BOL: Related items

Breaking chromosomes to study cancer !!!

Jit — Fri, 18 Jul 2014 05:42:09 -0500

Chromosomes are present in every cell of our body and they contain the information the body needs to develop and function properly. This information is carried in genes that are arranged along the chromosomes. There are usually 46 chromosomes in every cell. These chromosomes come in pairs, one from our mother and one from our father. The chromosomes can be sorted into 23 pairs by looking at them down a microscope.

Most people who have a balanced translocation have the right amount of chromosome material but it has been rearranged in some way. This may happen if two chromosomes swap pieces (a reciprocal translocation). In other cases two whole chromosomes may become stuck together (a Robertsonian translocation). This page describes what happens when someone has a reciprocal translocation.

Reciprocal chromosomal translocations occur following double-strand breaks (DSBs) in DNA when a section of one chromosome is exchanged with that of another, non-homologous chromosome. These exchanges may produce a dysfunctional fusion gene that disrupts cell growth and survival pathways, such as the translocations seen in leukemia and childhood sarcomas.

Chromosomal translocations have been well studied in cancer cell lines which are associated with two types of cancer, acute myeloid leukemia and Ewing's sarcoma, but determining how they contribute to cancer development is complicated by additional mutations and altered gene expression profiles in these cultured cells. Now, Juan Carlos Ramirez, head of the Viral Vector Facility at the Fundacion Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC) and his colleagues Raul Torres at CNIC and Sandra Rodriguez-Peralez at the Spanish National Cancer Center (CNIO) in Madrid, Spain have used a new genome editing tool, CRISPR-Cas9, to induce chromosomal translocations for the first time in a human cell line and in primary cells. The study's authors conclude by stating that the use of this technology will allow for the clarification of how and why chromosomal translocation occurs, which without doubt will allow new anti-cancer therapeutic strategies to be tackled.

Using RNA-Guided Endonuclease (RGEN) technology or CRISPR/Cas9 genome engineering technology, CNIO and CNIC researchers have shown that it is possible to obtain such chromosomal translocations. The CRISPR-Cas9 system is extremely simple to introduce a cut at the desired locus, easier to design, and cheaper than many other systems. Using the CRISPR-Cas9 system, Ramirez and his colleagues reproduced the translocations observed in Ewing’s Sarcoma (ES) and Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) patient cell lines in HEK293 cells and also generated the ES translocation in human mesenchymal stem cells and the AML translocation in umbilical cord blood cells.

By focusing on chromosomal translocation without the confounding characteristics of established cell lines, these new cells lines should help answer the fundamental question of what causes a cell to become cancerous. Ramirez and his team now look forward to modeling other chromosome translocations in a variety of cell types.

Reference:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosomal_translocation

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140603/ncomms4964/abs/ncomms4964.html

Circlator: automated circularization of genome assemblies using long sequencing reads

Poonam Mahapatra — Tue, 15 May 2018 09:42:32 -0500

A tool to circularize genome assemblies. The algorithm and benchmarks are described in the Genome Biology manuscript. Citation: "Circlator: automated circularization of genome assemblies using long sequencing reads", Hunt et al, Genome Biology 2015 Dec 29;16(1):294. doi: 10.1186/s13059-015-0849-0. PMID: 26714481.

Address of the bookmark: http://sanger-pathogens.github.io/circlator/

PRICE (Paired-Read Iterative Contig Extension), a de novo genome assembler implemented in C++.

Surabhi Chaudhary — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 03:08:26 -0500

We are pleased to release PRICE (Paired-Read Iterative Contig Extension), a de novo genome assembler implemented in C++. Its name describes the strategy that it implements for genome assembly: PRICE uses paired-read information to iteratively increase the size of existing contigs. Initially, those contigs can be individual reads from a subset of the paired-read dataset, non-paired reads from sequencing technologies that provide non-paired data, or contigs that were output from a prior run of PRICE or any other assembler. http://derisilab.ucsf.edu/software/price/

Address of the bookmark: http://derisilab.ucsf.edu/software/price/

HaploMerger2: rebuilding both haploid sub-assemblies from high-heterozygosity diploid genome assembly

BioStar — Thu, 27 Sep 2018 07:08:47 -0500

HM2 can process any diploid assemblies, but it is especially suitable for diploid assemblies with high heterozygosity (≥3%), which can be difficult for other tools. This pipeline also implements flexible and sensitive assembly error detection, a hierarchical scaffolding procedure and a reliable gap-closing method for haploid sub-assemblies.

