BOL: Related items

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

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

NearHGT

Jit — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 05:41:57 -0500

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT), the transfer of genetic material between organisms, is crucial for genetic innovation and the evolution of genome architecture. Existing HGT detection algorithms rely on a strong phylogenetic signal distinguishing the transferred sequence from ancestral (vertically derived) genes in its recipient genome. Detecting HGT between closely related species or strains is challenging, as the phylogenetic signal is usually weak and the nucleotide composition is normally nearly identical. Nevertheless, there is a great importance in detecting HGT between congeneric species or strains, especially in clinical microbiology, where understanding the emergence of new virulent and drug-resistant strains is crucial, and often time-sensitive.

We developed a novel, self-contained technique named Near HGT, based on the synteny index, to measure the divergence of a gene from its native genomic environment and used it to identify candidate HGT events between closely related strains. The method confirms candidate transferred genes based on the constant relative mutability (CRM). Using CRM, the algorithm assigns a confidence score based on “unusual” sequence divergence. A gene exhibiting exceptional deviations according to both synteny and mutability criteria, is considered a validated HGT product. We first employed the technique to a set of three E. coli strains and detected several highly probable horizontally acquired genes. We then compared the method to existing HGT detection tools using a larger strain data set.

When combined with additional approaches our new algorithm provides richer picture and brings us closer to the goal of detecting all newly acquired genes in a particular strain.

Availability: The method is publicly available athttp://research.haifa.ac.il/~ssagi/software/nearHGT.zip

Address of the bookmark: http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004408

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

DarkHorse: a method for genome-wide prediction of horizontal gene transfer

Jit — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 07:58:35 -0500

A new approach to rapid, genome-wide identification and ranking of horizontal transfer candidate proteins is presented. The method is quantitative, reproducible, and computationally undemanding. It can be combined with genomic signature and/or phylogenetic tree-building procedures to improve accuracy and efficiency. The method is also useful for retrospective assessments of horizontal transfer prediction reliability, recognizing orthologous sequences that may have been previously overlooked or unavailable. These features are demonstrated in bacterial, archaeal, and eukaryotic examples.

Address of the bookmark: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1852411/

HGT-Finder: A New Tool for Horizontal Gene Transfer Finding and Application to Aspergillus genomes

Jit — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 05:03:19 -0600

HGT-Finder:

(i) can be used for HGT detection in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes,

(ii) can report a statistical P value for each gene to indicate how likely it is to be horizontally transferred, and

(iii) is fully automated (requires minimal human intervention), as well as very easy to install and run.

Address of the bookmark: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4626719/

alienness : Rapid Detection of Candidate Horizontal Gene Transfers across the Tree of Life

Jit — Mon, 12 Mar 2018 09:24:40 -0500

Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is the transmission of genes between organisms by other means than parental to offspring inheritance. While it is prevalent in prokaryotes, HGT is less frequent in eukaryotes and particularly in Metazoa. Here, we propose Alienness, a taxonomy-aware web application available at http://alienness.sophia.inra.fr

http://www.mdpi.com/2073-4425/8/10/248

Address of the bookmark: http://alienness.sophia.inra.fr/cgi/index.cgi

DarkHorse

Jit — Wed, 22 Jun 2016 05:37:38 -0500

DarkHorse is a bioinformatic method for rapid, automated identification and ranking of phylogenetically atypical proteins on a genome-wide basis. It works by selecting potential ortholog matches from a reference database of amino acid sequences, then using these matches to calculate a lineage probability index (LPI) score for each genome protein.

LPI scores are inversely proportional to the phylogenetic distance between database match sequences and the query genome. These scores are useful not only for large-scalede novo predictions of horizontally transferred proteins, but can also serve as an independent quality control test for potential horizontal transfer candidates identified by alternative methods, especially those based on nucleic acid signatures. Candidates having high LPI scores are unlikely to have been horizontally transferred, since they are highly conserved among closely related organisms.

One unique and powerful feature of the DarkHorse HGT Candidate database is the opportunity to explore the phylogenetic background of potential HGT donors as well as recipients. The breadth of the database allows not only query sequences, but also their database match partners to be evaluated for sequence similarity or novelty compared to taxonomically related organisms.

DarkHorse is configurable for varying degrees of phylogenetic granularity and protein sequence conservation. Users should consult the references cited below for a complete explanation of parameter selection and result interpretation. A brief tutorial page is also available on-line.

Address of the bookmark: http://darkhorse.ucsd.edu/download.html

DeCoSTAR - Detection of Co-evolution

Jit — Fri, 14 Apr 2017 06:27:25 -0500

DeCoSTAR is a software which aims at reconstructing ancestral gene or genome organizations, in the form of sets of neighborhood relations -adjacencies- between pairs of ancestral genes or gene domains.
Ancestral genes or domains are deduced from reconciled gene trees in a context of birth, speciation, duplication, loss, transfer, which are either given as input or computed with the ecceTERA package, to which DeCoSTAR is integrated. DeCoSTAR constructs parsimonious scenarios of gains and breakages of adjacencies, and contains in particular all the features of previous software DeCo, DeCoLT, ArtDeCo and DeClone. It provides statistical supports on ancestral adjacencies, or the possibility to handle badly assembled genomes.
DeCoSTAR is able to reconstruct the histories of domains inside genes, including gene fusion and fission events, as well as ancestral genome structures for dozens of whole genomes from all kingdoms of life in a few minutes.

Address of the bookmark: http://pbil.univ-lyon1.fr/software/DeCoSTAR/

HGTector: an automated method facilitating genome-wide discovery of putative horizontal gene transfers

Jit — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 06:50:05 -0600

A computational pipeline for genome-wide detection of putative horizontal gene transfer (HGT) events based on sequence homology search hit distribution statistics

Authors: Qiyun Zhu (qiyunzhu@gmail.com), Katharina Dittmar (katharinad@gmail.com)

Affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, University at Buffalo, State University of New York, Buffalo, USA

Zhu Q, Kosoy M, Dittmar K. HGTector: an automated method facilitating genome-wide discovery of putative horizontal gene transfers. BMC Genomics. 2014. 15:717.

Usage: Simply execute perl HGTector.pl, or, open GUI.html in a web browser to see a step-by-step wizard.

Download HGTector 0.2.2.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/DittmarLab/HGTector