BOL: Related items

Finding the Hidden Switches: The Story of KiNext and Protein Kinases

LEGE — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:51:28 -0500

Every newly sequenced genome contains thousands of proteins, but identifying what each protein does is a much harder task. Among these proteins are protein kinases, important molecular regulators that control processes such as cell growth, development, metabolism, stress responses, and signaling. Finding these kinases and determining which families they belong to can reveal important clues about how an organism functions and has evolved.

This is where KiNext comes into the picture. Introduced in a 2024 study published in BMC Bioinformatics, KiNext is a computational workflow designed to identify and classify protein kinases from predicted protein sequences. Instead of relying on a single search method, it brings together several approaches, including Hidden Markov Models, sequence alignment, phylogenetic analysis, and structural comparison.

The search begins with a simple question: does a protein contain the characteristics of a kinase? Protein kinases can change considerably during evolution, but important regions of their sequences often retain recognizable patterns. KiNext uses Hidden Markov Models, or HMMs, to detect these patterns. An HMM does not require a protein to be an exact match to a known kinase. Instead, it looks for a statistical sequence signature associated with kinase proteins, making it possible to detect more distant candidates.

Once potential kinases are identified, KiNext takes the analysis further. It distinguishes conventional eukaryotic protein kinases from atypical protein kinases and then attempts to classify them into different kinase groups and families. This distinction is important because simply identifying a protein as a kinase does not tell the complete story. Different kinase families can have very different evolutionary histories and biological functions.

The next stage brings evolution into the picture. KiNext can align kinase sequences and construct phylogenetic trees, allowing researchers to examine how newly identified proteins are related to previously characterized kinases. When sequence evidence alone is difficult to interpret, structural information can provide another clue. The workflow can incorporate AlphaFold-predicted structures and Foldseek-based structural comparisons to investigate whether an unusual protein resembles known kinase structures.

The researchers tested KiNext using two very different organisms: the Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas, and the green alga Ostreococcus tauri. In C. gigas, KiNext recovered previously reported kinases while identifying additional candidates. Structural analysis provided further evidence for many of the newly detected proteins. In O. tauri, the workflow similarly recovered most previously reported kinases and identified additional candidates while refining some of their classifications.

What makes KiNext particularly interesting is not just its ability to find kinases, but how the entire analysis is organized. The workflow uses Nextflow, allowing the different computational steps to be connected into a reproducible pipeline. Containers can also help manage software dependencies, making it easier to run the workflow across different computing environments.

This reproducibility becomes increasingly important as the number of available genomes continues to grow. A researcher studying one organism may be able to perform an analysis manually, but repeating the same process across hundreds or thousands of genomes quickly becomes impractical. A standardized workflow provides a way to perform the analysis consistently while keeping track of how the results were generated.

At its core, KiNext demonstrates a broader change taking place in modern genomics. Sequencing a genome provides an enormous amount of information, but the real scientific challenge begins afterward: understanding what all those sequences mean. Protein kinases are only one part of this larger puzzle, yet they are particularly important because they act as molecular switches throughout the cell.

By combining sequence profiles, evolutionary analysis, and structural evidence within a reproducible computational framework, KiNext provides researchers with a systematic way to uncover these molecular switches. Its real value lies not only in finding more kinases, but in making the process scalable, repeatable, and easier to apply to new genomes.

As genome sequencing continues to expand across the tree of life, tools such as KiNext can help turn enormous collections of protein sequences into meaningful biological stories—one kinase at a time.

Update Genome Workbench 2.7.15 released

Surabhi Chaudhary — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 16:12:17 -0600

NCBI Genome Workbench is an integrated application for viewing and analyzing sequence data. With Genome Workbench, you can view data in publically available sequence databases at NCBI, and mix this data with your own private data.

Genome Workbench can display sequence data in many ways, including graphical sequence views, various alignment views, phylogenetic tree views, and tabular views of data. It can also align your private data to data in public databases, display your data in the context of public data, and retrieve BLAST results.

