BOL: Related items

NCBI PSI-BLAST Tutorial

Fri, 23 Aug 2013 02:25:02 -0500

http:--www.biotechnology.jhu.edu- Tutorial for PSI-BLAST, an extension of BLAST that uses matrix algebra. BLAST is a cornerstone bioinformatics tool at NCBI. BLAST is the Basic Local Alignment Search tool and will protein and DNA sequences that are related to a sequence that the user provides.

Efficient genome searching with Biostrings and the BSgenome data package

Aasha — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 05:18:06 -0600

Address of the bookmark: https://www.bioconductor.org/packages/3.3/bioc/vignettes/BSgenome/inst/doc/GenomeSearching.pdf

MetaGraph: Ultra Scalable Framework for DNA Search, Alignment, Assembly

Abhi — Sat, 08 Jun 2024 16:15:25 -0500

The MetaGraph framework is designed to work with a wide range of input data sets, indexing from a few samples up to the contents of entire archives with hundreds of thousands of records. The indexing workflow always follows the same principle, transforming single input samples into error-removed, refined sample graphs, which are then merged into a joint metagraph index. Each input sample is annotated in the joint index as a subgraph. This graph index enriched with metadata can then be used for downstream applications such as sequence search or differential assembly.

Searcg link https://metagraph.ethz.ch/search

Pre-print https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.10.01.322164v4

Address of the bookmark: https://metagraph.ethz.ch/

MMseqs2.0: ultra fast and sensitive protein search and clustering suite

Jit — Thu, 22 Mar 2018 10:40:51 -0500

MMseqs2 (Many-against-Many sequence searching) is a software suite to search and cluster huge protein sequence sets. MMseqs2 is open source GPL-licensed software implemented in C++ for Linux, MacOS, and (as beta version, via cygwin) Windows. The software is designed to run on multiple cores and servers and exhibits very good scalability. MMseqs2 can run 10000 times faster than BLAST. At 100 times its speed it achieves almost the same sensitivity. It can perform profile searches with the same sensitivity as PSI-BLAST at over 400 times its speed.

The MMseqs2 user guide is available as Github Wiki or as PDF file (Thanks to pandoc!)

Please cite: Steinegger M and Soeding J. MMseqs2 enables sensitive protein sequence searching for the analysis of massive data sets. Nature Biotechnology, doi: 10.1038/nbt.3988 (2017).

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/soedinglab/MMseqs2

Common Bioinformatics Interview Questions !

Jit — Sat, 23 Jan 2021 06:07:50 -0600

The possibility of an interview for a bioinformatics position in the life sciences may be very disquieting, but the same concerns emerge time and again in my experience. So, it is exceedingly worthwhile to plan for future bioinformatics interview questions. Doing this will really give you the advantage in obtaining the position.

The following 5 questions are those that I have heard many times during the job-search process. There is no reason for not planning responses in such situations.

1. Tell Us About Yourself
This is a very typical opener in interviews. It's a perfect question to ask, and getting something planned will really help you concentrate and ease in the conversation. However, you need to make sure that your response is applicable to the job you're interviewing.
It's probably better to keep your answer professional. Try to include these in the answer as well: where did your love of science and bioinformatics come from? How the heck did you end up in this field? Why programming and scripting ?

2. What is your plan for your bioinformatics career? / How do you look at yourself in five years? / How are your personal objectives to accomplish these goals / What are the plan for your research fundings ?

Your CV/resume has already impressed the selection panel if you have been invited for an interview. The questions from the bioinformatics interview team provide an incentive for you to market yourself and illustrate the work in question with the most appropriate knowledge.

3. What do you understand about the job description/What would your suggested research path be if you were a successful candidate?
Summarize the specifics of the advertised bioinformatics position in your own words. Follow on with some suggestions of how you want to extend your research and create your own projects within the community.

4. Will you work as a group or do you want to work on your own?
This requirement can vary from jobs to job, so when addressing, be alert. A company/research PI may need a bioinformatician that is able to work on a single project autonomously, or they may need a person who can help direct and organize a team. In your response, refer to the job description.

