BOL: Related items

Gene Synteny Database

Jit — Fri, 16 Dec 2016 11:09:39 -0600

Comparative genomics remains a pivotal strategy to study the evolution of gene organization, and this primacy is reinforced by the growing number of full genome sequences available in public repositories. Despite this growth, bioinformatic tools available to visualize and compare genomes and to infer evolutionary events remain restricted to two or three genomes at a time, thus limiting the breadth and the nature of the question that can be investigated. Here we present Genomicus, a new synteny browser that can represent and compare unlimited numbers of genomes in a broad phylogenetic view. In addition, Genomicus includes reconstructed ancestral gene organization, thus greatly facilitating the interpretation of the data.

Availability: Genomicus is freely available for online use at http://www.dyogen.ens.fr/genomicus while data can be downloaded at ftp://ftp.biologie.ens.fr/pub/dyogen/genomicus

Contact: rf.sne.eigoloib@crh

Address of the bookmark: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2853686/

MeGAMerge: A tool to merge assembled contigs, long reads from metagenomic sequencing runs

Jit — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 09:42:15 -0600

MeGAMerge

MeGAMerge (A tool to merge assembled contigs, long reads from metagenomic sequencing runs)

Description

MeGAMerge is a perl based wrapper/tool that can accept any number of sequence (FASTA) files containing assembled contigs of any length in Multi-FASTA format to produce an improved contig set based on OLC based assembly. All overlap parameters (Minimum Overlap Length, Identity, etc) are user-declarable at runtime. It is written to run on Linux.

Requirements:

You will need to have the following tools installed and in $PATH, or added to $binpath in the tool:

Newbler (specifically runAssembly)
Minimus2 (part of AMOS, also requires MUMmer)

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/LANL-Bioinformatics/MeGAMerge

Venkatesh Lab

Tue, 20 Dec 2016 04:38:01 -0600

We are using a comparative genomics approach to better understand the structure, function and evolution of the human genome. Our group is one of the pioneers in the field of comparative genomics. We proposed the compact genome of the fugu (Takifugu rubripes) as a model vertebrate genome in 1993 (Nature 366: 265-268, 1993) and determined its whole genome sequence in 2002 (Science 297: 1301-1310, 2002).

More at
https://zfin.org/ZDB-LAB-110408-1
http://www.imcb.a-star.edu.sg/php/venkatesh.php

16th Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB)

Thu, 22 Dec 2016 08:08:37 -0600

Abstract submissions for our upcoming symposium on the Genomics of Adaptation that will take place as part of the 16th Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB). The conference will take place from August 20th - August 25th, 2017 in Groningen, the Netherlands.

SYMPOSIUM DESCRIPTION: Genomics of Adaptation [S16] Model organisms for life-history research are mainly studied in the lab where functional genetics is assessable. In general, however, knowledge about their eco-evolutionary dynamics, such as biotic interactions, is rare. By contrast, in organisms for which the ecology and adaptation strategies in the field are well known, we typically lack the appropriate genetic tools to investigate functionality. Advances in genomics and statistics as well as investments in evolutionary model organisms are now providing access to putatively adaptive genome-wide variation within species from across the tree of life. In this symposium, we focus on integrating life-history biology, genetics and evolutionary ecology in the genomics era.

We wish to (1) highlight the role of genetic architecture of complex traits, such as adaptations to biotic interactions or life-history traits; (2) contrast this to morphological traits which are generally thought to have a less complex genetic architecture; and (3) discuss the opportunities and drawbacks of specific model systems.

INVITED SPEAKERS: Josephine Pemberton, University of Cambridge (http://bit.ly/2hJWytJ ) Peter Tiffin, University of Minnesota (http://bit.ly/2hK7HuS )

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION The deadline for abstract submission is January 10, 2017. For more information and to submit abstracts online, please visit: http://bit.ly/2fBXlvN We look forward to an exciting symposium and seeing you all in Groningen! Sincerely, Ben Blackman, UC Berkeley Maaike de Jong, University of Bristol Bart Pannebakker, Wageningen University Noah Whiteman, UC Berkeley Jelle Zandveld, Wageningen University

Mauve: a system for constructing multiple genome alignments in the presence of large-scale evolutionary events such as rearrangement and inversion

Jit — Sat, 24 Dec 2016 09:20:53 -0600

Mauve is a system for constructing multiple genome alignments in the presence of large-scale evolutionary events such as rearrangement and inversion. Multiple genome alignments provide a basis for research into comparative genomics and the study of genome-wide evolutionary dynamics.

Mauve has been developed with the idea that a multiple genome aligner should require only modest computational resources. It employs algorithmic techniques that scale well in the lengths of sequences being aligned. For example, a pair of Y. pestis genomes can be aligned in under a minute, while a group of 9 divergent Enterobacterial genomes can be aligned in a few hours. However, the current algorithm’s compute time (progressiveMauve) scales cubically in the number of genomes to align, making it unsuitable for datasets containing more than 50-100 bacterial genomes.

Address of the bookmark: http://darlinglab.org/mauve/mauve.html

Progressive Cactus

Jit — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 03:40:06 -0600

v0.0 by Glenn Hickey (hickey@soe.ucsc.edu)

Progressive Cactus is a whole-genome alignment package.

