
• Python in Education (Just fill the fields with any values)
• Python in Hydrology - Sat Kumar Tomer
• Python Koans (2.7 or 3.x)
• Python Module of the Week (3.x)
  • Python Module of the Week (2.x)
• Python Notes for Professionals - Compiled from StackOverflow documentation (3.x)
• Python Practice Book (2.7.1)
• Python Practice Projects
• Python Programming (PDF) (2.6)
• Scipy Lecture Notes
• SICP in Python (3.2)
• Snake Wrangling For Kids (3.x)
• Suporting Python 3: An In-Depth Guide (2.6 - 2.x & 3.1 - 3.x)
• Test-Driven Web Development with Python (3.3 - 3.x)
• Text Processing in Python - David Mertz (2.3 - 2.x)
• The Coder's Apprentice: Learning Programming with Python 3 - Pieter Spronck (PDF) (3.x)
• The Definitive Guide to Jython, Python for the Java Platform - Josh Juneau, Jim Baker, Victor Ng, Leo Soto, Frank Wierzbicki (2.5)
• The Little Book of Python Anti-Patterns (Source)
• The Programming Historian - William J. Turkel, Adam Crymble and Alan MacEachern
• The Python Ecosystem: An Introduction
• The Python GTK+ 3 Tutorial
• The Standard Python Library - Fredrik Lundh
• Think Complexity - Allen B. Downey (2nd Edition) (PDF, HTML)
• Web2py: Complete Reference Manual, 6th Edition (pre-release) (2.5 - 2.x)
• Wikibooks: Python Programming (2.7)

In this tutorial series article, I will explore features and packages of python which are widely used in the big data, NGS, and bioinformatics. I will also walk through a real biological example which shows NGS data processing with the help of python packages and programming.

Python has a couple of points to recommend it to biologists and scientists specifically:

• It's widely used in the scientific community
• It has a couple of very well designed libraries for doing complex scientific computing (although we won't encounter them in this book)
• It lend itself well to being integrated with other, existing tools
• It has features which make it easy to manipulate strings of characters (for example, strings of DNA bases and protein amino acid residues, which we as biologists are particularly fond of)

In general, following are some of the important features of python which makes it a perfect fit for rapid application development.

• Python is interpreted language so the program does not need to be compiled. Interpreter parses the program code and generates the output.
• Python is dynamically typed, so the variables types are defined automatically.
• Python is strongly typed. So the developers need to cast the type manually.
• Less code and more use makes it more acceptable.
• Python is portable, extendable and scalable.

There are two major Python versions, Python 2 and Python 3. Python 2 and 3 are quite different. This tutorial uses Python 3, because it more semantically correct and supports newer features.

I will post tutorial on daily basis on this page. Check the sub-pages on right side.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.programmingr.com/category/stype/r-job-listings/

Perl one-liners are small and awesome Perl programs that fit in a single line of code and they do one thing really well. These things include changing line spacing, numbering lines, doing calculations, converting and substituting text, deleting and printing certain lines, parsing logs, editing files in-place, doing statistics, carrying out system administration tasks, updating a bunch of files at once, and many more. Perl one-liners will make you the shell warrior. Anything that took you minutes to solve, will now take you seconds!

perl -pe '$\="\n"'   
#double space a file

perl -pe '$_ .= "\n" unless /^$/'
#double space a file except blank lines

perl -pe '$_.="\n"x7'
#7 space in a line.

perl -ne 'print unless /^$/'
#remove all blank lines

perl -lne 'print if length($_) < 20'
#print all lines with length less than 20.

perl -00 -pe ''
#If there are multiple spaces, delete all leaving one(make the file a single spaced file).

perl -00 -pe '$_.="\n"x4'
#Expand single blank lines into 4 consecutive blank lines

perl -pe '$_ = "$. $_"'
#Number all lines in a file

perl -pe '$_ = ++$a." $_" if /./'
#Number only non-empty lines in a file

perl -ne 'print ++$a." $_" if /./'
#Number and print only non-empty lines in a file

perl -pe '$_ = ++$a." $_" if /regex/'
#Number only lines that match a pattern

perl -ne 'print ++$a." $_" if /regex/'
#Number and print only lines that match a pattern

perl -ne 'printf "%-5d %s", $., $_ if /regex/'
#Left align lines with 5 white spaces if matches a pattern (perl -ne 'printf "%-5d %s", $., $_' : for all the lines)

perl -le 'print scalar(grep{/./}<>)'
#prints the total number of non-empty lines in a file

perl -lne '$a++ if /regex/; END {print $a+0}'
#print the total number of lines that matches the pattern

perl -alne 'print scalar @F'
#print the total number fields(words) in each line.

perl -alne '$t += @F; END { print $t}'
#Find total number of words in the file

perl -alne 'map { /regex/ && $t++ } @F; END { print $t }'
#find total number of fields that match the pattern

perl -lne '/regex/ && $t++; END { print $t }'
#Find total number of lines that match a pattern

perl -le '$n = 20; $m = 35; ($m,$n) = ($n,$m%$n) while $n; print $m'
#will calculate the GCD of two numbers.

