BOL: Related items

Zhang Lab

Sun, 28 Dec 2014 12:43:08 -0600

We develop and use integrative bioinformatics approaches to extract biological meanings from experimental data and generate hypotheses for experimental validation. Please explore our website to learn more about our people and our research.

More at http://bioinfo.vanderbilt.edu/zhanglab/

Alien Genome !!!

Jit — Sat, 13 Dec 2014 00:24:32 -0600

Genome sequencing, analysis and expression of Alien genome.

Note: This image/cartoon is create only for fun. It has nothing to do with any scientific findings.

Illumina Smartphone Chip !!!

Robert M Willioms — Tue, 30 Dec 2014 23:19:54 -0600

Illumina, the company that claims it brought human genome sequencing down to $1000 prices, has now turned its attention to a consumer product - a chip that you can plug into your smartphone and have it read your genetic information.

The biggest challenge ahead of Illumina is simplifying the process of genetic sequencing. Currently, Illumina’s DNA sequencers are gigantic machines that use techinques like colorimetry to work, but while the core technology is computational, it takes some 30 steps to extract genetic data and run it through. This process will likely have to be hugely simplified on mobile devices, given the fact that some studies require extracting 10 mililiters of blood. Illumina researchers are also working on finding the optimal technology for this on-chip DNA sequencing - be it electrical, optical, or other.

Illumina is one of the most prominent names in genetics, often said to be the Intel of genetic sequencing, as just like Intel it provides the algorithms, the processing brain that runs a DNA reading task.

In other recent smartphone-related biotech news, drug company Pfizer launched its REMOTE project, a new type of clinical trial that does not require going to a hospital for checks - targeted at patients with overactive bladder problems, the FDA-approved REMOTE project allowed to gather data from patients from over 10 states remotely, via mobile devices.

This is indeed the Illumina answer to Apple's Health app, HealthBook, Google HealthFit.

Genome Annotation Transfer Utility (GATU)

Jit — Mon, 29 May 2017 05:54:53 -0500

Genome Annotation Transfer Utility (GATU) was designed to facilitate quick, efficient annotation of similar genomes using genomes that have already been annotated. For example, whenever a new strain of SARS coronavirus is sequenced, it is possible, using GATU, to automatically annotate the new strain using a previously-annotated strain of SARS CoV. This saves researchers from tedious manual annotation of these sequences.

The program utilizes tBLASTn and BLASTn algorithms to map genes from the reference genome (the annotated strain) to the new sequence (the unannotated strain). The goal is to annotate the majority of the new genome’s genes in a single step. ORFs present in the target genome and absent from the reference genome are also identified; these ORFs can be further analyzed using BLAST, VGO and BBB. Afterwards, they can either be accepted for/rejected from annotation. GATU can handle multiple-exon genes as well as mature peptides. Although it was designed for use with viral genomes, GATU can also be used to help annotate larger genomes (ie. bacterial genomes).

The output is saved in GenBank, XML, or EMBL file format.

Address of the bookmark: https://virology.uvic.ca/help/tool-help/help-books/genome-annotation-transfer-utility-gatu-documentation/

WALK-IN-INTERVIEW for the post of JRF and Project Assistant @ CIFT

Tue, 20 Jan 2015 23:03:20 -0600

Eligible candidates are invited to attend a walk-in-Interview with all relevant documents for the following positions of Project Fellows (on contractual basis) to work in the Project “ Genetic Diversity of Clostridium botulinum in seafood and Development of Lateral Flow Immuno Assay (LFIA) for toxinotyping funded by Department of Biotechnology. The duration of the project is 3 years / co-terminus with the scheme.

Jr. Research Fellow – 2 posts

Fellowship : Rs. 25000/- + 20% HRA pm for Ist & 2nd year and Rs.28000/- + HRA on 3rd year

Qualification : Ist class Masters Degree in Microbiology/Fishery Microbiology/Bio-technology.

Desirable :

1. CSIR/UGC NET/JRF qualified

2. Excellent analytical skills and computer documentation

3. Prior experience in handling microbial cultures and molecular techniques

Project Assistant – 1 post

Fellowship : Rs.8000/- p.m (consolidated)

Qualification: Masters degree in Microbiology/Biotechnology with skill in Bioinformatics

Desirable: Excellent analytical skills in Bioinformatics and computer documentation

Terms & Conditions:

Registration will begin at 8.30 a.m and will close at 11.00 am
Age limit (as on 29.1.2015): Below 35 years for men and 40 years for women.
Age relaxation of 3 year for OBC candidates and 5 years for SC/ST candidates is permissible.
Candidates are required to submit self-attested copies of all the Certificates in support of their claims regarding age, educational qualifications, scheduled caste/scheduled tribe/OBC etc. The original certificates shall be produced for verification before the interview.
Candidates should bring detailed bio-data (in the enclosed format) affixing a recent passport size photograph.
The selected candidate will be recruited on contract basis under ICAR norms. The post is purely temporary and is co-terminus with the project.
The candidates attending the interview should ensure that they fulfil all the eligibility conditions. No correspondence will be entertained from the candidates for selection/test/appointment.
No TA/DA will be paid to attend the interview.
Canvassing in any form will render the candidate disqualified for the post.
The Director’s decision will be final and binding in all aspects regarding the selection to the post.