Genome Workbench is built on the NCBI C++ ToolKit and uses cross-platform APIs for graphics. It runs on your local machine, and is available for Windows 2000/XP, Linux, MacOS X, and various flavors of Unix.

NCBI Genome Workbench is an integrated application for viewing and analyzing sequence data. Genome Workbench was developed entirely in-house at NCBI and makes use of the NCBI C++ ToolKit. The C++ ToolKit provides a convenient and flexible cross-platform API for managing system internals, database connections, network sockets, and the NCBI data model. In addition, the C++ ToolKit provides the Object Manager, which abstracts handling of sequences and sequence-related objects.

New Features in Genome Workbench 2.7.15

Multiple Alignment View: implemented adaptive feature display when zooming in
Active Objects Inspector replaces Selection Inspector. New View should offer an improved selection context examination. See Using Active Objects Inspector tutorial for more details.
Binary packages for Linux OpenSUSE 13.1 are now available

Bug Fixes and Improvements in Genome Workbench 2.7.15

Fixed major issue with OpenGL overlay/scrolling. Could cause crashes or view scrolling irregularities
Multiple Pane View: fixed crash on loading BLAST results
Graphical Sequence View: fixed crash on zooming in and out, related to SNP track
Graphical Sequence View: fixed Go To Position dialog to give better diagnostics in case of a user error
Graphical Sequence View: PDF export fixed rendering of Markers with commas in the name
Text View / Flat File: fixed Mac OS rendering issues
Text View / Flat File: performance optimization, extended capabilities of real-time rendering of molecules to tens of thousands
File Import: optimization improvement to speed up load of files containing multiple project items
File Import: remapping stage now shows accession.version and description of molecules, instead of plain GI numbers
Mac OS: improved tooltips for toolbar buttons
Phylogenetic Tree Builder Tool: improved diagnostics of errors
Multiple Alignment View: optimizations to avoid main GUI freezes
Open Dialog: removed duplicate elements in table of genomes (load Genome)
PDF export: fixed issue with XREF table errors
Tree View: fixed issues with showing Force Layout progress on Mac OS
Tree View: PDF export fixed issues for showing labels of collapsed nodes
Tree View: added an option to stop layout
Tree View: broadcasting mechanism fixed not to accumulate selected nodes

Reference:

NCBI news

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/tools/gbench/

Software for genome assembly !

LEGE — Sun, 30 Aug 2020 09:51:38 -0500

List of bioinformatics tools/Software Website References for genome assembly:

1 Falcon https://github.com/PacificBiosciences/pb-assembly

2 Canu assembler http://canu.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

3 Miniasm assembler https://github.com/lh3/miniasm

4 PBJelly scaffolding tool https://sourceforge.net/projects/pb-jelly/

5 ARCS scaffolding tool https://github.com/bcgsc/arcs

6 Redundans reduction and scaffolding tool https://github.com/Gabaldonlab/redundans

7 Arrow error correction https://github.com/PacificBiosciences/ GenomicConsensus

8 PILON error correction https://github.com/broadinstitute/pilon/wiki

9 BUSCO single copy gene markers http://busco.ezlab.org/

10 Bandage graph assembly viewer https://rrwick.github.io/Bandage/

11 Gepard dotter http://cube.univie.ac.at/gepard

12 MUMmer aligner and plotter http://mummer.sourceforge.net/

pipesnake: bioinformatics best-practice analysis pipeline for phylogenomic reconstruction

LEGE — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 06:19:41 -0600

ausarg/pipesnake is a bioinformatics best-practice analysis pipeline for phylogenomic reconstruction starting from short-read 'second-generation' sequencing data.

The pipeline is built using Nextflow, a workflow tool to run tasks across multiple compute infrastructures in a very portable manner. It uses Docker/Singularity containers making installation trivial and results highly reproducible. The Nextflow DSL2 implementation of this pipeline uses one container per process which makes it much easier to maintain and update software dependencies.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/AusARG/pipesnake

How to sequence the human genome - Mark J. Kiel

Fri, 30 May 2014 13:24:11 -0500

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/how-to-sequence-the-human-genome-mark-j-kiel Your genome, every human's genome, consists of a unique DNA sequence of A's, T's, C's and G's that tell your cells how to operate. Thanks to technological advances, scientists are now able to know the sequence of letters that makes up an individual genome relatively quickly and inexpensively. Mark J. Kiel takes an in-depth look at the science behind the sequence. Lesson by Mark J. Kiel, animation by Marc Christoforidis.

