To fully leverage these opportunities, bioinformaticians require specialized tools and databases. This blog highlights essential resources for mycology research, focusing on databases, tools, and platforms tailored for fungal biology.

1. Fungal Databases

1.1. MycoCosm

Website: MycoCosm
Developed by the DOE Joint Genome Institute, MycoCosm is a comprehensive portal for fungal genomics. It offers genomic and transcriptomic data for a wide range of fungi, including saprobes, pathogens, and symbionts.

• Key Features: Genome browsers, comparative genomics tools, and functional annotations.
• Best For: Large-scale studies on fungal evolution and ecology.

1.2. FungiDB

Website: FungiDB
FungiDB is an integrated genomic resource for fungal pathogens and non-pathogens. It provides access to genome sequences, transcriptomic data, and functional annotations.

• Key Features: Advanced search options, BLAST, and pathway analysis tools.
• Best For: Studying fungal pathogenesis and host-pathogen interactions.

1.3. Index Fungorum

Website: Index Fungorum
This nomenclatural database provides information on the scientific names of fungi. It’s an essential resource for taxonomists and researchers focused on fungal biodiversity.

• Key Features: Taxonomic hierarchy and synonymy tracking.
• Best For: Identifying and classifying fungal species.

1.4. UNITE

Website: UNITE
UNITE is a specialized database for fungal ITS (Internal Transcribed Spacer) sequences, often used in fungal identification and phylogenetics.

• Key Features: Curated reference datasets and community annotations.
• Best For: Environmental mycology and microbial ecology studies.

2. Analytical Tools

2.1. Funannotate

Repository: GitHub - Funannotate
Funannotate is a genome annotation tool designed for fungi. It supports tasks like gene prediction, functional annotation, and orthology analysis.

• Best For: Annotating newly sequenced fungal genomes.

2.2. BUSCO (Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs)

Website: BUSCO
BUSCO evaluates genome assembly and annotation completeness using orthologs. It includes a fungal-specific dataset.

• Best For: Assessing the quality of fungal genome assemblies.

2.3. Pathogen-Host Interactions Database (PHI-base)

Website: PHI-base
PHI-base is a manually curated resource containing information on pathogen-host interactions, including fungal pathogens.

• Best For: Exploring virulence factors and host-pathogen relationships.

3. Visualization Platforms

3.1. Cytoscape

Website: Cytoscape
A powerful tool for visualizing molecular interaction networks, Cytoscape can be used to study protein-protein interactions, gene networks, and metabolic pathways in fungi.

• Best For: Network biology and functional genomics.

3.2. iTOL (Interactive Tree of Life)

Website: iTOL
iTOL is an interactive tool for visualizing phylogenetic trees.

• Best For: Displaying fungal phylogenies and comparing evolutionary relationships.

4. Community Resources

4.1. Mycological Society of America (MSA)

Website: MSA
The MSA promotes fungal research and provides access to resources, conferences, and publications.

• Best For: Networking with fungal researchers and accessing recent studies.

4.2. OpenFungi

Website: OpenFungi
OpenFungi is an open-source initiative providing fungal genomic and transcriptomic datasets for research and education.

• Best For: Sharing and accessing public fungal datasets.

5. Genomics Workflows

5.1. Galaxy

Website: Galaxy Project
Galaxy offers a web-based platform for reproducible bioinformatics workflows, including tools for fungal genome and transcriptome analysis.

• Best For: User-friendly analysis pipelines without requiring coding skills.

5.2. Snakemake

Repository: Snakemake
A flexible pipeline management tool that supports fungal data processing and analysis.

• Best For: Custom workflows for large-scale fungal datasets.

Conclusion

Fungal research is a rapidly growing field with vast implications for medicine, agriculture, and industry. For bioinformaticians, the availability of specialized resources—databases, tools, and community platforms—opens doors to innovative discoveries. Whether you are investigating fungal genomics, studying host-pathogen interactions, or exploring fungal biodiversity, the resources outlined above will empower your research journey.

