BOL: Related items

Prodigal (Prokaryotic Dynamic Programming Genefinding Algorithm)

Abhimanyu Singh — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 03:26:45 -0600

Prodigal (Prokaryotic Dynamic Programming Genefinding Algorithm) is a microbial (bacterial and archaeal) gene finding program developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee. Key features of Prodigal include:

Speed: Prodigal is an extremely fast gene recognition tool (written in very vanilla C). It can analyze an entire microbial genome in 30 seconds or less.
Accuracy: Prodigal is a highly accurate gene finder. It correctly locates the 3' end of every gene in the experimentally verified Ecogene data set (except those containing introns). It possesses a very sophisticated ribosomal binding site scoring system that enables it to locate the translation initiation site with great accuracy (96% of the 5' ends in the Ecogene data set are located correctly).
Specificity: Prodigal's false positive rate compares favorably with other gene identification programs, and usually falls under 5%.
GC-Content Indifferent: Prodigal performs well even in high GC genomes, with over a 90% perfect match (5'+3') to the Pseudomonas aeruginosa curated annotations.
Metagenomic Version: Prodigal can run in metagenomic mode and analyze sequences even when the organism is unknown.
Ease of Use: Prodigal can be run in one step on a single genomic sequence or on a draft genome containing many sequences. It does not need to be supplied with any knowledge of the organism, as it learns all the properties it needs to on its own.
Open Source: Prodigal source code is freely available under the General Public License.

Download the latest version of Prodigal at the Prodigal github page.
or
Browse the wiki documenation.

Address of the bookmark: http://prodigal.ornl.gov/

PASA: Gene Structure Annotation and Analysis

biogeek — Tue, 26 Dec 2017 21:14:03 -0600

PASA, acronym for Program to Assemble Spliced Alignments, is a eukaryotic genome annotation tool that exploits spliced alignments of expressed transcript sequences to automatically model gene structures, and to maintain gene structure annotation consistent with the most recently available experimental sequence data. PASA also identifies and classifies all splicing variations supported by the transcript alignments.

Address of the bookmark: http://pasapipeline.github.io/

G-NEST: The Gene NEighborhood Scoring Tool

Neel — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 20:09:18 -0500

The Gene NEighborhood Scoring Tool (G-NEST) combines genomic location, gene expression, and evolutionary sequence conservation data to score putative gene neighborhoods across all window sizes. Primary author of final code = William F. Martin. Example data files are in the separate repository.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/dglemay/G-NEST

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

gggenes: a ggplot2 extension for drawing gene arrow maps.

BioStar — Tue, 02 Jun 2020 11:43:34 -0500

Install the stable version of gggenes from CRAN:

install.packages("gggenes")

If you want the development version, install it from GitHub:

devtools::install_github("wilkox/gggenes")

More at https://github.com/wilkox/gggenes

Address of the bookmark: http://wilkox.org/gggenes

MetaEuk - sensitive, high-throughput gene discovery and annotation for large-scale eukaryotic metagenomics

Jit — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 19:29:32 -0600

MetaEuk is a modular toolkit designed for large-scale gene discovery and annotation in eukaryotic metagenomic contigs. Metaeuk combines the fast and sensitive homology search capabilities of MMseqs2 with a dynamic programming procedure to recover optimal exons sets. It reduces redundancies in multiple discoveries of the same gene and resolves conflicting gene predictions on the same strand. MetaEuk is GPL-licensed open source software that is implemented in C++ and available for Linux and macOS. The software is designed to run on multiple cores.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/soedinglab/metaeuk

scikit-bio™ is an open-source, BSD-licensed, python package providing data structures, algorithms, and educational resources for bioinformatics.

Jit — Fri, 02 Mar 2018 04:29:47 -0600

scikit-bio is currently in beta. We are very actively developing it, and backward-incompatible interface changes can and will arise. To avoid these types of changes being a surprise to our users, our public APIs are decorated to make it clear to users when an API can be relied upon (stable) and when it may be subject to change (experimental). See the API stability docs for more details, including what we mean by stable and experimental in this context.

Address of the bookmark: http://scikit-bio.org/

modelStudio: a package automates the explanation of machine learning predictive models

Jit — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 23:58:11 -0600

The modelStudio package automates the explanation of machine learning predictive models. This package generates advanced interactive and animated model explanations in the form of a serverless HTML site.

It combines R with D3.js to produce plots and descriptions for various local and global explanations. Tools for model exploration unite with tools for EDA (Exploratory Data Analysis) to give a broad overview of the model behavior. modelStudio is a fast and condensed way to get all the answers without much effort. Break down your model and look into its ingredients with only a few lines of code.

Address of the bookmark: https://modeloriented.github.io/modelStudio/index.html

Luigi: a Python package that helps you build complex pipelines of batch jobs.

Neel — Thu, 24 Jun 2021 05:43:31 -0500

Luigi is a Python (3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 3.9 tested) package that helps you build complex pipelines of batch jobs. It handles dependency resolution, workflow management, visualization, handling failures, command line integration, and much more.

Run pip install luigi to install the latest stable version from PyPI. Documentation for the latest release is hosted on readthedocs.

Run pip install luigi[toml] to install Luigi with TOML-based configs support.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/spotify/luigi