BOL: Related items

Alien_Hunter : prediction of putative Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) events

Jit — Sun, 07 Jan 2018 19:11:18 -0600

Alien_hunter is an application for the prediction of putative Horizontal Gene Transfer (HGT) events with the implementation of Interpolated Variable Order Motifs (IVOMs).

An IVOM approach exploits compositional biases using variable order motif distributions and captures more reliably the local composition of a sequence compared to fixed-order methods. Optionally the predictions can be parsed into a 2-state 2nd order Hidden Markov Model (HMM), in a change-point detection framework, to optimize the localization of the boundaries of the predicted regions. The predictions (embl format) can be automatically loaded into the freely available Artemis genome viewer.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.sanger.ac.uk/science/tools/alien-hunter

GenomeThreader: Gene Prediction Software

Neel — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 15:34:08 -0500

GenomeThreader is a software tool to compute gene structure predictions. The gene structure predictions are calculated using a similarity-based approach where additional cDNA/EST and/or protein sequences are used to predict gene structures via spliced alignments. GenomeThreader was motivated by disabling limitations in GeneSeqer, a popular gene prediction program which is widely used for plant genome annotation.

Address of the bookmark: http://genomethreader.org/

Predict Gene Ontology with sequences !

LEGE — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 04:59:28 -0500

PANNZER (Protein ANNotation with Z-scoRE) is a fully automated service for functional annotation of prokaryotic and eukaryotic proteins of unknown function. The tool is designed to predict the functional description (DE) and GO classes.

PANNZER2 processes bacterial proteomes in minutes and eukaryotic proteomes in an hour. You can use AAI-profiler to summarize a proteome's species neighbors and reveal taxonomic identity or contamination.

http://ekhidna2.biocenter.helsinki.fi/sanspanz/

IterPro is for the beginners

h ttps://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro/

You can find other comparative info at https://academic.oup.com/view-large/118391389

Address of the bookmark: http://ekhidna2.biocenter.helsinki.fi/sanspanz/

NVIDIA and Arc Institute Unveil Evo 2: A Breakthrough AI for DNA Design

BioStar — Fri, 21 Feb 2025 10:39:47 -0600

NVIDIA and the Arc Institute have introduced Evo 2, a groundbreaking AI model designed to understand, predict, and generate DNA sequences. This marks a major advancement in computational biology, offering scientists an unprecedented tool to decode the genetic blueprint of life and even design entirely new biological systems.

The Power of Evo 2: AI Meets DNA

Evo 2 is the largest AI model for biology ever created, trained on an astonishing 9.3 trillion DNA "letters" (nucleotides) carefully selected from genomes spanning the entire tree of life. This massive dataset ensures that Evo 2 can recognize patterns and relationships in genetic sequences at an unparalleled scale.

For the first time, scientists can design DNA with AI, moving beyond simple sequence analysis to active DNA generation. Evo 2 enables researchers to predict, modify, and even create entire genetic sequences, opening new possibilities in medicine, agriculture, and synthetic biology.

Decoding the Dark Genome

One of the biggest challenges in genetics is understanding the non-coding regions of DNA—vast stretches of the genome that do not code for proteins but play crucial roles in regulating gene expression. These regions control when and how genes are activated, influencing everything from development to disease.

Evo 2 is designed to decode these non-coding elements, helping researchers uncover their functions and use this knowledge to develop gene-based therapies, synthetic life forms, and precision agriculture solutions.

From Reading DNA to Writing It

To put Evo 2’s impact into perspective:

Previous AI models could "read" DNA like a book, analyzing genetic sequences and identifying patterns.
Evo 2 can "write" entirely new DNA, designing functional genes, chromosomes, and even full genomes from scratch.

This means scientists can now engineer biological systems with AI, designing new proteins, metabolic pathways, and genetic circuits to address real-world challenges.

A Step Toward Generative Biology

The Arc Institute describes Evo 2 as a major step toward "generative biology"—a revolutionary approach where AI is used to create novel biological structures rather than just analyzing existing ones. This could lead to breakthroughs such as:

New medicines: AI-generated enzymes and proteins tailored for targeted therapies.
Disease-resistant crops: Genetically optimized plants for higher yield and climate resilience.
Synthetic organisms: Custom-designed microbes for bioremediation, biofuel production, and industrial applications.

