BOL: Related items

Genomics for Bioinformatician

Jitendra Narayan — Sat, 20 Jul 2013 07:03:00 -0500

Genomics is the study of the genomes of organisms. The field includes intensive efforts to determine the entire DNA sequence of organisms and fine-scale genetic mapping efforts. The field also includes studies of intragenomic phenomena such as heterosis, epistasis, pleiotropy and other interactions between loci and alleles within the genome. In contrast, the investigation of the roles and functions of single genes is a primary focus of molecular biology or genetics and is a common topic of modern medical and biological research. Research of single genes does not fall into the definition of genomics unless the aim of this genetic, pathway, and functional information analysis is to elucidate its effect on, place in, and response to the entire genome's networks.

Genomics was established by Fred Sanger when he first sequenced the complete genomes of a virus and a mitochondrion. His group established techniques of sequencing, genome mapping, data storage, and bioinformatic analyses in the 1970-1980s. A major branch of genomics is still concerned with sequencing the genomes of various organisms, but the knowledge of full genomes has created the possibility for the field of functional genomics, mainly concerned with patterns of gene expression during various conditions. The most important tools here are microarrays and bioinformatics. Study of the full set of proteins in a cell type or tissue, and the changes during various conditions, is called proteomics. A related concept is materiomics, which is defined as the study of the material properties of biological materials (e.g. hierarchical protein structures and materials, mineralized biological tissues, etc.) and their effect on the macroscopic function and failure in their biological context, linking processes, structure and properties at multiple scales through a materials science approach. The actual term 'genomics' is thought to have been coined by Dr. Tom Roderick, a geneticist at the Jackson Laboratory (Bar Harbor, ME) over beer at a meeting held in Maryland on the mapping of the human genome in 1986.

The outcome of almost two years of intense discussions with literally hundreds of scientists and members of the public, has three major areas of focus: Genomics to Biology, Genomics to Health, and Genomics to Society.

Genomics to Biology:
The human genome sequence provides foundational information that now will allow development of a comprehensive catalog of all of the genome's components, determination of the function of all human genes, and deciphering of how genes and proteins work together in pathways and networks.

Genomics to Health:
Completion of the human genome sequence offers a unique opportunity to understand the role of genetic factors in health and disease, and to apply that understanding rapidly to prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. This opportunity will be realized through such genomics-based approaches as identification of genes and pathways and determining how they interact with environmental factors in health and disease, more precise prediction of disease susceptibility and drug response, early detection of illness, and development of entirely new therapeutic approaches.

Genomics to Society:
Just as the HGP has spawned new areas of research in basic biology and in health, it has created new opportunities in exploring the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of such work. These include defining policy options regarding the use of genomic information in both medical and non-medical settings and analysis of the impact of genomics on such concepts as race, ethnicity, kinship, individual and group identity, health, disease, and "normality" for traits and behaviors.

This vision for the future of genomics is not just about the NHGRI. It encompasses the whole field of genomics, including the work of all the other Institutes and Centers at the NIH and of a number of other federal agencies. All of the NIH Institutes are already taking full advantage of the sequence and will apply its data to the better understanding of both rare and common diseases, almost all of which have a genetic component. A recent example of the way that the HGP and the knowledge and new technologies it has spawned are already facilitating science is the extremely rapid sequencing by groups in Canada and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta of the genome of the virus that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The sequencing of the SARS virus genome provides insight into this new and deadly disease at a speed never before possible in science. In turn, this should lead to the rapid development of diagnostic tests and, in time, vaccines and effective treatments.