Nuclear Dynamics Lab

Thu, 17 Jul 2014 15:03:27 -0500

Lab focus is to elucidate fundamental principles, new mechanisms, machineries and emergent properties that are involved in maintaining the genome and gene expression programmes for improvements in lifelong health and well-being for all.

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

JBrowse: Embeddable genome browser built completely with JavaScript and HTML5

Jit — Fri, 29 Jun 2018 09:19:56 -0500

JBrowse is a fast, embeddable genome browser built completely with JavaScript and HTML5, with optional run-once data formatting tools written in Perl. Headline Features: Fast, smooth scrolling and zooming. Explore your genome with unparalleled speed. Scales easily to multi-gigabase genomes and deep-coverage sequencing. Quickly open and view data files on your computer without uploading them to any server. Supports GFF3, BED, FASTA, Wiggle, BigWig, BAM, VCF (with either .tbi or .idx index), REST, and more. BAM, BigBed, BigWig, and VCF data are displayed directly from chunks of the compressed binary files, no conversion needed. Includes an optional “faceted” track selector (see demo) suitable for large installations with thousands of tracks. Very light server resource requirements. In fact, JBrowse has no back-end server code, just tools for formatting data files to be read directly over HTTP. Serve huge datasets from a single low-cost cloud instance. Can run as a stand-alone app on OSX and Windows using the Electron platform Highly extensible plugin architecture, with a large plugin registry of existing examples here https://gmod.github.io/jbrowse-registry https://jbrowse.org/

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/GMOD/jbrowse

Cogent: a tool for reconstructing the coding genome using high-quality full-length transcriptome sequences.

Jit — Tue, 18 Jun 2019 05:33:04 -0500

Cogent is a tool that identifies gene families and reconstructs the coding genome using high-quality transcriptome data without a reference genome, and can be used to check assemblies for the presence of these known coding sequences.

Cogent is a tool for reconstructing the coding genome using high-quality full-length transcriptome sequences. It is designed to be used on Iso-Seq data and in cases where there is no reference genome or the ref genome is highly incomplete.

See a recent presentation on Cogent being applied to the Cuttlefish Iso-Seq data.

Cogent preliminary draft paper (updated 2016Dec version), Supplementary

Please see wiki for details on usage.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/Magdoll/Cogent

InfoGenomeR: Integrative reconstruction of cancer genome karyotypes

Jit — Wed, 05 May 2021 01:02:18 -0500

InfoGenomeR is the Integrative Framework for Genome Reconstruction that uses a breakpoint graph to model the connectivity among genomic segments at the genome-wide scale. InfoGenomeR integrates cancer purity and ploidy, total CNAs, allele-specific CNAs, and haplotype information to identify the optimal breakpoint graph representing cancer genomes.

More at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22671-6

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/dmcblab/InfoGenomeR

deepTools

Martin Jones — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 15:02:08 -0600

deepTools addresses the challenge of handling the large amounts of data that are now routinely generated from DNA sequencing centers. To do so, deepTools contains useful modules to process the mapped reads data to create coverage files in standard bedGraph and bigWig file formats. By doing so, deepTools allows the creation of normalized coverage files or the comparison between two files (for example, treatment and control). Finally, using such normalized and standardized files, multiple visualizations can be created to identify enrichments with functional annotations of the genome.

Publicaton: http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/05/05/nar.gku365.full

Source Code and Wiki: https://github.com/fidelram/deepTools/wiki

Galaxy Tool Shed repository: http://toolshed.g2.bx.psu.edu/view/bgruening/deeptools

and example Galaxy workflows: http://toolshed.g2.bx.psu.edu/view/bgruening/deeptools_workflows