BOL: Related items

Import R Data

Abhimanyu Singh — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 08:30:46 -0500

It is often necessary to import sample textbook data into R before you start working on your homework.

Excel File

Quite frequently, the sample data is in Excel format, and needs to be imported into R prior to use. For this, we can use the function read.xls from the gdata package. It reads from an Excel spreadsheet and returns a data frame. The following shows how to load an Excel spreadsheet named "mydata.xls". This method requires Perl runtime to be present in the system.

> library(gdata)                   # load gdata package
> help(read.xls)                   # documentation
> mydata = read.xls("mydata.xls")  # read from first sheet

Alternatively, we can use the function loadWorkbook from the XLConnect package to read the entire workbook, and then load the worksheets with readWorksheet. The XLConnect package requires Java to be pre-installed.

> library(XLConnect) # load XLConnect package
> wk = loadWorkbook("mydata.xls")
> df = readWorksheet(wk, sheet="Sheet1")

Minitab File

If the data file is in Minitab Portable Worksheet format, it can be opened with the function read.mtp from the foreign package. It returns a list of components in the Minitab worksheet.

> library(foreign)                 # load the foreign package
> help(read.mtp)                   # documentation
> mydata = read.mtp("mydata.mtp")  # read from .mtp file

SPSS File

For the data files in SPSS format, it can be opened with the function read.spss also from the foreign package. There is a "to.data.frame" option for choosing whether a data frame is to be returned. By default, it returns a list of components instead.

> library(foreign) # load the foreign package
> help(read.spss) # documentation
> mydata = read.spss("myfile", to.data.frame=TRUE)

Table File

A data table can resides in a text file. The cells inside the table are separated by blank characters. Here is an example of a table with 4 rows and 3 columns.

100   a1   b1
200   a2   b2
300   a3   b3
400   a4   b4

Now copy and paste the table above in a file named "mydata.txt" with a text editor. Then load the data into the workspace with the function read.table.

> mydata = read.table("mydata.txt")  # read text file
> mydata                             # print data frame
   V1 V2 V3
1 100 a1 b1
2 200 a2 b2
3 300 a3 b3
4 400 a4 b4

For further detail of the function read.table, please consult the R documentation.

> help(read.table)

CSV File

The sample data can also be in comma separated values (CSV) format. Each cell inside such data file is separated by a special character, which usually is a comma, although other characters can be used as well.

The first row of the data file should contain the column names instead of the actual data. Here is a sample of the expected format.

Col1,Col2,Col3
100,a1,b1
200,a2,b2
300,a3,b3

After we copy and paste the data above in a file named "mydata.csv" with a text editor, we can read the data with the function read.csv.

> mydata = read.csv("mydata.csv")  # read csv file
> mydata
  Col1 Col2 Col3
1  100   a1   b1
2  200   a2   b2
3  300   a3   b3

In various European locales, as the comma character serves as the decimal point, the function read.csv2 should be used instead. For further detail of the read.csv and read.csv2 functions, please consult the R documentation.

> help(read.csv)

Working Directory

Finally, the code samples above assume the data files are located in the R working directory, which can be found with the function getwd.

> getwd() # get current working directory

You can select a different working directory with the function setwd(), and thus avoid entering the full path of the data files.

> setwd("") # set working directory

Note that the forward slash should be used as the path separator even on Windows platform.

> setwd("C:/MyDoc")

NCBI to assist in Virus Hunting Data Science Hackathon

BioStar — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 12:55:01 -0600

NCBI Hackathon are pleased to announce the second installment of the SoCal Bioinformatics Hackathon. From January 9-11, 2019, the NCBI will help run a bioinformatics hackathon in Southern California hosted by the Computational Sciences Research Center at San Diego State University!