Links for the addition material available on Net

Genomes and genomics:

Bioinformatics and Genomics:

Structural genomics tutorial:

Comparative Genomics Tutorial:

GENOME TUTORIAL:

Tools and resources for identifying protein families, domains and motifs

Bioinformatics Tools
Tips, Tutorials, and Terminology for Using Selected Resources in Genome Database Guide:

A Web-Based Comparative Genomics Tutorial for Investigating Microbial Genomes:

Free Online Tutorials Teach Anyone How to Use Genome Databases:

Circos to create concise, explanatory, unique and print-ready visualizations of your data:

Genomics and Comparative Genomics Learning Module:

Computational Challenges in Comparative Genomics

A Tutorial:

A Comparative Genomics Resource for Grains:

PLAZA: A Comparative Genomics Resource to Study Gene and Genome Evolution in Plants:

VISTA :

Software for Genomics

Artemis Artemis is a free genome viewer and annotation tool that allows visualization of sequence features and the results of analyses within the context of the sequence, and its six-frame translation.
Chromas It will display and prints chromatogram files from ABI automated DNA sequencers, and Staden SCF files which the analysis programs for ALF, Li-Cor and Visible Genetics OpenGene sequencers can create.
Glimmer A system for finding genes in microbial DNA, especially the genomes of bacteria and archaea.Glimmer (Gene Locator and Interpolated Markov Modeler) uses interpolated Markov models (IMMs) to identify the coding regions and distinguish them from noncoding DN
Glimmer HMM A fast and accurate gene finder based on a GHMM architecture, developed specifically for eukaryotes. It incorporates splice site models adapted from the GeneSplicer program and uses interpolated Markov models for evaluating the coding regions.
Glimmer M A gene finder derived from Glimmer, but developed specifically for eukaryotes. It is based on a dynamic programming algorithm that considers all combinations of possible exons for inclusion in a gene model and chooses the best of these combinations. The d
MUMmer MUMmer is a system for rapidly aligning entire genomes, whether in complete or draft form.
pDRAW pDRAW32 is being developed as a free time hobby project. It is far from finished, but as it has reached a point where it could be helpful for many labs, it is now available to the scientific community.
Sequin Sequin is a stand-alone software tool developed by the NCBI for submitting and updating entries to the GenBank, EMBL, or DDBJ sequence databases. It is capable of handling simple submissions that contain a single short mRNA sequence, and complex submissio
Staden The Staden Package consists of a series of tools for DNA sequence preparation (pregap4), assembly (gap4), editing (gap4) and DNA/protein sequence analysis (spin).

For more software @ http://bioinformaticsonline.com/bookmarks/view/926/list-of-popular-bioinformatics-softwaretools

R and Bioconductor Tutorial

Jitendra Narayan — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 08:23:59 -0500

This tutorial is intended to introduce users quickly to the basics of R, focusing on a few common tasks that biologists need to perform some basic analysis: load a table, plot some graphs, and perform some basic statistics. More extensive tutorials can be found on the project website and via bioconductor (not covered here).

You can add more tutorial links in comments if found new pages.

Address of the bookmark: http://manuals.bioinformatics.ucr.edu/home/R_BioCondManual

A Brief Bioinformatics Tutorial

Jit — Wed, 21 May 2014 12:50:09 -0500

This is about how to use a computer to find what is known about a gene of interest and also how to get new insights about it.

The tutorial is divided in three main parts:

In the Sequence part, you will see how to look efficiently for a particular protein sequence, how to blast it against the database of your choice to find homologues, how to perform a multiple alignment of the homologues you've selected and how to edit this alignment.
The Structure part is about molecular visualization, homology modeling and structural domain prediction.
In the Function part, you will be introduced to you 3 useful servers to investigate the function of a protein. i.e. finding interactors, co-expressed genes, see a phylogenetic profile, easily access papers citing your gene etc ...

During all the three parts, we will use the S. cerevisiae VPS36 protein as an example.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/rlw/text/bioinfo_tuto/introduction.html

A guide for complete R beginners :- R Syntax

Archana Malhotra — Fri, 20 Feb 2015 23:41:03 -0600

R is a functional based language, the inputs to a function, including options, are in brackets. Note that all dat and options are separated by a comma

Function(data, options)

Even quit is a function

So is help

help(read.table)

Provides the help page for the FUNCTION ‘read.table’

help.search(“t test”)

Searches for help pages that might relate to the phrase ‘t test’

NOTE: quotes are needed for search strings, they are not needed when referring to data objects or function names.

