We are looking for a motivated candidate for handling proteomic and/or transcriptomic and other data with a strong background in bioinformatics tools and database development. The project will include identification of novel peptides from mass spectrometry-based proteomic data.

Familiarity with statistical tools or wet lab experience will be an added advantage. The position is open for immediate appointment and available for two years. The applicant will be appointed as Research Associate or Senior Research Fellow based on qualifications as detailed below:

Research Associate: Ph.D. in Biological Science or Bioinformatics with relevant publications in peer reviewed journals. Familiarity with bioinformatics tools, database development, programming skills and proteomic and/or other omics data analysis. Salary will be as per ICMR rules and guidelines.

Senior Research Fellow: M.Sc./B.Tech. in any branch of biology/ biotechnology/bioinformatics, with minimum 2 years of research experience (essential). Familiarity with bioinformatics tools, database development, programming skills and proteomic data analysis. Salary will be as per ICMR rules and guidelines.

Application will be shortlisted based on CV, reference letters from mentors and telephonic interview. Candidates will be called for a personal interview at Bangalore before appointment. No travel expense will be provided for attending interview at Bangalore.

Interested candidates may send a Letter of Interest and CV by email to: ravi@ibioinformatics.org on or before May 15th, 2014.

Contact:
Dr. Ravi Sirdeshmukh
Distinguished Scientist & Associate Director, IOB,
Principal Advisor MSMC/MSCTR

Advertisement: www.ibioinformatics.org/careers.php

usage:   canu [-correct | -trim | -assemble | -trim-assemble] \
              [-s ] \
               -p  \
               -d  \
               genomeSize=[g|m|k] \
               -maxThreads=2 \
               useGrid=false \
              [other-options] \
               read_file.fastq.gz

A default Canu run produces usually high quality assembly, example of a command that was used for testing can be found below. However, there are still a lot of parameters that are possible to tweak. For example if we desire to assemble haplotypes separately of if we want to smash them together, we can alternate the error correction process.

canu -p test_asmbl \
     -d asm_test3 \
     genomeSize=2m \
     -maxThreads=2 useGrid=false \
     -pacbio-raw \ ~/pacbio/dna/sample_reads.fastq.gz

There is a brilliant section in documentation about parameter tweaking.

The output directory contains will contain many files. The most interesting ones are:

• *.correctedReads.fasta.gz : file containing the input sequences after correction, trim and split based on consensus evidence.
• *.trimmedReads.fastq : file containing the sequences after correction and final trimming
• *.layout : file containing informations about read inclusion in the final assembly
• *.gfa : file containing the assembly graph by Canu
• *.contigs.fasta : file containing everything that could be assembled and is part of the primary assembly

The basic stats of assembly can be read from reports generated by the assembler, or calculated using standard UNIX command line tools.

More at https://canu.readthedocs.io/en/latest/faq.html

Appointment Adv.No.2

Applications in plain paper are invited from Indian citizens for one/two position each of Research Associate, Traineeship and Studentship for BIF facility, Division of Life Sciences, IASST.

Applications with complete Bio-data containing contact address, e-mail and phone number, two recent passport size photographs and attested copies of mark sheets, certificates etc., should be sent to the Registrar, IASST, Paschim Boragaon, Garchuk, Guwahati – 781035, Assam, so as to reach on or before 5/05/2014.

A. Research Associate:

Number of vacancies: 1 (One)

Qualifications:

PhD in Bioinformatics or allied disciplines with knowledge of Bioinformatics. The candidates who have submitted PhD thesis may also apply.

In case, candidates having PhD are not found, candidates having MSc in Bioinformatics or allied disciplines with sound knowledge of Bioinformatics will be preferred.

Remuneration: Candidate having PhD will get a consolidated remuneration of Rs. 22,000/- +HRA per month. MSc having NET/GATE/SLET qualified candidate will get a remuneration of Rs. 16,000/= and HRA and candidate with only MSc will get a remuneration of Rs.14,000/- and HRA.

Tenure:

The post is initially for one year and may be extended depending on the performance till the tenure of the project.

B. Traineeship:

Number of vacancies: 2 (Two)

Qualifications:

Candidate with a postgraduate degree in Bioinformatics/Biotechnology/Life sciences from a recognised University

Remuneration: Rs. 5000/month for 6 months

C. Studentship:

Number of vacancies: 2 (Two)

Qualifications:

Candidate pursuing M.Sc in bioinformatics in a recognised University.

Remuneration: Rs. 5000/month for 6 months

Advertisement:

http://iasst.gov.in/pdf/recruitment/advt%20no_2_24042014.pdf

https://academic.oup.com/nar/article/47/11/e63/5377471

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/linzhi2013/MitoZ

ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/genomes/

https://hgdownload.soe.ucsc.edu/downloads.html

Address of the bookmark: ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/genomes/

Careful encoding of graph entities allows odgi to efficiently compute and transform pangenomes with minimal overheads. odgi implements a dynamic data structure that leveraged multi-core CPUs and can be updated on the fly.