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/

De novo Genome Assembly for Illumina Data

Rahul Nayak — Mon, 20 Jan 2020 05:13:29 -0600

Written and maintained by Simon Gladman - Melbourne Bioinformatics (formerly VLSCI)

Protocol Overview / Introduction

In this protocol we discuss and outline the process of de novo assembly for small to medium sized genomes.

https://www.melbournebioinformatics.org.au/tutorials/tutorials/assembly/assembly-protocol/

Address of the bookmark: https://www.melbournebioinformatics.org.au/tutorials/tutorials/assembly/assembly-protocol/

BioJupies: Automatically Generates RNA-seq Data Analysis Notebooks

Rahul Nayak — Sun, 20 Dec 2020 11:43:45 -0600

With BioJupies you can produce in seconds a customized, reusable, and interactive report from your own raw or processed RNA-seq data through a simple user interface

BioJupies now supports user accounts! Sign in from the top right corner of the page for access to unlimited private notebooks, RNA-seq datasets and alignment jobs.

Address of the bookmark: https://amp.pharm.mssm.edu/biojupies/

Fundamentals of Data Visualization by Claus O. Wilke

Abhi — Sat, 08 Jun 2024 16:07:19 -0500

The book is meant as a guide to making visualizations that accurately reflect the data, tell a story, and look professional. It has grown out of my experience of working with students and postdocs in my laboratory on thousands of data visualizations. Over the years, I have noticed that the same issues arise over and over. I have attempted to collect my accumulated knowledge from these interactions in the form of this book.

The entire book is written in R Markdown, using RStudio as my text editor and the bookdown package to turn a collection of markdown documents into a coherent whole. The book’s source code is hosted on GitHub, at https://github.com/clauswilke/dataviz.

Address of the bookmark: https://clauswilke.com/dataviz/

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

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/

Simka and SimkaMin are comparative metagenomics method dedicated to NGS datasets

Neel — Sat, 06 Jul 2019 13:56:10 -0500

Simka is a de novo comparative metagenomics tool. Simka represents each dataset as a k-mer spectrum and compute several classical ecological distances between them.

Developper: Gaëtan Benoit, PhD, former member of the Genscale team at Inria.

Contact: claire dot lemaitre at inria dot fr

Simka and SimkaMin are comparative metagenomics method dedicated to NGS datasets. https://gatb.inria.fr/software/simka/

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/GATB/simka

Tools and Method for Haplotype phasing !

Manisha Mishra — Fri, 04 Sep 2020 20:41:40 -0500

Huge amounts of genotype data are being produced with recent technological advances, both from increasingly comprehensive and inexpensive genome-wide SNP microarrays and from ever more accessible whole-genome and whole-exome sequencing methods. The vast amount of knowledge contained in these results, however, is best exploited through phased haplotypes, which classify the alleles co-located on the same chromosome. Since sequence and SNP array data normally take the form of unphased genotypes, one does not specifically observe which of the two parental chromosomes, or haplotypes, falls on a specific allele. Fortunately, new advances in both computational and laboratory methods promise improved determination of haplotype phase. Following are useful tools :

Arlequin: http://cmpg.unibe.ch/software/arlequin3/

BEAGLE: http://faculty.washington.edu/browning/beagle/beagle.html

fastPHASE: http://stephenslab.uchicago.edu/software.html

GENEHUNTER: http://linkage.rockefeller.edu/soft/gh/

The Genome Analysis Toolkit:

http://www.broadinstitute.org/gsa/wiki/index.php/The_Genome_Analysis_Toolkit

IMPUTE2: https://mathgen.stats.ox.ac.uk/impute/impute_v2.html

MACH: http://www.sph.umich.edu/csg/abecasis/MACH/

MERLIN: http://www.sph.umich.edu/csg/abecasis/Merlin/

PHASE: http://stephenslab.uchicago.edu/software.html

PL-EM: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~junliu/plem/

“Read-backed phasing” algorithm: http://www.broadinstitute.org/gsa/wiki/index.php/Read-backed_phasing_algorithm

SHAPE-IT: http://www.griv.org/shapeit/

Popular bioinformatics educational resources !

Rahul Nayak — Fri, 04 May 2018 19:43:21 -0500

Followings are the list of popular bioinformatics educational resources

Bii.a-star.edu.sg

Bio research and development. Has course information and research information.