Source code, executables and the testing dataset are freely available at https://github.com/mapleforest/HaploMerger2/releases/.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/mapleforest/HaploMerger2/releases/

QUAST-LG: Versatile genome assembly evaluation

Jit — Thu, 25 Oct 2018 10:46:55 -0500

QUAST-LG-a tool that compares large genomic de novo assemblies against reference sequences and computes relevant quality metrics. Since genomes generally cannot be reconstructed completely due to complex repeat patterns and low coverage regions, we introduce a concept of upper bound assembly for a given genome and set of reads, and compute theoretical limits on assembly correctness and completeness. Using QUAST-LG, we show how close the assemblies are to the theoretical optimum, and how far this optimum is from the finished reference.

AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION:

http://cab.spbu.ru/software/quast-lg

Address of the bookmark: http://cab.spbu.ru/software/quast-lg/

pyGenomeTracks: Standalone program and library to plot beautiful genome browser tracks

Neel — Fri, 09 Nov 2018 12:34:23 -0600

pyGenomeTracks aims to produce high-quality genome browser tracks that are highly customizable. Currently, it is possible to plot:

bigwig
bed (many options)
bedgraph
links (represented as arcs)
Hi-C matrices (if HiCExplorer is installed)

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/deeptools/pyGenomeTracks

NovoGraph: building whole genome graphs from long-read-based de novo assemblies

Jit — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 12:48:30 -0600

NovoGraph: building whole genome graphs from long-read-based de novo assemblies

An algorithmically novel approach to construct a genome graph representation of long-read-based de novo sequence assemblies. We then provide a proof of principle by creating a genome graph of seven ethnically-diverse human genomes.

https://f1000research.com/articles/7-1391/v1

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/NCBI-Hackathons/NovoGraph

Purge Haplotigs: Pipeline to help with curating heterozygous diploid genome assemblies

Rahul Nayak — Mon, 17 Dec 2018 03:17:20 -0600

Some parts of a genome may have a very high degree of heterozygosity. This causes contigs for both haplotypes of that part of the genome to be assembled as separate primary contigs, rather than as a contig and an associated haplotig. This can be an issue for downstream analysis whether you're working on the haploid or phased-diploid assembly.

Identify pairs of contigs that are syntenic and move one of them to the haplotig 'pool'. The pipeline uses mapped read coverage and Minimap2 alignments to determine which contigs to keep for the haploid assembly. Dotplots are optionally produced for all flagged contig matches, juxtaposed with read-coverage, to help the user determine the proper assignment of any remaining ambiguous contigs. The pipeline will run on either a haploid assembly (i.e. Canu, FALCON or FALCON-Unzip primary contigs) or on a phased-diploid assembly (i.e. FALCON-Unzip primary contigs + haplotigs). Here are two examples of how Purge Haplotigs can improve a haploid and diploid assembly.

Address of the bookmark: https://bitbucket.org/mroachawri/purge_haplotigs

GenomeView: genome browser and annotation editor

Rahul Nayak — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 04:09:06 -0600

GenomeView is a genome browser and annotation editor that displays reference sequence, annotation, multiple alignments, short read alignments and graphs. Most major data formats are supported. Local and internet files can be loaded.
This project has moved to GitHub: https://github.com/GenomeView/genomeview

Address of the bookmark: https://sourceforge.net/projects/genomeview/

List of tools frequently used while genome assembly

BioStar — Tue, 22 Jan 2019 09:39:02 -0600

List of tools frequently used while genome assembly:

I have used the following assemblers

Spades (v. 3.10.1)
CANU (v. 1.6)
Unicycler (v. v0.4.1)
Miniasm (v. 0.2-r137-dirty)

I have used the following mappers

minimap2 (v. 2.0rc1-r232)
minimap (v. 0.2-r124-dirty)
bwa (v. 0.7.12-r1039)

I have used the following polishing tools

Racon (v. not available)
Pilon (v. 1.18)
Nanopolish (v. 0.8.3)

I have used the following tools to assess genome assembly characteristics

ANI.pl (https://github.com/chjp/ANI)
CheckM (v. 1.0.7)
Prokka (v. 1.12)
QUAST (v. 2.3)
mummer (v. not available)

If you have any ideas or superior tools we have missed please let us know in the comments.