5. What particular methods have you used to date with your experiments?
You might have experience with all the laboratory techniques described in the job description, but stress the ones you highly experienced with. Highlight your professional abilities and stress that you are extremely capable of mastering new techniques with others ...

At the end of the day, remember that you're questioning the jury as well as they're interviewing you. You will ought to think of any questions you would like the interview panel to pose. This indicates that you have done your homework and serious about the position.

All the best for your future job interview.

sourmash: Quickly search, compare, and analyze genomic and metagenomic data sets.

BioStar — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 04:24:06 -0500

sourmash is a k-mer analysis multitool, and we aim to provide stable, robust programmatic and command-line APIs for a variety of sequence comparisons. Some of our special sauce includes:

FracMinHash sketching, which enables accurate comparisons (including ANI) between data sets of different sizes
sourmash gather, a combinatorial k-mer approach for more accurate metagenomic profiling

Please see the sourmash publications for details.

The name is a riff off of Mash, combined with @ctb's love of whiskey. (Sour mash is used in making whiskey.)

Maintainers: C. Titus Brown (@ctb), Luiz C. Irber, Jr (@luizirber), and N. Tessa Pierce-Ward (@bluegenes).

sourmash was initially developed by the Lab for Data-Intensive Biology at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, and now includes contributions from the global research and developer community.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/sourmash-bio/sourmash

High Density Sheep SNP Genotyping Chip released!!!

Rahul Agarwal — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 13:58:04 -0500

If you are working on Sheep genomics then there is a good news for you. FarmIQ in conjunction with Illumina and the International Sheep Genomics Consortium (ISGC) are today announcing completion of the “Ovine Infinium® HD SNP BeadChip”, a high definition SNP chip for ship genome. The OvineSNP50 BeadChip features over 54,241 evenly spaced probes that target SNPs, offering more than sufficient SNP density for genome-wide association studies and other applications such as genome-wide selection, determination of genetic merit, identification of quantitative trait loci, and comparative genetic studies.

The BeadChip was developed in collaboration with leading ovine researchers from AgResearch, Baylor UCSC, CSIRO, and the USDA as part of the International Sheep Genomics Consortium. It features over 54,241 evenly spaced probes that target single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). More than 18,000 of these markers were discovered through sequencing reduced representation libraries with the Illumina Genome Analyzer IIx. A set of 600 SNPs were identified by BAC end sequencing and validated with Illumina GoldenGate Genotyping Assays over 403 animals from 23 breeds. The remaining SNPs were derived from the draft ovine genome.

Software packages for next gen sequence analysis

Rahul Nayak — Fri, 19 Jun 2015 21:07:15 -0500

Integrated solutions
* CLCbio Genomics Workbench - de novo and reference assembly of Sanger, Roche FLX, Illumina, Helicos, and SOLiD data. Commercial next-gen-seq software that extends the CLCbio Main Workbench software. Includes SNP detection, CHiP-seq, browser and other features. Commercial. Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
* Galaxy - Galaxy = interactive and reproducible genomics. A job webportal.
* Genomatix - Integrated Solutions for Next Generation Sequencing data analysis.
* JMP Genomics - Next gen visualization and statistics tool from SAS. They are working with NCGR to refine this tool and produce others.
* NextGENe - de novo and reference assembly of Illumina, SOLiD and Roche FLX data. Uses a novel Condensation Assembly Tool approach where reads are joined via "anchors" into mini-contigs before assembly. Includes SNP detection, CHiP-seq, browser and other features. Commercial. Win or MacOS.
* SeqMan Genome Analyser - Software for Next Generation sequence assembly of Illumina, Roche FLX and Sanger data integrating with Lasergene Sequence Analysis software for additional analysis and visualization capabilities. Can use a hybrid templated/de novo approach. Commercial. Win or Mac OS X.
* SHORE - SHORE, for Short Read, is a mapping and analysis pipeline for short DNA sequences produced on a Illumina Genome Analyzer. A suite created by the 1001 Genomes project. Source for POSIX.
* SlimSearch - Fledgling commercial product.

