BOL: Related items

Nemo – A stochastic, individual-base, genetically explicit simulation platform

Jit — Sat, 01 Oct 2016 14:45:02 -0500

A recombination map has been added for all multi-locus traits. The map positions (chromosomal) for neutral markers (e.g. SNPs) and loci under selection (QTLs, deleterious mutations, DMIs) can now be specified explicitly, or set at random. The map can hold an unlimited number of loci of different types jointly, at any recombination scale (cM or lower). The effects of linkage can thus be finely explored.
A new trait coding for (Bateson-)Dobzhansky-Muller incompatibility loci. Multiple haploid or diploid pairs of incompatible loci can be spread throughout the genome and affect individual fitness.
Multi-type selection: Individual fitness can be jointly determined by different types of loci under selectinon, such as QTLs coding for quantitative traits under spatially variable selection, universally deleterious mutations, and Dobzhansky-Muller incompatibility loci.
An unlimited number of quantitative traits under different forms of selection can be modelled, based on universally pleiotropic loci with several bi- or multi-allelic models.
Spatial and temporal variation of selection on quantitative traits is possible, modelling shifts of environmental conditions over time.
The dispersal matrix describing the movement of individuals among sub-populations can be replaced by a connectivity matrix and a reduced dispersal matrix describing migration only among the connected sub-populations. This offers a substantial gain in computing time and system memory when simulating very large grids.
Input parameters' arguments may be specified in separate files. This is particularly convenient when specifying large matrices.
Many adjustments have been made for refined control of the input of parameters and data output. See updates in the manual.

Address of the bookmark: http://nemo2.sourceforge.net/index.html

Referee: Genome assembly quality scores

Jit — Sun, 04 Nov 2018 16:44:30 -0600

Modern genome sequencing technologies provide a succint measure of quality at each position in every read, however all of this information is lost in the assembly process. Referee summarizes the quality information from the reads that map to a site in an assembled genome to calculate a quality score for each position in the genome assembly.

We accomplish this by first calculating genotype likelihoods for every site. For a given site in a diploid genome, there are 10 possible genotypes (AA, AC, AG, AT, CC, CG, CT, GG, GT, TT). Referee takes as input the genotype likelihoods calculated for all 10 genotypes given the called reference base at each position.

Referee is a program to calculate a quality score for every position in a genome assembly. This allows for easy filtering of low quality sites for any downstream analysis.

https://github.com/gwct/referee

Address of the bookmark: https://gwct.github.io/referee/#

LINKS

Jit — Fri, 04 Nov 2016 06:19:01 -0500

LINKS is a genomics application for scaffolding genome assemblies with long reads, such as those produced by Oxford Nanopore Technologies Ltd. It can be used to scaffold high-quality draft genome assemblies with any long sequences (eg. ONT reads, PacBio reads, another draft genomes, etc)

Paper at https://gigascience.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13742-015-0076-3

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/warrenlr/LINKS/

Professor (all levels) in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology

Tue, 22 Nov 2016 05:43:38 -0600

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) (kaust.edu.sa) is seeking a highly motivated and skilled faculty member for the Bioinformatics track whose research focuses on development of methods and tools for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology.
KAUST is an international, graduate-level research university dedicated to advancing science and technology through interdisciplinary research, education, and innovation. Located on the shores of the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia, KAUST offers superb research facilities, generous assured research funding, and internationally competitive salaries, attracting top international faculty, scientists, engineers, and students to conduct fundamental and goal-oriented research to address the world’s pressing scientific and technological challenges in the areas of food, water, energy, and the environment.
The successful applicant is expected to develop world-leading research in domain of bioinformatics/computational biology with focus on development of novel computational approaches for efficient and accurate methods of analyzing biological phenomena at molecular level. The faculty member will be part of the Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC) within the Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division. The position will remain open until filled.

Requirements:

PhD or equivalent in a Computer Science, Mathematics or Engineering discipline. Candidates should be well-established within the research field relevant to the position grade. They should demonstrate original research and experience at the highest international level.

Responsibilities and tasks:

Research competence in the following areas is preferred:
Analysis of next generation sequencing (NGS) and other ‘omics’ data (e.g. CAGE, ChIP-Seq, DHS, RNA-Seq, Ribo-Seq, proteomic, metabolic and NMR spectra, etc.).
Signaling, regulatory and metabolic pathways analysis.
Development of tools (web-based and standalone) suited for efficient computational biology/bioinformatics.

Visit cemse.kaust.edu.sa to apply.

