In this post, we’ll explore the core methods used in comparative genomics, the questions they help answer, and how they’re shaping our understanding of life.

1. Whole-Genome Alignment
Whole-genome alignment involves mapping the entire genome of one species to another. Tools like MUMmer, MAUVE, and LASTZ perform large-scale sequence alignments to detect conserved regions, rearrangements, insertions, and deletions.

Use Case:
Comparing human and chimpanzee genomes to identify evolutionary conserved sequences (ECS) and regions of divergence.

Key Challenges:
Handling repetitive sequences and genome rearrangements.

Computational complexity in large genomes.

2. Synteny and Collinearity Analysis
Synteny refers to conserved blocks of gene order across species. Tools like MCScanX, SynMap, or CHITRA (for visualizing synteny interactively) detect these blocks to understand chromosomal evolution.

Use Case:
Studying ancient genome duplications in plants.

Investigating chromosomal rearrangements in cancer genomes.

3. Ortholog and Paralog Detection
Orthologs are genes in different species that evolved from a common ancestor, while paralogs are genes duplicated within a genome. Identifying them is crucial for functional annotation and evolutionary studies.

Popular Tools:
OrthoFinder, Orthologous MAtrix (OMA), InParanoid, and EggNOG.

Use Case:
Functional prediction of uncharacterized genes based on orthologs in model organisms.

Tracing gene family evolution.

4. Phylogenomic Analysis
Phylogenomic methods combine phylogenetics and genomics to infer evolutionary trees based on genome-wide data. These methods can handle dozens to hundreds of genomes, using concatenated alignments or gene trees.

Tools:
RAxML, IQ-TREE, ASTRAL, Phylip, BEAST.

Use Case:
Resolving the evolutionary relationships between microbial species.

Studying speciation events.

5. Pan-Genome Analysis
The pan-genome consists of the core genome (shared by all strains) and the accessory genome (strain-specific genes). This is especially popular in microbial genomics.

Tools:
Roary, Panaroo, BPGA, PGAP.

Use Case:
Understanding virulence factor diversity in E. coli.

Designing broad-spectrum vaccines.

6. Comparative Transcriptomics
Comparing transcriptomes across species or conditions reveals conserved and unique expression patterns. RNA-seq data can be mapped to reference genomes to identify orthologous expression profiles.

Use Case:
Comparing stress response in extremophiles and model species.

Studying conserved regulatory networks.

7. Functional Element Comparison
Beyond genes, comparative genomics also targets non-coding regions—enhancers, promoters, miRNAs. Conservation across species often implies functional importance.

Tools:
PhastCons, GERP, phyloP (based on multiple alignments).

Use Case:
Detecting conserved non-coding elements in vertebrates.

Studying regulatory divergence in human evolution.

8. Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) Detection
In microbes, genes often jump across species boundaries. Comparative genomics can detect HGT by identifying genes that defy the expected phylogenetic pattern.

Tools:
HGTector, DarkHorse, AlienHunter, SIGI-HMM.

Use Case:
Tracing antibiotic resistance genes.

Exploring microbial adaptability in extreme environments.

Final Thoughts
Comparative genomics is a powerful lens to observe the diversity and unity of life. With a broad toolkit—from aligners to orthology pipelines, phylogenetic engines to visualization tools—it allows scientists to ask big questions: How did genomes evolve? What makes species unique? Where do new genes come from?

Whether you're studying extremophiles, building better crops, or exploring human ancestry, comparative genomics offers the methods to connect the dots across the tree of life.

This bookmark is created to provide NGS online books links.

Address of the bookmark: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Next_Generation_Sequencing_%28NGS%29/Print_version

Eligibility:
M.Sc. in any stream of Life Sciences with minimum 55% marks.

Desirable:
Candidates having experience in Molecular Spectroscopy, Protein Folding and Bioinformatics will be preferred.

Interested candidate may appear in the walk in Interview conducted on September 16, 2014 (Tuesday) 11:00 AM in the Director's Office, Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Basic Sciences, lamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi-110025.
Candidates are required to bring a set of Xerox copy of their recent CV and qualifying degree (certificate/mark sheet) along with original documents. NoTA/DA will be paid.