Align/Assemble to a reference
* BFAST - Blat-like Fast Accurate Search Tool. Written by Nils Homer, Stanley F. Nelson and Barry Merriman at UCLA.
* Bowtie - Ultrafast, memory-efficient short read aligner. It aligns short DNA sequences (reads) to the human genome at a rate of 25 million reads per hour on a typical workstation with 2 gigabytes of memory. Uses a Burrows-Wheeler-Transformed (BWT) index. Link to discussion thread here. Written by Ben Langmead and Cole Trapnell. Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.
* BWA - Heng Lee's BWT Alignment program - a progression from Maq. BWA is a fast light-weighted tool that aligns short sequences to a sequence database, such as the human reference genome. By default, BWA finds an alignment within edit distance 2 to the query sequence. C++ source.
* ELAND - Efficient Large-Scale Alignment of Nucleotide Databases. Whole genome alignments to a reference genome. Written by Illumina author Anthony J. Cox for the Solexa 1G machine.
* Exonerate - Various forms of pairwise alignment (including Smith-Waterman-Gotoh) of DNA/protein against a reference. Authors are Guy St C Slater and Ewan Birney from EMBL. C for POSIX.
* GenomeMapper - GenomeMapper is a short read mapping tool designed for accurate read alignments. It quickly aligns millions of reads either with ungapped or gapped alignments. A tool created by the 1001 Genomes project. Source for POSIX.
* GMAP - GMAP (Genomic Mapping and Alignment Program) for mRNA and EST Sequences. Developed by Thomas Wu and Colin Watanabe at Genentec. C/Perl for Unix.
* gnumap - The Genomic Next-generation Universal MAPper (gnumap) is a program designed to accurately map sequence data obtained from next-generation sequencing machines (specifically that of Solexa/Illumina) back to a genome of any size. It seeks to align reads from nonunique repeats using statistics. From authors at Brigham Young University. C source/Unix.
* MAQ - Mapping and Assembly with Qualities (renamed from MAPASS2). Particularly designed for Illumina with preliminary functions to handle ABI SOLiD data. Written by Heng Li from the Sanger Centre. Features extensive supporting tools for DIP/SNP detection, etc. C++ source
* MOSAIK - MOSAIK produces gapped alignments using the Smith-Waterman algorithm. Features a number of support tools. Support for Roche FLX, Illumina, SOLiD, and Helicos. Written by Michael Strömberg at Boston College. Win/Linux/MacOSX
* MrFAST and MrsFAST - mrFAST & mrsFAST are designed to map short reads generated with the Illumina platform to reference genome assemblies; in a fast and memory-efficient manner. Robust to INDELs and MrsFAST has a bisulphite mode. Authors are from the University of Washington. C as source.
* MUMmer - MUMmer is a modular system for the rapid whole genome alignment of finished or draft sequence. Released as a package providing an efficient suffix tree library, seed-and-extend alignment, SNP detection, repeat detection, and visualization tools. Version 3.0 was developed by Stefan Kurtz, Adam Phillippy, Arthur L Delcher, Michael Smoot, Martin Shumway, Corina Antonescu and Steven L Salzberg - most of whom are at The Institute for Genomic Research in Maryland, USA. POSIX OS required.
* Novocraft - Tools for reference alignment of paired-end and single-end Illumina reads. Uses a Needleman-Wunsch algorithm. Can support Bis-Seq. Commercial. Available free for evaluation, educational use and for use on open not-for-profit projects. Requires Linux or Mac OS X.
* PASS - It supports Illumina, SOLiD and Roche-FLX data formats and allows the user to modulate very finely the sensitivity of the alignments. Spaced seed intial filter, then NW dynamic algorithm to a SW(like) local alignment. Authors are from CRIBI in Italy. Win/Linux.
* RMAP - Assembles 20 - 64 bp Illumina reads to a FASTA reference genome. By Andrew D. Smith and Zhenyu Xuan at CSHL. (published in BMC Bioinformatics). POSIX OS required.
* SeqMap - Supports up to 5 or more bp mismatches/INDELs. Highly tunable. Written by Hui Jiang from the Wong lab at Stanford. Builds available for most OS's.
* SHRiMP - Assembles to a reference sequence. Developed with Applied Biosystem's colourspace genomic representation in mind. Authors are Michael Brudno and Stephen Rumble at the University of Toronto. POSIX.
* Slider- An application for the Illumina Sequence Analyzer output that uses the probability files instead of the sequence files as an input for alignment to a reference sequence or a set of reference sequences. Authors are from BCGSC. Paper is here.
* SOAP - SOAP (Short Oligonucleotide Alignment Program). A program for efficient gapped and ungapped alignment of short oligonucleotides onto reference sequences. The updated version uses a BWT. Can call SNPs and INDELs. Author is Ruiqiang Li at the Beijing Genomics Institute. C++, POSIX.
* SSAHA - SSAHA (Sequence Search and Alignment by Hashing Algorithm) is a tool for rapidly finding near exact matches in DNA or protein databases using a hash table. Developed at the Sanger Centre by Zemin Ning, Anthony Cox and James Mullikin. C++ for Linux/Alpha.
* SOCS - Aligns SOLiD data. SOCS is built on an iterative variation of the Rabin-Karp string search algorithm, which uses hashing to reduce the set of possible matches, drastically increasing search speed. Authors are Ondov B, Varadarajan A, Passalacqua KD and Bergman NH.
* SWIFT - The SWIFT suit is a software collection for fast index-based sequence comparison. It contains: SWIFT — fast local alignment search, guaranteeing to find epsilon-matches between two sequences. SWIFT BALSAM — a very fast program to find semiglobal non-gapped alignments based on k-mer seeds. Authors are Kim Rasmussen (SWIFT) and Wolfgang Gerlach (SWIFT BALSAM)
* SXOligoSearch - SXOligoSearch is a commercial platform offered by the Malaysian based Synamatix. Will align Illumina reads against a range of Refseq RNA or NCBI genome builds for a number of organisms. Web Portal. OS independent.
* Vmatch - A versatile software tool for efficiently solving large scale sequence matching tasks. Vmatch subsumes the software tool REPuter, but is much more general, with a very flexible user interface, and improved space and time requirements. Essentially a large string matching toolbox. POSIX.
* Zoom - ZOOM (Zillions Of Oligos Mapped) is designed to map millions of short reads, emerged by next-generation sequencing technology, back to the reference genomes, and carry out post-analysis. ZOOM is developed to be highly accurate, flexible, and user-friendly with speed being a critical priority. Commercial. Supports Illumina and SOLiD data.