Structural variation: the hidden genomic treasure

Jit — Sat, 10 Dec 2016 16:19:09 -0600

Genome re-sequencing projects have revealed substantial amounts of genetic variation between individuals extending beyond single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and short indels. Structural Variations (SVs) and Copy Number Variations (CNVs) are a major source of genomic variation. However, compared to SNPs, accurate detection, genotyping and understanding of CNVs is lagging behind due to much greater analytical challenges related to SV/CNV detection and analysis. In our lab we analyse SVs/CNVs using high-throughput sequencing and different analytical approaches. The most‐studied structural variants are copy number variations (CNVs) which can be generated by several different mechanisms including non‐allelic homologous recombination, non‐homologous end‐joining and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) replication‐related fork stalling and template switching. CNVs are closely related to segmental duplications (SDs): SDs can stimulate the formation of CNVs and themselves started out as CNVs, but became fixed in a species. Structural variation can be neutral but has also influenced our phenotypic evolution, for example our susceptibility to disease and our ability to digest certain types of food. Our understanding of the extent of structural variation is increasing rapidly, but it will be much more difficult to understand its phenotypic consequences.

Structural variants (SVs) such as deletions, insertions, duplications, inversions and translocations litter genomes and are often associated with gene expression changes and severe phenotypes (ie. genetic diseases in humans). Recent studies on the functional aspects of different types of SVs have unveiled several cases of adaptive evolution. For example, inversions have been associated with ecological adaptations and may facilitate speciation. Due to their prevalent nature, SVs arguably have a large impact on genome evolution and should not be neglected when studying the genetics of adaptation and speciation. SVs were classically defined as chromosomal rearrangements larger than 1kb, but due to a higher resolution of new detection methods, smaller variants (between 50 and 1000 base pairs) can now be accurately assessed. Besides various methods of detection in next generation sequencing data (paired end mapping, split reads, and depth of coverage), array-based approaches have proven to be particularly useful for detecting copy number variations (CNVs). These technologies have enabled researchers to catalog a wide spectrum of SVs in many organisms and infer the effects of selection shaping their evolutionary trajectories.

Structure variation sequencing signature (Source: NatRev Genetics)

Related tools, databases and publications are listed below. If you know any interesing papers, please let us know in comment section:

Key concepts

Structural variation includes balanced variants such as inversions and translocations, and unbalanced ones such as duplications and deletions (copy number variations or CNVs).

Structural variants can arise by several mechanisms, including nonallelic homologous recombination (NAHR), nonhomologous end‐joining (NHEJ) and DNA replication‐based fork stalling and template switching (FoSTeS).

CNV is closely linked to segmental duplication, but is not exactly the same. Segmental duplications can stimulate CNV formation by NAHR, and themselves arise from CNVs that have become fixed.

Segmental duplications did not appear uniformly during the evolution of the Great Ape species, but rather during a burst of activity around the time of the divergence of gorilla from the human/chimpanzee ancestor.

Duplicated genes play a critical role in the evolution of a genome as they act as ‘spare parts’ than can evolve to perform new or more specialized functions.

Effects of structural variation on gene expression can be identified but only a few examples of the consequences for species biology have been documented.

Tools

CNVnatora tool for CNV discovery and genotyping from depth of read mapping.2011a,2011b

AGEa tools that implements an algorithm for optimal alignment of sequences with SVs.2011

BreakSeqa pipeline for annotation, classification and analysis of SVs at single nucleotide resolution.2010

PEMera computational and simulation framework for discovering SVs by paired-end read mapping.2009,2007

GASV https://code.google.com/archive/p/gasv/

PAIROSCOPE http://pairoscope.sourceforge.net/

SVDetect http://svdetect.sourceforge.net/Site/Home.html

BreakPtr, discovery of unbalanced structural variants (copy-number variants) with tiling microarrays Link

R Package https://www.bioconductor.org/help/course-materials/2010/EMBL2010/Practical-4-StructuralVariants.pdf

BreakSeq, structural variant genotyping using split reads Link

CopySeq, genotyping of unbalanced structural variants (copy-number variants) using read-depth Link

DELLY2, integrated structural variant discovery, genotyping and visualization in deep sequencing data Link

PEMer, structural variant discovery in 454 sequencing data by paired-end mapping Link

TIGER, transduction inference in germline genomes using short read data Link

MANTA https://github.com/Illumina/manta

SV-Bay https://github.com/InstitutCurie/SV-Bay

BreakDancer http://breakdancer.sourceforge.net/

Variation Hunter http://compbio.cs.sfu.ca/software-variation-hunter

Lumpy https://github.com/arq5x/lumpy-sv

ForestSV http://sebatlab.ucsd.edu/index.php/software-data

PBSuites for long reads https://sourceforge.net/projects/pb-jelly/

Visualization

The SV visualization tool: http://genomesavant.com/savant/

InGAP-SV (http://ingap.sourceforge.net/) that is nice tools for both detection and visualisation of severals kind of structural variations (Large insertions, translocation, deletion, inversions....)