For any further information you may e-mail to: mihassan@jmLac.in

Read more at http://jmi.ac.in/upload/advertisement/jobs_cirbs_2014september8.pdf

Please report new whole genome alignment tools under comment sections.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~brudno/721.full.pdf

(Deemed University)

Hamdard Nagar, New Delhi – 110 062

R E C R U I T M E N T

(Advertisement No. 5/2014)

Applications on prescribed form are invited for filling up the following teaching positions in the Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Science in the university. Eligible candidates may apply on or before 30.09.2014.

1. Professor/Associate Professor - One in Pay Band of Rs. 37400-67000+ AGP Rs.10000/9000

2. Assistant Professor - Two in Pay Band of Rs. 15600-39100+ AGP Rs. 6000/-

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR – 02 (including 01 SFS)

Specialization : Bioinformatics

Qualification and Experience :

Ph.D. in Biotechnology or an allied discipline with M.Sc. in Biotechnology/ Biochemistry in the First division or equivalent grade from a recognized University/ Institute.

NET in Life Science or allied discipline in addition to the above qualification.

Experience : At least two years of Post-doctoral teaching and/or research experience in Bioinformatics or relevant field in a UGC recognized Institution of repute or international research institute/ University. Proof of research to be evidenced by publications in SCI-indexed journals of high impact factor as the first or corresponding author.

Note : University may consider exempting candidates from NET, who has been awarded Ph.D. degree from ‘A’ Grade accredited University following the procedure as notified by the UGC in its Regulations of 2009 and adopted by Jamia Hamdard.

For more information: http://www.jamiahamdard.ac.in/PDF/Online%20application%20form%20_Teaching_1.pdf
http://www.jamiahamdard.ac.in/PDF/PBAS.pdf

The work in our lab has focussed on computational approaches to speed-up the finishing process. Specifically, we have explored the use of optical mapping and mate-pair data to augment assemblies and direct finishing experiments. The tools developed in our lab have been used in several finishing projects, producing complete genomes (and near-complete ones) with surprisingly little computational and experimental effort (Nagarajan et al., in submission). The executables (as well as source code) for these tools are freely available here:

• Scaffolding using Optical Restriction Mapping
  Optical Maps are global, ordered maps of restriction site locations in a genome. This information can be quite useful in scaffolding contigs from a shotgun assembly to guide the finishing process. A set of programs to exploit optical maps for assembly can be found here: SOMA v2.0 (63 MB tar.gz file). This version of SOMA contains several improvements to programs in v1.0 as well as new scripts for working with multiple maps, contig graphs and scaffolds. 
  
  
• Augmenting assemblies with mate-pair data
  Mate-pair information can be valuable in augmenting short-read assemblies and reconstructing the genome as larger scaffolds. AMOS-Hybrid is a pipeline written in the AMOS framework (open-source assembly tools) to merge arbitrary mated reads into an existing assembly and merge contigs and create scaffolds where possible. Source code and executables for AMOS-Hybrid are available here: AMOS-Hybrid v1.0 (142 MB tar.gz file). 
  
  
• Assembly and sequence-composition guided finishing
  Contigs from a shotgun assembly are typically linked together in a graph structure that can serve to guide finishing and in some case close gaps in-silico. Also, in many cases, sequence composition of contigs can provide clues to fill gaps in scaffolds. A set of scripts to automate some of these tasks can be found here: Finishing Scripts v1.0 (63 MB tar.gz file). 

http://www.cbcb.umd.edu/finishing/

Address of the bookmark: http://www.cbcb.umd.edu/finishing/

Functional and Comparative Genomics

http://jp.senescence.info/
http://www.senescence.info/
http://www.liv.ac.uk/integrative-biology/staff/joao-de-magalhaes/

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

The Mix algorithm, approach and results were published in BMC bioinformatics : http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/14/S15/S16.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/cbib/MIX

• Updated human gene set (GENCODE 21)
• Updated rat gene set including manual annotation from HAVANA
• New species: Vervet-African green monkey
• Imported Transcript Support Levels (TSLs) from UCSC for human and mouse
• Imported APPRIS flag for human and mouse
• Updated Amazon molly gene set

Find more at http://www.ensembl.info/blog/2014/10/02/ensembl-77-has-been-released/