De novo Align/Assemble
* ABySS - Assembly By Short Sequences. ABySS is a de novo sequence assembler that is designed for very short reads. The single-processor version is useful for assembling genomes up to 40-50 Mbases in size. The parallel version is implemented using MPI and is capable of assembling larger genomes. By Simpson JT and others at the Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. C++ as source.
* ALLPATHS - ALLPATHS: De novo assembly of whole-genome shotgun microreads. ALLPATHS is a whole genome shotgun assembler that can generate high quality assemblies from short reads. Assemblies are presented in a graph form that retains ambiguities, such as those arising from polymorphism, thereby providing information that has been absent from previous genome assemblies. Broad Institute.
* Edena - Edena (Exact DE Novo Assembler) is an assembler dedicated to process the millions of very short reads produced by the Illumina Genome Analyzer. Edena is based on the traditional overlap layout paradigm. By D. Hernandez, P. François, L. Farinelli, M. Osteras, and J. Schrenzel. Linux/Win.
* EULER-SR - Short read de novo assembly. By Mark J. Chaisson and Pavel A. Pevzner from UCSD (published in Genome Research). Uses a de Bruijn graph approach.
* MIRA2 - MIRA (Mimicking Intelligent Read Assembly) is able to perform true hybrid de-novo assemblies using reads gathered through 454 sequencing technology (GS20 or GS FLX). Compatible with 454, Solexa and Sanger data. Linux OS required.
* SEQAN - A Consistency-based Consensus Algorithm for De Novo and Reference-guided Sequence Assembly of Short Reads. By Tobias Rausch and others. C++, Linux/Win.
* SHARCGS - De novo assembly of short reads. Authors are Dohm JC, Lottaz C, Borodina T and Himmelbauer H. from the Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics.
* SSAKE - The Short Sequence Assembly by K-mer search and 3' read Extension (SSAKE) is a genomics application for aggressively assembling millions of short nucleotide sequences by progressively searching for perfect 3'-most k-mers using a DNA prefix tree. Authors are René Warren, Granger Sutton, Steven Jones and Robert Holt from the Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. Perl/Linux.
* SOAPdenovo - Part of the SOAP suite. See above.
* VCAKE - De novo assembly of short reads with robust error correction. An improvement on early versions of SSAKE.
* Velvet - Velvet is a de novo genomic assembler specially designed for short read sequencing technologies, such as Solexa or 454. Need about 20-25X coverage and paired reads. Developed by Daniel Zerbino and Ewan Birney at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI).