Isb-sib.ch

SIB operates the ExPASy proteomics server and the Swiss node of EMBnet. Teaching activities include a series of post-graduate courses given at the Universities of Geneva and Lausanne, as well as at the EPFL, and a Masters Degree in bioinformatics. Major research areas include the development of integrated databases and software resources in the field of proteomics.

Bioinformatics.ca

Provides information about bioinformatics in Canada. Workshops, certification and resources.

Chickscope.beckman.uiuc.edu

Students raise chicken embryos in the classroom and obtain magnetic resonance images through the Internet.

Bcb.iastate.edu

Graduate program at Iowa State University offering Undergraduate Major (BCBio) and the PhD program (BCB).

Bu.edu/bioinformatics/

Interdisciplinary PhD and Masters Programs that include an internship in the local industry companies. In conjunction with the NE masters program.

Bioinformatics.ubc.ca

A computational biology research centre covering many areas of genomics, proteomics, computer science and statistics. Research, training, news and events, resources and support, director's message, faculty and personnel.

Openhelix.com

Provides onsite training on specific bioinformatics databases and tools. Also offers bioinformatic software testing and research consulting services.

Igb.uci.edu

Specializing in making publicly available software and database services for computational biology.

Bioinformatics.pe.kr

Maintained by Dr. Seyeon Weon, Korea providing information on courses, a database archive, software archive and online resources.

Groups.yahoo.com/group/bimatics/

Bioinformatics group for students interested and/or working in the bioinformatics/computationalbiology fields. Offers opportunities to exchanging information and sharing ideas.

Ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22183/

Information about several medically important genes and related diseases. Illustrates the use of bioinformatics in their study.

Bioinfo.mbb.yale.edu/mbb452a/2003/

Bioinformatics course at Yale University. All course slides are available online.

Cs.iastate.edu/~honavar/comp-bio-courses.html

Listing of computational molecular biology course pages that have extensive online course materials.

Bioinf.manchester.ac.uk/dbbrowser/bioactivity/prefacefrm.html

A web-based tutorial associated with "Introduction to bioinformatics" published by Addison Wesley Longman.

Northeastern.edu/bioinformatics/

From the Biology department and in cooperation with Boston University. Emphasis on the ability to integrate knowledge from biological, computational, and mathematical disciplines.

Biocomp.unibo.it/lsbioinfo/

A two year, international master's programme in bioinformatics at the Universita di Bologna, Italy.

Cs.helsinki.fi/bioinformatiikka/mbi/programme.html

A two year Masters Degree Programme in Bioinformatics (MBI) offered by the University of Helsinki and Helsinki University of Technology, Finland.

Ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/education/education.shtml

A resource for introductory information on the Human Genome Project.

His.se/bioinformatics

A one-year, international master's programme in bioinformatics at the University of Skovde, Sweden.

Members.tripod.com/C.elegans/

Resources in biochemical, molecular, cellular, system, and organism biology, including over 25,000 indexed links, accumulated since 2000, from topic menus or from search interface.

Bioinformatics.org/faq/#contents

Summary of basics of bioinformatics for the intelligent newcomer.

Jiscmail.ac.uk/archives/bioinformatics.html

Forum featuring various aspects, events and developments in the bioinformatics field.

Biinoida.blogspot.com

Blog focusing on bioinformatics, biotechnology, pharma regulatory affairs, IPR and clinical trials.

Colorbasepair.com/bioinformatics_courses_tutorials.html

A list of on-line course materials and tutorials for bioinformatics and computational biology.

Geospiza.com/education/

Instructional materials for teaching bioinformatics. These include animated tutorials on topicssuch as BLAST, finding mutations in a protein, and graphing with MS-Excel.

Bioinformatics.fi

An international, two-year Master's programme jointly managed by the University of Tampere and the University of Turku, Finland.

Perlsource.net

Provides online courses in Perl programming for bioinformatic tools.