Venue: CIFT, Matsyapuri.P.O, Cochin Date of interview: 29.01.2015 Time: 10.00 am

http://www.cift.res.in/uploads/userfiles/file/file/srf%20appn.doc

Oxford Nanopore Sequencing, Hybrid Error Correction, and de novo Assembly of a Eukaryotic Genome

Jit — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 05:08:53 -0600

Monitoring the progress of DNA molecules through a membrane pore has been postulated as a method for sequencing DNA for several decades. Recently, a nanopore-based sequencing instrument, the Oxford Nanopore MinION, has become available that we used for sequencing the S. cerevisiae genome. To make use of these data, we developed a novel open-source hybrid error correction algorithm Nanocorr (https://github.com/jgurtowski/nanocorr) specifically for Oxford Nanopore reads, as existing packages were incapable of assembling the long read lengths (5-50kbp) at such high error rate (between ~5 and 40% error). With this new method we were able to perform a hybrid error correction of the nanopore reads using complementary MiSeq data and produce a de novo assembly that is highly contiguous and accurate: the contig N50 length is more than ten-times greater than an Illumina-only assembly (678kb versus 59.9kbp), and has greater than 99.88% consensus identity when compared to the reference. Furthermore, the assembly with the long nanopore reads presents a much more complete representation of the features of the genome and correctly assembles gene cassettes, rRNAs, transposable elements, and other genomic features that were almost entirely absent in the Illumina-only assembly.

Address of the bookmark: http://schatzlab.cshl.edu/data/nanocorr/

WALK-IN-INTERVIEW FOR PROJECT ASSISTANT @ BHARATHIDASAN UNIVERSITY

Mon, 12 Jan 2015 21:54:10 -0600

BHARATHIDASAN UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF BIOINFORMATICS, SCHOOL OF LIFE SCIENCES, TIRUCHIRAPPALLI – 620024

Project title: “Genome-scale metabolic modeling and simulation of rumen methanogens An in silico attempt to methane attenuation”

Funding Agency: University Grants Commission, New Delhi

Tenure of the project: Two years or till the end of the project period.

Position: Project Assistant (1 no.)

Essential qualification: First class M.Sc. in Bioinformatics/Microbiology/ Biotechnology and other related discipline.

Desirable qualification: Experience in an area relevant (Molecular Systems Engineering) to the project.

Fellowship: Rs. 5000 per month as per the UGC norms.

Upper age limit: 28 years

Date of Venue of interview: 22.01.2015, Department of Bioinformatics, School of Life Sciences, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli -620 024, Tamil Nadu

The above post is purely temporary and will be terminated with three month notice.

The Terms and the condition of the appointment shall be governed according to UGC, Govt. of India. The eligible candidates will bring their original certificates and documents at the time of interview. No TA/DA will be paid for attending the interview.

Dr. P. CHELLAPANDI
UGC-Research Awardee,
Department of Bioinformatics,
School of Life Sciences,
Bharathidasan University,
Tiruchirappalli -620 024, Tamil Nadu

Advertisement: www.bdu.ac.in/adv/PA_UGC_Bioinformatics.pdf

Genome assembly stats plotting

Jit — Wed, 28 Feb 2018 03:45:39 -0600

A de novo genome assembly can be summarised b

y a number of metrics, including:

Overall assembly length
Number of scaffolds/contigs
Length of longest scaffold/contig
Scaffold/contig N50 and N90Assembly base composition, in particular percentage GC and percentage Ns
CEGMA completeness
Scaffold/contig length/count distribution

assembly-stats supports two widely used presentations of these values, tabular and cumulative length plots, and introduces an additional circular plot that summarises most commonly used assembly metrics in a single visualisation. Each of these presentations is generated using javascript from a common (JSON) data structure, allowing toggling between alternative views, and each can be applied to a single or multiple assemblies to allow direct comparison of alternate assemblies.

Tabular presentation allows direct comparison of exact values between assemblies, the limitations of this approach lie in the necessary omission of distributions and the challenge of interpreting ratios of values that may vary by several orders of magnitude.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/rjchallis/assembly-stats

Linux operating system aimed at scientists

Pranjali Yadav — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 08:30:49 -0600

The Bio-Linux operating system is based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr), and the previous version was using Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. The developers only use LTS releases and that means that upgrades for this distro don't come along all that often.

This Linux distribution is aimed at scientists and it comes with more than 250 bioinformatics packages, 50 graphical applications and several hundred command line tools. And this is just skimming the surface of what the OS can do. Users have access to even more apps from the official repositories.

Bio-Linux is using an Ubuntu LTS version as its base

The fact that it uses Ubuntu LTS versions for the base is a good thing because it means its users won't have to worry about the support. Ubuntu 14.04 LTS is supported until 2019, so people who are using Bio-Linux shouldn't have a problem.

"An updated Bio-Linux 8 version is now on the website in ISO and OVA versions. As usual, there is no need to download this version if you are an existing user. All updates to existing packages will be applied to your system through the update manager and new packages are all available via apt-get or Synaptic," reads the announcement.

The changelog also states that a problem that was preventing the desktop to not start on VirtualBox has been fixed, the QIIME and Bowtie-Bio tools have been upgraded, the pandaseq paired end assembler has been added, and the beginners tutorial specific to Bio-Linux 8 has been improved.

Check out the official announcement for a complete list of changes and updates. You can download Bio-Linux 8.0.5 right now from Softpedia and give it a spin. It has the Unity desktop and now it runs very well in virtual environments.

Reference @ http://news.softpedia.com/news/Bioinformatics-Distro-Bio-Linux-8-0-5-Now-Available-for-Download-469867.shtml

The MARVEL assembler

Jit — Fri, 04 May 2018 19:18:41 -0500

MARVEL consists of a set of tools that facilitate the overlapping, patching, correction and assembly of noisy (not so noisy ones as well) long reads.

The assembly process can be summarized as follows:

overlap
patch reads
overlap (again)
scrubbing
assembly graph construction and touring
optional read correction
fasta file creation

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/schloi/MARVEL