perl -le '$a = $n = 20; $b = $m = 35; ($m,$n) = ($n,$m%$n) while $n; print $a*$b/$m'
#will calculate lcd of 20 and 35.

perl -le '$n=10; $min=5; $max=15; $, = " "; print map { int(rand($max-$min))+$min } 1..$n'
#Generates 10 random numbers between 5 and 15.

perl -le 'print map { ("a".."z",”0”..”9”)[rand 36] } 1..8'
#Generates a 8 character password from a to z and number 0 – 9.

perl -le 'print map { ("a",”t”,”g”,”c”)[rand 4] } 1..20'
#Generates a 20 nucleotide long random residue.

perl -le 'print "a"x50'
#generate a string of ‘x’ 50 character long

perl -le 'print join ", ", map { ord } split //, "hello world"'
#Will print the ascii value of the string hello world.

perl -le '@ascii = (99, 111, 100, 105, 110, 103); print pack("C*", @ascii)'
#converts ascii values into character strings.

perl -le '@odd = grep {$_ % 2 == 1} 1..100; print "@odd"'
#Generates an array of odd numbers.

perl -le '@even = grep {$_ % 2 == 0} 1..100; print "@even"'
#Generate an array of even numbers

perl -lpe 'y/A-Za-z/N-ZA-Mn-za-m/' file
#Convert the entire file into 13 characters offset(ROT13)

perl -nle 'print uc'
#Convert all text to uppercase:

perl -nle 'print lc'
#Convert text to lowercase:

perl -nle 'print ucfirst lc'
#Convert only first letter of first word to uppercas

perl -ple 'y/A-Za-z/a-zA-Z/'
#Convert upper case to lower case and vice versa

perl -ple 's/(\w+)/\u$1/g'
#Camel Casing

perl -pe 's|\n|\r\n|'
#Convert unix new lines into DOS new lines:

perl -pe 's|\r\n|\n|'
#Convert DOS newlines into unix new line

perl -pe 's|\n|\r|'
#Convert unix newlines into MAC newlines:

perl -pe '/regexp/ && s/foo/bar/'
#Substitute a foo with a bar in a line with a regexp.

Reference/Sources:

http://genomics-array.blogspot.in/2010/11/some-unixperl-oneliners-for.html

http://genomespot.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-selection-of-useful-bash-one-liners.html

http://biowize.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/command-line-magic-for-your-gene-annotations/

http://genomics-array.blogspot.com/2010/11/some-unixperl-oneliners-for.html

http://bioexpressblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/split-multi-fasta-sequence-file/

Bio-Linux is using an Ubuntu LTS version as its base

The fact that it uses Ubuntu LTS versions for the base is a good thing because it means its users won't have to worry about the support. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is supported until 2019, so people who are using Bio-Linux shouldn't have a problem.

"An updated Bio-Linux 8 version is now on the website in ISO and OVA versions. As usual, there is no need to download this version if you are an existing user. All updates to existing packages will be applied to your system through the update manager and new packages are all available via apt-get or Synaptic," reads the announcement.

The changelog also states that a problem that was preventing the desktop to not start on VirtualBox has been fixed, the QIIME and Bowtie-Bio tools have been upgraded, the pandaseq paired end assembler has been added, and the beginners tutorial specific to Bio-Linux 8 has been improved.

Check out the official announcement for a complete list of changes and updates. You can download Bio-Linux 8.0.5 right now from Softpedia and give it a spin. It has the Unity desktop and now it runs very well in virtual environments.

Reference @ http://news.softpedia.com/news/Bioinformatics-Distro-Bio-Linux-8-0-5-Now-Available-for-Download-469867.shtml

Transcription is the process by which the information in DNA is copied into messenger RNA (mRNA) for protein production. Originally created for DNA Interactive ( http://www.dnai.org ). TRANSCRIPT: The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology: "DNA makes RNA makes protein" Here the process begins. Transcription factors assemble at a specific promoter region along the DNA. The length of DNA following the promoter is a gene and it contains the recipe for a protein. A mediator protein complex arrives carrying the enzyme RNA polymerase. It manoeuvres the RNA polymerase into place... inserting it with the help of other factors between the strands of the DNA double helix. The assembled collection of all these factors is referred to as the transcription initiation complex... and now it is ready to be activated. The initiation complex requires contact with activator proteins, which bind to specific sequences of DNA known as enhancer regions. These regions may be thousands of base pairs distant from the start of the gene. Contact between the activator proteins and the initiation-complex releases the copying mechanism. The RNA polymerase unzips a small portion of the DNA helix exposing the bases on each strand. Only one of the strands is copied. It acts as a template for the synthesis of an RNA molecule which is assembled one sub-unit at a time by matching the DNA letter code on the template strand. The sub-units can be seen here entering the enzyme through its intake hole and they are joined together to form the long messenger RNA chain snaking out of the top.

http://www.thestreet.com/story/13151062/1/affymetrix-acquires-assets-of-eureka-genomics-corporation-to-provide-high-throughput-and-economical-crop-and-animal-genotyping.html

http://www.stratosgenomics.com/stratos-genomics-technology

More at http://www.yandell-lab.org/software/maker.html

Address of the bookmark: http://www.yandell-lab.org/software/maker.html