The edges and path steps are recorded as deltas between the current node id and the target node id, where the node id corresponds to the rank in the global array of nodes. Graphs built from biological data sets tend to have local partial order and, when sorted, the deltas be small. This allows them to be compressed with a variable length integer representation, resulting in a small in-memory footprint at the cost of packing and unpacking.

The RAM and computational savings are substantial. In partially ordered regions of the graph, most deltas will require only a single byte.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/pangenome/odgi

Once a query gene has been entered, it is displayed in its genomic context in parallel to the genomic context of all its orthologous and paralogous copies in all the other sequenced metazoan genomes. Moreover, Genomicus stores and displays the predicted ancestral genome structure in all the ancestral species within the phylogenetic range of interest.

All the data on extant species displayed in this browser are from Ensembl.

Summary statistics of Genomicus version 105.01: (view species tree in pdf or newick)

Address of the bookmark: https://www.genomicus.bio.ens.psl.eu/genomicus-105.01/cgi-bin/search.pl

More at http://www.babraham.ac.uk/our-research/nuclear-dynamics/

The vital metaphase stage of cell division, when the sister chromatids migrated to the centre and lined up in a row, and pulled apart using attached microtubules in such a way that half the DNA ends up in each daughter cell. However, before the mitotic spindle‐mediated movement gets start and pulled DNA apart, the chromosomes are free to undergo recombination which involves the exchange of genetic material either between multiple chromosomes or between different regions of the same chromosome.

During recombination, the precise breakage of each strand, exchange between the strands, and sealing of the resulting recombined molecules happens. The “chromosomal breakpoints” refers to these places where they break. Mostly, this process occurs with a high degree of accuracy at high frequency in both eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells. But occasionally this “break and sealing/ break and reattach” process goes wrong and the reattachment happens in the wrong place which usually create disaster (with few exceptions).These chromosome disaster or abnormalities involve the gain, loss or rearrangement of visible amounts of genetic material during cell division. These abnormalities are of two type, the first one is numerical abnormalities  where severe disorders are caused by the loss or gain of whole chromosomes, which affect the copy number of hundreds or even thousands of genes. The second are structural abnormalities which can be unbalanced or balanced. The former are similar to numerical abnormalities in that genetic material is either gained or lost. The natural defects in chromosome segregation are linked to cancer and several genetic diseases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genetic_disorders). Therefore, the enzymes involved in regulating cell division are still the attractive drug targets for many diseases.

Apart from certain chromosome abnormalities, these “crossing over” of segments of maternal and paternal chromosomes to form hybrid chromosomes have some evolutionary importance and considered as a driver of genetic variation. Moreover, the chromosome breakage in evolution is considered to be non-random in nature(http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.0020014). In addition the study of breakpoint regions and non-breakpoint (stable) regions of chromosomes indicates both the regions evolved in distinctly different ways ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2675965/). These breakage may lead to genetic diseases or participate to chromosomal rearranmgnets and contributed in development of new species.

I will try to explain the genome hotspots/Evolutionary Breakpoint Regions(EBRs)/fragile regions/weak fragments/  in my next blog.

Software for recombination detection:

RAT http://cbr.jic.ac.uk/dicks/software/RAT/

Breakpointer https://github.com/ruping/Breakpointer

DRP http://web.cbio.uct.ac.za/~darren/rdp.html

RB-finder http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18707535

LDhat2.0 http://ldhat.sourceforge.net/LDhat2.0/instructions.shtml

Reference:

http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/genetic-recombination-514#

Image: Wikipedia , sciencelearn.org.nz

Recommended Articles:

http://www.friendshipcircle.org/blog/2012/05/22/13-chromosomal-disorders-youve-never-heard-of/

http://web.udl.es/usuaris/e4650869/docencia/segoncicle/genclin98/recursos_classe_%28pdf%29/revisionsPDF/chromosyndromes.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2775595/table/T2/

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/disorders/chromosomal/

http://www.ncert.nic.in/html/learning_basket/biology/cc&cd.pdf

Further information about fragScaff, including source code, is available at:https://sourceforge.net/projects/fragscaff/files.

Manuscript describing fragScaff was published as: Adey A, Kitzman JO, Burton JN, Daza R, Kumar A, Christiansen L, Ronaghi M, Amini S, L Gunderson K, Steemers FJ, Shendure J#. In vitro, long-range sequence information for de novo genome assembly via transposase contiguity. Genome Research 2014 Dec;24(12):2041-9. doi: 10.1101/gr.178319.114. PubMed PMID: 25327137.

Address of the bookmark: https://sourceforge.net/projects/fragscaff/files/