There is a short cut for help,

? shows the help page on a function name, same as help(function)

?read.table

?? searches for help pages on functions, same as help.search(‘phrase’)

??“t test”

Information is usually returned from a function, by default this is printed to screen

read.table(‘data.tsv’)

This can always be stored, we call what it is stored in an ‘object’

mydata

here mydata is an object of type dataframe

Reminder:

Vector: a list of numbers, equivalent to a column in a table
Data Frame = a collection of vectors. Equivalent to a table

Hint:

Up/Down arrow keys can be use to cycle through previous commands

One page R survival guide !!

Rahul Nayak — Thu, 28 May 2015 21:10:12 -0500

There any many of the documents have been developed and tested by scientist around the world. I found this one really useful. The data used is available for download as data.zip.

Reference@http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/one-page-r-a-survival-guide-to-data-science-with-r

Templates for the Data Scientist
1. A Template for Preparing Data: *OnePageR - *R
2. A Template for Building Models: *OnePageR - *R
Getting Started as a Data Scientist
1. Getting Started with R and Rattle: *Lecture - *Laboratory
2. Introducing and Interacting with R: *Lecture - *Laboratory
3. BasicR - OnePage(R) - Writing R scripts
Dealing With Data
1. Read Data into R: *OnePageR - *R
2. Explore and Summarise Data: *OnePageR - *R
3. Transform Data: *OnePageR - *R
4. Dealing with Dates and Time: (PDF, R) Dates and Time
5. Visualising Data with GGPlot2: *OnePageR - *R
6. Visualising Data with Maps *OnePageR - *R
7. Spatial (R) Spatial Analysis
8. Handling Big Data *OnePageR - *R
Descriptive Analytics
1. Cluster Analysis: *Lecture - *OnePageR - *R
2. Association Analysis: *Lecture
Predictive Analytics
1. Decision Trees: *Lecture - *OnePageR - *R - *Rattle
2. Ensembles of Decision Trees: *Lecture - *OnePageR - *R
3. SVM (R)
4. KernLab (R)
5. NeuralNetworks (R)
6. NNet (R)
Model Delivery
1. Evaluating Models: *OnePageR - *R
2. Evaluation (R)
3. Scoring (R)
4. PMML (R) Exporting Models for Deployment
Advanced Topics
1. Text Mining: *OnePageR - *R
Advanced R Topics
1. Plots (PDF, R) Miscellaneous Plots
2. Functions (PDF, R) Writing Functions in R
3. Parallel (PDF, R) Parallel Execution
4. Packaging (R) Pulling it Together into a Package
5. Doing R with Style: *OnePageR - *R
6. Literate Data Mining with KnitR: *Lecture - *OnePageR - *

BioToolbox

Jit — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 09:14:44 -0600

This is a collection of libraries and high-quality end-user scripts for bioinformatic analysis, including working with gene annotation, collecting data scores from a variety of modern file formats, and conversion between file formats. The Bio::ToolBox libraries provide a unified, abstracted interface to multiple common gene annotation formats and the collection of data from multiple data files. They rely on BioPerl SeqFeature libraries and related adaptors to access binary file formats including Bam, BigWig, BigBed, and USeq. The Bio::ToolBox package includes scripts for setting up databases of annotation, collecting annotated features, collecting genomic data relative to features, manipulating and analyzing data, and data format conversion.

More at http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/TJPARNELL/

Address of the bookmark: http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/TJPARNELL/

Metagenomics assembly workshop !!

Jit — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 04:28:19 -0500

Welcome to the one-day metagenomics assembly workshop. This tutorial will guide you through the typical steps of metagenome assembly and binning.

Address of the bookmark: http://denbi-metagenomics-workshop.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

SNP Analysis: Unlocking the Secrets in Our DNA

Abhi — Wed, 16 Jul 2025 01:31:45 -0500

Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) are the most common type of genetic variation in humans—and many other organisms. A single base change in the DNA sequence (for example, an A instead of a G) can influence everything from our eye color to our risk of developing diseases. Analyzing these tiny changes has become central to modern genetics, medicine, agriculture, and evolutionary biology.