Tools table: http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v29/n8/fig_tab/nbt.1904_T2.html

Variation Viewer https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/variation/view/

Papers

http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v9/n2/full/nmeth.1858.html

http://journal.frontiersin.org/researchtopic/1412/structural-variations-in-genomes-ecological-and-evolutionary-implications

http://www.mi.fu-berlin.de/wiki/pub/ABI/GenomicsLecture10Materials/structural-variation.pdf

http://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-015-1479-3

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/dbvar/content/overview/

http://www.nature.com/subjects/structural-variation

https://eichlerlab.gs.washington.edu/news/NatMeth_Feb2012.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19477992 ***

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22452995

http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/09/06/073833

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4479793/

http://www.nature.com/articles/srep18501

http://www.genetics.org/content/202/1/351

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sssykim/teaching/s13/slides/Lecture_SVI.pdf

https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/structural-variation-detection-from-next-generation-sequencing-2469-9853-S1-007.php?aid=69055

http://schatzlab.cshl.edu/presentations/2016/2016.01.12.PAG.Structural%20Variations.pdf

MCscan

Bulbul — Thu, 22 Dec 2016 03:53:58 -0600

MCscan is a computer program that can simultaneously scan multiple genomes to identify homologous chromosomal regions and subsequently align these regions using genes as anchors. This is the toolset for generating the synteny correspondences in Plant Genome Duplication Database. It is intended as an easy-to-use and quick way to identify conserved gene arrays both within the same genome and across different genomes.

More at http://chibba.agtec.uga.edu/duplication/mcscan/

Address of the bookmark: http://chibba.agtec.uga.edu/duplication/mcscan/

PAired-eND Assembler for DNA sequences

Neel — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 05:25:34 -0500

PANDASEQ is a program to align Illumina reads, optionally with PCR primers embedded in the sequence, and reconstruct an overlapping sequence.

More at https://github.com/neufeld/pandaseq

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/neufeld/pandaseq

REAPR: a universal tool for genome assembly evaluation

Jitendra Prajapati — Wed, 06 Apr 2016 18:26:31 -0500

REAPR is a tool that evaluates the accuracy of a genome assembly using mapped paired end reads, without the use of a reference genome for comparison. It can be used in any stage of an assembly pipeline to automatically break incorrect scaffolds and flag other errors in an assembly for manual inspection. It reports mis-assemblies and other warnings, and produces a new broken assembly based on the error calls.

The software requires as input an assembly in FASTA format and paired reads mapped to the assembly in a BAM file. Mapping information such as the fragment coverage and insert size distribution is analysed to locate mis-assemblies. REAPR works best using mapped read pairs from a large insert library (at least 1000bp). Additionally, if a short insert Illumina library is also available, REAPR can combine this with the large insert library in order to score each base of the assembly.

http://www.sanger.ac.uk/science/tools/reapr

Address of the bookmark: https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/gb-2013-14-5-r47

BUSCO: Assessing genome assembly and annotation completeness with Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs

Anjana — Tue, 10 May 2016 07:46:24 -0500

High-throughput genomics has revolutionized biological research, however, while the number of sequenced genomes grows by the day, quality assessment of the resulting assembled sequences remains complicated and mostly limited to technical measures like N50.
BUSCO provides measures for quantitative assessment of genome assembly, gene set, and transcriptome completeness based on evolutionarily informed expectations of gene content from near-universal single-copy orthologs selected from OrthoDB.
BUSCO assessments are implemented in open-source software, with comprehensive lineage-specific sets of Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs for arthropods, vertebrates, metazoans, fungi, eukaryotes, and bacteria.
These conserved orthologs are ideal candidates for large-scale phylogenomics studies, and the annotated BUSCO gene models built during genome assessments provide a comprehensive gene predictor training set for use as part of genome annotation pipelines.
BUSCO assessments offer intuitive metrics, based on evolutionarily informed expectations of gene content from hundreds of species, to gauge completeness of rapidly accumulating genomic data and satisfy an Iberian's quest for quality - "Busco calidad/qualidade".

Address of the bookmark: http://busco.ezlab.org/

Platanus

Jit — Fri, 13 May 2016 05:12:40 -0500

Platanus is a novel de novo sequence assembler that can reconstruct genomic sequences of
highly heterozygous diploids from massively parallel shotgun sequencing data.

The latest version is 1.2.4.

To cite Platanus, please use the following:

Kajitani R, Toshimoto K, Noguchi H, Toyoda A, Ogura Y, Okuno M, Yabana M, Harada M, Nagayasu E, Maruyama H, Kohara Y, Fujiyama A, Hayashi T, Itoh T, “Efficient de novo assembly of highly heterozygous genomes from whole-genome shotgun short reads”. Genome Res. 2014 Aug;24(8):1384-95. doi: 10.1101/gr.170720.113. [abstract | full text]

Address of the bookmark: http://platanus.bio.titech.ac.jp/