An Open-Source Revolution

Unlike many proprietary AI models, Evo 2 is open source, making its capabilities accessible to researchers worldwide. This democratization of AI-driven biology means that scientists from different disciplines can collaborate, experiment, and innovate, accelerating discoveries in genetic engineering and synthetic biology.

With Evo 2, the boundaries of what’s possible in DNA design, genetic engineering, and biological innovation are being redrawn. The future of life sciences is no longer just about understanding life’s code—it’s about writing it.

Bioinformatics tools to detect horizontal gene transfer (HGT) in genomes

Jit — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 04:56:23 -0600

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), the “non-sexual movement of genetic material between two organisms” , is relatively common in prokaryotes and single-celled eukaryotes, but a number of factors combine to make it far rarer in multicellular eukaryotes. In order for a eukaryotic species to gain a gene by HGT, foreign DNA must enter the host nucleus, integrate into the genome, and in more complex organisms it must enter the sequestered germline in order to be transmitted to offspring. Once there, it must not experience strong negative selection, despite potential for genetic incompatibility with the host genome and mismatch between the niche of the donor and the host. Over the longer term, foreign DNA may become “domesticated” in the recipient genome and provide novel function.

Following are the popular tool to detect HGT in genomes:

T-REX / 3.22

HGT detection / download & compile

20525630

RANGER-DTL / 2.0

HGT detection / download binary

22689773

PhyloNet / 3.6.1

HGT detection / download binary

18662388

Jane / 4.01

HGT detection / download binary (!license!)

20181081

TREE-PUZZLE / 5.3.rc16

HGT detection / download & compile

11934758

CONSEL / 0.20

HGT detection / download

11751242

DarkHorse / 1.5 rev170

HGT detection / download & install

17274820

HGTector / 0.2.1

HGT detection / git clone

25159222

EGID / 1.0

HGT detection / download

22355228

GeneMarkS / 4.30

HGT detection / download binary (!license!)

9461475

GeneOverlap: An R package to test and visualize gene overlaps

Jit — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 19:45:52 -0600

Overlapping gene lists can reveal biological meanings and may lead to novel hypotheses. For example, histone modification is an important cellular mechanism that can pack and re-pack chromatin. By making the chromatin structure more dense or loose, the gene expression can be turned on or off. Tri-methylation on lysine 4 of histone H3 (H3K4me3) is associated with gene activation and its genome-wide enrichment can be mapped by using ChIP-seq experiments. Because of its activating role, if we overlap the genes that are bound by H3K4me3 with the genes that are highly expressed, we should expect a positive association. Similary, we can perform such kind of overlapping between the gene lists of different histone modifications with that of various expression groups and establish each histone modification’s role in gene regulation.

Address of the bookmark: https://bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/vignettes/GeneOverlap/inst/doc/GeneOverlap.pdf

ShadowCaster: a hybrid approach for the detection of horizontal gene transfer events in prokaryotes

Jit — Tue, 14 Jul 2020 06:42:10 -0500

ShadowCaster implements an evolutionary model to calculate Bayesian likelihoods for each ‘alien genes’ with an unusual sequence composition according to the host genome background to detect HGT events in prokaryotes.

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4425/11/7/756/htm

https://shadowcaster.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

https://github.com/dani2s/ShadowCaster_testData

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/dani2s/ShadowCaster

homologizer: Phylogenetic phasing of gene copies into polyploid subgenomes

Abhi — Sat, 03 Jun 2023 19:19:10 -0500

This tutorial describes the usage of homologizer to phase gene copies into polyploid subgenomes. The tutorial is an abbreviated version of a soon-to-be published paper in Methods in Molecular Biology. Please see that paper for many more details and practical considerations for running homologizer analyses. If you use homologizer, please cite the paper in which we first describe the method:

Freyman, W.A., Johnson, M.G., and C.J. Rothfels. 2022. Homologizer: phylogenetic phasing of gene copies into polyploid subgenomes. bioRxiv 2020.10.22.351486v4

homologizer is implemented in RevBayes. Please see http://revbayes.com to download and install RevBayes. For users without previous RevBayes experience, we recommend the tutorials at http://revbayes.com.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/wf8/homologizer

Software and Tools to detect structure variation with long reads !!

