BOL: Related items

Postgraduate Research Associate Bioinformatics / Computational Biology (Reference code: 59)

Tue, 04 Aug 2015 20:32:39 -0500

The Department of Biotechnology, group “Genome Bioinformatics” is currently seeking a Postgraduate Research Associate Bioinformatics / Computational Biology (Reference code: 59)

Extent of employment: 30 Hours per Week
Duration of employment: 1st of October 2015 to 30th of September 2019
Gross monthly salary and pay grade in terms of collective agreement for university staff (payable 14 times per year): B1, € 1.997,20

Responsibilities
The successful candidate (f/m) will pursue a Ph.D. project related to the interpretation of plant genome and transcriptome sequencing data from next-generation sequencing (NGS) platforms. In particular, the candidate will characterize the unexplored genome of quinoa, a crop plant of long-standing tradition in Latin America. We collaborate with research partners in Austria and abroad, and the candidate’s project will be of central importance in the context of this research network.

Required skills and qualifications
We are looking for a graduate student (f/m) with a Master’s degree in bioinformatics or in a related field, solid programming skills (e.g. developing sequence analysis tools), experience with the analysis of NGS data sets, understanding of lab methods and knowledge of genomics/transcriptomics. The group has successfully performed several projects using NGS technology. We have recently published the reference genome sequence of sugar beet (Dohm et al., Nature, 2014), a crop plant closely related to quinoa (same family, but different genus). Not yet published is a quinoa genome assembly that we have generated, and which will serve as the starting point of the candidate’s project. We are a multidisciplinary team and offer work in a lively and friendly atmosphere, and state-of-the-art computing infrastructure. We are looking forward to expanding our team by a dedicated and strongly motivated person with a distinct interest in the challenges of plant genomics.

Applications can be submitted until: 16th of August 2015

University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna seeks to increase the number of its female faculty and staff members. Therefore qualified women are strongly encouraged to apply. In case of equal qualification, female candidates will be given preference unless reasons specific to an individual male candidate tilt the balance in his favour.

Please send your job application (incl. letter of motivation, CV, summary of Master’s thesis and contact details for two referees) to Personnel department, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, 1190 Vienna, Peter-Jordan-Straße 70; E-Mail: kerstin.buchmueller@boku.ac.at. (Reference code: 59)

We regret that we cannot reimburse applicants travel and lodging expenses incurred as part of the selection and hiring process.

www.boku.ac.at

Linux operating system aimed at scientists

Pranjali Yadav — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 08:30:49 -0600

The Bio-Linux operating system is based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr), and the previous version was using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. The developers only use LTS releases and that means that upgrades for this distro don't come along all that often.

This Linux distribution is aimed at scientists and it comes with more than 250 bioinformatics packages, 50 graphical applications and several hundred command line tools. And this is just skimming the surface of what the OS can do. Users have access to even more apps from the official repositories.

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

DNA Transcription (Advanced)

Thu, 29 Jan 2015 05:31:42 -0600

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.

A guide for complete R beginners !

Archana Malhotra — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 23:36:46 -0600

This tutorial is intended to introduce users quickly to the basics of R, focusing on a few common tasks that biologists need to perform some basic analysis: load a table, plot some graphs, and perform some basic statistics. More extensive tutorials can be found on the project website and via bioconductor (not covered here).

R-language: http://www.r-project.org

BioConductor: http://www.bioconductor.org

Advantages of R

Free!
Powerful, many libraries have been created to perform application specific tasks. e.g. analysis of microarray experiments and Next-Gen sequencing (bioconductor: including Bioseq group).
Presentation quality graphics
- Save as a png, pdf or svg
History
- What you do can be saved for the next time you use R.
- Ability to turn it into an automated script to perform again and again on different data

Disadvantages

Lack of a comprehensive graphical user interface, but two do exist: However some do exist: R commander: http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/ and Limma-gui (microarrays) : http://bioinf.wehi.edu.au/limmaGUI/

Preparation

(Optional) Download and save the tutorial data set from
- http://bioinformatics.knowledgeblog.org/wp-content/uploads/bioinf/kerr/data.tsv
- Start R (type R on a Linux or Mac terminal, or find the starting link from PC)

Getting More Help

Project Home page
- http://www.r-project.org/
- Check out the ‘introduction to R’, which is a much more in depth guide .
- Also R has a built-in help system (see later)

Working directory

This is the directory used to store your data and results. It is useful if it is also the directory where your input data is stored.