What are SNPs?
SNPs (pronounced "snips") are positions in the genome where individuals differ by a single nucleotide. For example:

Reference: ...A T G C A T G A...
Variant: ...A T G T A T G A...

Here, the C in the reference genome has been replaced by a T in the variant.

SNPs occur roughly every 300–1,000 bases in the human genome, meaning there are millions of them scattered throughout our DNA. Most SNPs have no effect on health, but some are linked to disease susceptibility, drug response, and other traits.

Why Do We Analyze SNPs?
1. Medical Genetics

Identify disease-associated variants (e.g., BRCA1/2 in breast cancer).

Predict drug response (pharmacogenomics).

Enable precision medicine by tailoring treatments.

2. Population Genetics & Ancestry

Trace human migration and ancestry.

Study genetic diversity within and between populations.

3. Agriculture & Animal Breeding

Select for desirable traits (drought resistance, yield, disease resistance).

Improve breeding efficiency in livestock.

4. Evolutionary Biology

Track natural selection.

Study adaptation in wild populations.

How is SNP Analysis Performed?
SNP analysis can be broadly divided into three steps:

SNP Detection
Genotyping arrays: Chips that test hundreds of thousands of known SNP positions simultaneously. Fast and affordable, widely used in consumer ancestry testing.

Whole-genome or whole-exome sequencing: Can detect known and novel SNPs across the genome.

Targeted sequencing or PCR: For focused analysis of specific regions.

Variant Calling
Sequencing data is aligned to a reference genome. Bioinformatics tools (e.g., GATK, bcftools) identify positions where the sequenced sample differs from the reference.

Annotation and Interpretation
Tools (e.g., SnpEff, VEP) predict the functional impact of SNPs.

Are the SNPs in coding regions? Do they cause amino acid changes? Are they known to be pathogenic?

Databases like dbSNP, ClinVar, and GWAS Catalog provide information on known associations.

Common Tools for SNP Analysis
Alignment: BWA, Bowtie2

Variant Calling: GATK, FreeBayes

Visualization: IGV, UCSC Genome Browser

Annotation: SnpEff, VEP

Statistical Analysis: PLINK, SNPTEST

Challenges in SNP Analysis
False positives/negatives: Sequencing errors, alignment issues.

Population stratification: Confounding in association studies.

Interpretation: Many SNPs have unknown or complex effects.

Researchers address these with rigorous quality control, large datasets, and increasingly sophisticated statistical models.

The Future of SNP Analysis
With advances in sequencing technology and AI-driven analysis, SNP studies are expanding:

Polygenic risk scores predict disease risk based on thousands of SNPs.

Large-scale biobanks (e.g., UK Biobank, All of Us) enable powerful genome-wide association studies (GWAS).

CRISPR and functional assays help validate SNP effects in the lab.

SNP analysis is at the heart of the genomic revolution, promising insights into biology, health, and evolution at unprecedented scale.

Conclusion
From diagnosing rare diseases to designing better crops, SNP analysis is a foundational tool in modern science. As our ability to sequence and interpret genomes improves, so will our understanding of these tiny—but mighty—variations in DNA.

Biological file format tutorial

Jit — Sun, 17 Dec 2017 18:13:03 -0600

This section explains some of the commonly used file formats in bioinformatics. The information provided here is basic and designed to help users to distinguish the difference between different formats. Please refer user manual or other information resources on web for more details.

Address of the bookmark: https://bioinformatics.uconn.edu/resources-and-events/tutorials/file-formats-tutorial/

Pangolin tutorial !

Abhi — Fri, 10 Dec 2021 05:58:59 -0600

This is a tutorial for using the Pangolin Web Application. For information on using the command line tool, please visit the command line tool usage page.

https://cov-lineages.org/resources/pangolin/tutorial.html

Address of the bookmark: https://cov-lineages.org/resources/pangolin/tutorial.html