Archana Malhotra — Wed, 15 Mar 2017 14:31:09 -0500

Uncovering the connection between genetics and heritable diseases requires an approach that looks at all the variant bases and types in a genome. While a PacBio de novo assembly resolves the most novel SV variants. 8-10X PacBio coverage of single genomes or trios reveals triple the SVs detectable by short-read data.

With Single Molecule, Real-Time (SMRT) Sequencing, you can access structural variations having a broad range of sizes, types, and GC content with the ability to:

Uncover missing heritability linked to structural variation
Unambiguously identify genomic context and variant breakpoints at the sequence level to unravel the genetic etiology of disease
Resolve structural variation across the complete size spectrum with basepair resolution

Following are the SV tools, which can assist you to achieve your goal.

Sniffles: Structural variation caller using third generation sequencing

Sniffles is a structural variation caller using third generation sequencing (PacBio or Oxford Nanopore). It detects all types of SVs using evidence from split-read alignments, high-mismatch regions, and coverage analysis. Please note the current version of Sniffles requires sorted output from BWA-MEM (use -M and -x parameter) or NGM-LR with the optional SAM attributes enabled!

More at https://github.com/fritzsedlazeck/Sniffles

MultiBreak-SV: It identifies structural variants from next-generation paired end data, third-generation long read data, or data from a combination of sequencing platforms.

There are two pieces of software in this release: (1) a pre-processor that takes machineformat (.m5) BLASR files, and (2) MultiBreak-SV. For installation and usage instructions, see doc/MultiBreakSV-Manual.txt.

More at https://github.com/raphael-group/multibreak-sv

Parliament: A Structural Variation Tool. Why ask a single sv-detection approach to find every variant when you can have a parliament of tools deciding?

Publication about the algorithm and “…the first long-read characterization of structural variation in a diploid human personal genome…” (HS1011) - “Assessing structural variation in a personal genome—towards a human reference diploid genome”

More at https://sourceforge.net/projects/parliamentsv/

https://www.dnanexus.com/papers/Parliament_Info_Sheet.pdf

PBHoney: the structural variation discovery tool

PBHoney is an implementation of two variant-identification approaches designed to exploit the high mappability of long reads (i.e., greater than 10,000 bp). PBHoney considers both intra-read discordance and soft-clipped tails of long reads to identify structural variants.

Read The Paper http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/15/180/abstract

More at https://sourceforge.net/projects/pb-jelly/

SMRT-SV: Structural variant and indel caller for PacBio reads

Structural variant (SV) and indel caller for PacBio reads based on methods from Chaisson et al. 2014.

SMRT-SV provides an official software package for tools described in Chaisson et al. 2014 and adds several key features including the following.

Unified variant calling user interface with built-in cluster compute support
Small indel calling (2-49 bp)
Improved inversion calling (screenInversions)
Quality metric for SV calls based on number of local assemblies supporting each call
Higher sensitivity for SV calls using tiled local assemblies across the entire genome instead of "signature" regions
Genotyping of SVs with Illumina paired-end reads from WGS samples

More at https://github.com/EichlerLab/pacbio_variant_caller

DISTRUCT: a program for the graphical display of population structure

Abhimanyu Singh — Mon, 25 Mar 2019 03:33:44 -0500

distruct is a program that can be used to graphically display results produced by the genetic clustering program structure or by other similar programs. The figures produced by distructdisplay individual membership coefficients in the same form as used in "Genetic structure of human populations" Science 298: 2381-2385 (2002). Various options enable the user to control left-to-right printing order of populations, bottom-to-top printing order of clusers, colors, and other graphical details. [Example]

[Download software package (includes the manual)] (you will be directed first to a registration page and we would very much appreciate if you register)
[Download manual]
[Download software note from Molecular Ecology Notes 4: 137-138 (2004)]

To use the UNIX versions, unzip and untar the files in an appropriate directory using

gunzip filename.tar.gz; tar xvf filename.tar

where "filename.tar.gz" is the downloaded file. Winzip will unzip the Windows version. Run the program by typing

./distruct

in UNIX or

distruct

from a Dos prompt in Windows. It will produce a figure using the data that are represented in the Central/South Asia K=5 plot in Science 298: 2381-2385 (2002).

Please send comments or problems with distruct to Noah Rosenberg.

October 15, 2014 — Users of Distruct may also find CLUMPP and CLUMPAK of interest.

Address of the bookmark: https://rosenberglab.stanford.edu/distruct.html