Mac/Linux: this is the directory where you typed in R
PC: Change using the change working directory option

Affy has acquired Eureka Genomics for 15M $

Martin Jones — Wed, 20 May 2015 15:11:20 -0500

Affymetrix Acquires Assets Of Eureka Genomics Corporation To Provide High Throughput And Economical Crop And Animal Genotyping

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

Sequencing By Xpansion

Jitendra Narayan — Wed, 17 Jun 2015 20:58:11 -0500

Sequencing By Xpansion (SBX) is a DNA sequencing method that uses a simple biochemical reaction to encode the sequence of a DNA molecule into a highly measurable surrogate called an Xpandomer. This single molecule approach produces enough Xpandomer in a single drop reaction to sequence an entire human genome 1000X over. To achieve this, an Xpandomer replaces each DNA sequence with a sequence of large, high signal reporter molecules using the SBX molecular expansion technology. The DNA sequence is then read out as the Xpandomer reporters pass sequentially through a nanopore detector. SBX is a molecular engineering platform that benefits from core design principles that separate the multiple molecular functions. This systems approach enables efficient development and incorporation of improvements to SBX and is key to reconfiguring and optimizing Xpandomer measurement for different detection platforms.

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

Cancer research database

Neel — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 17:36:31 -0500

Researchers in Andhra Pradesh have developed a database to identify genes that are common in tumours to provide their colleagues with easy access to insights into the genetic alterations in cancer.

The database, hosted at the Sri Venkateswara University (SVU) in Tirupati, will integrate information on cancer genes and markers with experimental data.

The Cancer Gene Markers Database (CGMD) is meant to help scientists better understand tumour genes and markers at a molecular level by combining data with literature on treatment regimen and recent advances in cancer therapy.

The database is free to access, and already includes 309 genes and 206 markers that correspond to 40 different human cancers. Accompanying literature comes from databases such as the United States’ National Center for Biotechnology Information and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes. It also includes experimental data from PubMed.

In a paper published last month in Nature Scientific Reports, the researchers from SVU’s department of animal biotechnology, describes the need for a database for different genes and markers along with their molecular characteristics and pathway associations.

MAKER

Jitendra Narayan — Sun, 07 Feb 2016 15:59:24 -0600

MAKER is a portable and easily configurable genome annotation pipeline.Its purpose is to allow smaller eukaryotic and prokaryotic genome projects to independently annotate their genomes and to create genome databases. MAKER identifies repeats, aligns ESTs and proteins to a genome, produces ab-initio gene predictions and automatically synthesizes these data into gene annotations having evidence-based quality values.

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

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

liftover

Jitendra Narayan — Mon, 08 Feb 2016 15:45:03 -0600

Convenient conversions between genome assemblie. The liftover package makes it easy to remap genomic coordinates to a different genome assembly.

More at https://github.com/aaronwolen/liftover

https://www.bioconductor.org/help/workflows/liftOver/

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/aaronwolen/liftover

Managing and Analyzing Next-Generation Sequence Data

Rahul Agarwal — Sat, 10 May 2014 06:28:06 -0500

Centralized Bioinformatics Core Facilities provide shared resources for the computational and IT requirements of the investigators in their department or institution. As such, they must be able to effectively react to new types of experimental technology. Recently faced with an unprecedented flood of data generated by the next generation of DNA sequencers, these groups found it necessary to respond quickly and efficiently to the informatics and infrastructure demands. Centralized Facilities newly facing this challenge need to anticipate time and design considerations of necessary components, including infrastructure upgrades, staffing, and tools for data analyses and management ...

More at http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1000369

Address of the bookmark: http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1000369