SNP/Indel Discovery
* ssahaSNP - ssahaSNP is a polymorphism detection tool. It detects homozygous SNPs and indels by aligning shotgun reads to the finished genome sequence. Highly repetitive elements are filtered out by ignoring those kmer words with high occurrence numbers. More tuned for ABI Sanger reads. Developers are Adam Spargo and Zemin Ning from the Sanger Centre. Compaq Alpha, Linux-64, Linux-32, Solaris and Mac
* PolyBayesShort - A re-incarnation of the PolyBayes SNP discovery tool developed by Gabor Marth at Washington University. This version is specifically optimized for the analysis of large numbers (millions) of high-throughput next-generation sequencer reads, aligned to whole chromosomes of model organism or mammalian genomes. Developers at Boston College. Linux-64 and Linux-32.
* PyroBayes - PyroBayes is a novel base caller for pyrosequences from the 454 Life Sciences sequencing machines. It was designed to assign more accurate base quality estimates to the 454 pyrosequences. Developers at Boston College.

Genome Annotation/Genome Browser/Alignment Viewer/Assembly Database
* EagleView - An information-rich genome assembler viewer. EagleView can display a dozen different types of information including base quality and flowgram signal. Developers at Boston College.
* LookSeq - LookSeq is a web-based application for alignment visualization, browsing and analysis of genome sequence data. LookSeq supports multiple sequencing technologies, alignment sources, and viewing modes; low or high-depth read pileups; and easy visualization of putative single nucleotide and structural variation. From the Sanger Centre.
* MapView - MapView: visualization of short reads alignment on desktop computer. From the Evolutionary Genomics Lab at Sun-Yat Sen University, China. Linux.
* SAM - Sequence Assembly Manager. Whole Genome Assembly (WGA) Management and Visualization Tool. It provides a generic platform for manipulating, analyzing and viewing WGA data, regardless of input type. Developers are Rene Warren, Yaron Butterfield, Asim Siddiqui and Steven Jones at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. MySQL backend and Perl-CGI web-based frontend/Linux.
* STADEN - Includes GAP4. GAP5 once completed will handle next-gen sequencing data. A partially implemented test version is available here
* XMatchView - A visual tool for analyzing cross_match alignments. Developed by Rene Warren and Steven Jones at Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. Python/Win or Linux.