Dive into these resources and help unravel the mysteries of the fungal kingdom!

Deadline: 30.09.2019

Requirement:
Microsoft SQL Server: Administration, Transact-SQL
Machine Learning
Know Deutsch und Englisch langauge

DEG is freely available at the website http://tubic.tju.edu.cn/deg or http://www.essentialgene.org.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.essentialgene.org/

Address of the bookmark: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chembl/

tax_id:
the unique identifier provided by NCBI Taxonomy
for the species or strain/isolate

GeneID:
the unique identifier for a gene
ASN1: geneid

Symbol:
the default symbol for the gene
ASN1: gene->locus

LocusTag:
the LocusTag value
ASN1: gene->locus-tag

Synonyms:
bar-delimited set of unofficial symbols for the gene

dbXrefs:
bar-delimited set of identifiers in other databases
for this gene. The unit of the set is database:value.
Note that HGNC and MGI include 'HGNC' and 'MGI', respectively,
in the value part of their identifier. Consequently,
dbXrefs for these databases will appear like:
HGNC:HGNC:1100
This would be interpreted as database='HGNC', value='HGNC:1100'
Example for MGI:
MGI:MGI:104537
This would be interpreted as database='MGI', value='MGI:104537'

chromosome:
the chromosome on which this gene is placed.
for mitochondrial genomes, the value 'MT' is used.

map location:
the map location for this gene

description:
a descriptive name for this gene

type of gene:
the type assigned to the gene according to the list of options
provided in https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/IEB/ToolBox/CPP_DOC/lxr/source/src/objects/entrezgene/entrezgene.asn

Symbol from nomenclature authority:
when not '-', indicates that this symbol is from a
a nomenclature authority

Full name from nomenclature authority:
when not '-', indicates that this full name is from a
a nomenclature authority

Nomenclature status:
when not '-', indicates the status of the name from the
nomenclature authority (O for official, I for interim)

Other designations:
pipe-delimited set of some alternate descriptions that
have been assigned to a GeneID
'-' indicates none is being reported.

Modification date:
the last date a gene record was updated, in YYYYMMDD format

Feature type:
pipe-delimited set of annotated features and their classes or
controlled vocabularies, displayed as feature_type:feature_class
or feature_type:controlled_vocabulary, when appropriate; derived
from select feature annotations on RefSeq(s) associated with the
GeneID

Address of the bookmark: ftp://ftp.ncbi.nih.gov/gene/DATA/GENE_INFO/

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/

More at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/tools/remap

API http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/tools/remap/docs/api

Address of the bookmark: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/tools/remap

EDirect also provides an argument-driven function that simplifies the extraction of data from document summaries or other results that are returned in structured XML format. This can eliminate the need for writing custom software to answer ad hoc questions. Queries can move seamlessly between EDirect commands and UNIX utilities or scripts to perform actions that cannot be accomplished entirely within Entrez.

Address of the bookmark: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK179288/

NCBI Hackathon specifically looking for folks who have experience in computational virus hunting or adjacent fields to identify known, taxonomically-definable and novel viruses from a few hundred thousand metagenomic datasets that we’ll put on cloud infrastructure. This event is for researchers, including students and postdocs, who are already engaged in the use of bioinformatics data or in the development of pipelines for virological analyses from high-throughput experiments. If this describes you, please apply! The event is open to anyone selected for the hackathon and willing to travel to SDSU (see below).

https://ncbiinsights.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2018/11/09/ncbi-sdsu-virus-hunting-data-science-hackathon-january-2019/

What’s included in this release?

As of July 8, 2024, this full release incorporates genomic, transcript, and protein data containing:

• 448,507,905 records
• 334,845,613 proteins
• 63,542,774 RNAs
• Sequences from 152,668 organisms

The release is provided in several directories as a complete dataset and also as divided by logical groupings.