Requirements

git
gcc 4.2 or newer
python 2.7
wget
64bit processor and build environment
150GB+ of memory on at least one machine when aligning mammal-sized genomes; less memory is needed for smaller genomes.
Parasol or SGE for cluster support.
750M disk space

Instructions

IMPORTANT NOTE: Progressive Cactus does not presently support installation into paths that contain spaces. Until this is resolved, you can use a softlink as a workaround: ln -s "path with spaces" "installation path without spaces"

In the parent directory of where you want Progressive Cactus installed:

git clone git://github.com/glennhickey/progressiveCactus.git
cd progressiveCactus
git pull
git submodule update --init
make

It is also convenient to add the location of progressiveCactus/bin to your PATH environment variable. In order to run the included tools (ex hal2maf) in the submodules/ directory structure, first source progressiveCactus/environment to load the installed environment.

If any errors occur during the build process, you are unlikely to be able to use the tool. Please submit a GitHub issue so we can help out: not only will you help yourself, but others who wish to use the tool as well.

Note that all dependencies are also built and included in the submodules/ directory. This increases the size and build time but greatly simplifies installation and version management. The installation does not create or modify any files outside the progressiveCactus/ directory.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/glennhickey/progressiveCactus

PANDASEQ

Shruti Paniwala — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 04:54:32 -0600

PANDASEQ assembles paired-end Illumina reads into sequences, trying to correct for errors and uncalled bases. The assembler reads two files in FASTQ format with quality information. If amplification primers were used (e.g., to isolate a variable region of the 16S gene, or the constant regions around zinc finger binding residues), they can be removed from the sequence during assembly. The final sequence will correct any uncalled bases in the overlapping region using the complementary strand. When mismatches occur in the overlapping region, the base with the better quality score is chosen.
The algorithm is as follows:

1.Find the positions where the forward and reverse primers match best above the threshold and discard the ends of the sequence, including the primer.
2.Pick and overlap to maximise the probability of the forward and reverse reads having come from a single piece of DNA.
3.Identify the masking of the end of the read with the quality score B or # as done by CASAVA and adjust the probabilities in this region.
4.Construct an assembled sequence between the primers and calculate the quality.
5.Check for various constraints, including quality, length, uncalled bases, and user-supplied modules.

http://neufeldserver.uwaterloo.ca/~apmasell/pandaseq_man1.html

Address of the bookmark: http://neufeldserver.uwaterloo.ca/~apmasell/pandaseq_man1.html

EasyBuild

Jit — Fri, 27 Jan 2017 16:00:43 -0600

EasyBuild is a software build and installation framework that allows you to manage (scientific) software on High Performance Computing (HPC) systems in an efficient way.
A full list of supported software packages is available here.

Address of the bookmark: https://hpcugent.github.io/easybuild/

Harvest

Jit — Tue, 31 Jan 2017 10:57:56 -0600

Harvest is a suite of core-genome alignment and visualization tools for quickly analyzing thousands of intraspecific microbial genomes, including variant calls, recombination detection, and phylogenetic trees.

Tools

Parsnp - Core-genome alignment and analysis
Gingr - Interactive visualization of alignments, trees and variants
HarvestTools - Archiving and postprocessing

Citation

Treangen TJ, Ondov BD, Koren S, Phillippy AM. The Harvest suite for rapid core-genome alignment and visualization of thousands of intraspecific microbial genomes. Genome Biology, 15 (11), 1-15 [PDF]

Address of the bookmark: http://harvest.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

Mercator

Jit — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 04:20:36 -0600

Our basic strategy in building homology maps is to use exons that are orthologous in multiple genomes as map "anchors." Given K genomes, the steps in the map construction are as follows:

For each genome, obtain a set of exon annotations. These annotations can be a combination of both exon predictions (e.g. Genscan) and annotations that have been experimentally verified (e.g. RefSeq). Ideally, we would like to have these annotations be as sensitive as possible. Specificity is not a concern, as incorrect annotations are not likely not have significant alignments with other gene annotations.
Compare all exons against all exons in other genomes and record significant alignments between exons. Currently, we use BLAT to do this all-vs-all comparison with alignments being performed in protein space.
Construct a graph with each vertex corresponding to a exon and edges between vertices whose corresponding exons have significant alignments.
Identify cliques in this graph. These cliques are potential anchors to be used in the map.
Starting with the largest cliques (those that have exons in all or most of the genomes), join neighboring (adjacent in genomic coordinates, in each genome) cliques to form runs. Smaller cliques that are inconsistent with runs formed by larger cliques are filtered out. After the smallest cliques have been considered, cliques that are not part of a run are discarded.
The extents of each run in each genome are outputted as orthologous segments. The cliques from each run are used to output the exact genomic coordinates of anchors within each orthologous segment. These anchors can be used by genomic alignment programs (such as MAVID) to do a detailed alignment of each orthologous segment.

https://www.biostat.wisc.edu/~cdewey/mercator/

Address of the bookmark: https://www.biostat.wisc.edu/~cdewey/mercator/