Counting e.g. CHiP-Seq, Bis-Seq, CNV-Seq
* BS-Seq - The source code and data for the "Shotgun Bisulphite Sequencing of the Arabidopsis Genome Reveals DNA Methylation Patterning" Nature paper by Cokus et al. (Steve Jacobsen's lab at UCLA). POSIX.
* CHiPSeq - Program used by Johnson et al. (2007) in their Science publication
* CNV-Seq - CNV-seq, a new method to detect copy number variation using high-throughput sequencing. Chao Xie and Martti T Tammi at the National University of Singapore. Perl/R.
* FindPeaks - perform analysis of ChIP-Seq experiments. It uses a naive algorithm for identifying regions of high coverage, which represent Chromatin Immunoprecipitation enrichment of sequence fragments, indicating the location of a bound protein of interest. Original algorithm by Matthew Bainbridge, in collaboration with Gordon Robertson. Current code and implementation by Anthony Fejes. Authors are from the Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre. JAVA/OS independent. Latest versions available as part of the Vancouver Short Read Analysis Package
* MACS - Model-based Analysis for ChIP-Seq. MACS empirically models the length of the sequenced ChIP fragments, which tends to be shorter than sonication or library construction size estimates, and uses it to improve the spatial resolution of predicted binding sites. MACS also uses a dynamic Poisson distribution to effectively capture local biases in the genome sequence, allowing for more sensitive and robust prediction. Written by Yong Zhang and Tao Liu from Xiaole Shirley Liu's Lab.
* PeakSeq - PeakSeq: Systematic Scoring of ChIP-Seq Experiments Relative to Controls. a two-pass approach for scoring ChIP-Seq data relative to controls. The first pass identifies putative binding sites and compensates for variation in the mappability of sequences across the genome. The second pass filters out sites that are not significantly enriched compared to the normalized input DNA and computes a precise enrichment and significance. By Rozowsky J et al. C/Perl.
* QuEST - Quantitative Enrichment of Sequence Tags. Sidow and Myers Labs at Stanford. From the 2008 publication Genome-wide analysis of transcription factor binding sites based on ChIP-Seq data. (C++)
* SISSRs - Site Identification from Short Sequence Reads. BED file input. Raja Jothi @ NIH. Perl.
**See also this thread for ChIP-Seq, until I get time to update this list.

Alternate Base Calling
* Rolexa - R-based framework for base calling of Solexa data. Project publication
* Alta-cyclic - "a novel Illumina Genome-Analyzer (Solexa) base caller"

Transcriptomics
* ERANGE - Mapping and Quantifying Mammalian Transcriptomes by RNA-Seq. Supports Bowtie, BLAT and ELAND. From the Wold lab.
* G-Mo.R-Se - G-Mo.R-Se is a method aimed at using RNA-Seq short reads to build de novo gene models. First, candidate exons are built directly from the positions of the reads mapped on the genome (without any ab initio assembly of the reads), and all the possible splice junctions between those exons are tested against unmapped reads. From CNS in France.
* MapNext - MapNext: A software tool for spliced and unspliced alignments and SNP detection of short sequence reads. From the Evolutionary Genomics Lab at Sun-Yat Sen University, China.
* QPalma - Optimal Spliced Alignments of Short Sequence Reads. Authors are Fabio De Bona, Stephan Ossowski, Korbinian Schneeberger, and Gunnar Rätsch. A paper is available.
* RSAT - RSAT: RNA-Seq Analysis Tools. RNASAT is developed and maintained by Hui Jiang at Stanford University.
* TopHat - TopHat is a fast splice junction mapper for RNA-Seq reads. It aligns RNA-Seq reads to mammalian-sized genomes using the ultra high-throughput short read aligner Bowtie, and then analyzes the mapping results to identify splice junctions between exons. TopHat is a collaborative effort between the University of Maryland and the University of California, Berkeley

Heap: a highly sensitive and accurate SNP detection tool for low-coverage high-throughput sequencing data

Jit — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 08:06:03 -0500

Heap, that enables robustly sensitive and accurate calling of SNPs, particularly with a low coverage NGS data, which must be aligned to the reference genome sequences in advance. To reduce false positive SNPs, Heap determines genotypes and calls SNPs at each site except for sites at the both end of reads or containing a minor allele supported by only one read. Performance comparison with existing tools showed that Heap achieved the highest F-scores with low coverage (7X) restriction-site associated DNA sequencing reads of sorghum and rice individuals. This will facilitate cost-effective GWAS and GP studies in this NGS era. Code and documentation of Heap are freely available from https://github.com/meiji-bioinf/heap and our web site (http://bioinf.mind.meiji.ac.jp/lab/en/tools.html).

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/meiji-bioinf/heap

QuasiModo - Quasispecies Metric Determination on Omics

Neel — Sat, 26 Jun 2021 15:22:56 -0500

This repository contains the scripts and pipeline that reproduces the results of the HCMV benchmarking study. In this study we evaluated genome assemblers and variant callers on 10 in vitro generated, mixed strain HCMV sequence samples, each consisting of two lab strains in different abundance ratios. This tool can also be used to evaluate assemblies and variant calling results on other similar datasets.

https://academic.oup.com/bib/article/22/3/bbaa123/5868070

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/hzi-bifo/Quasimodo