BOL: Related items

Reference Sequence Resource!

LEGE — Wed, 15 Sep 2021 21:15:22 -0500

The ENCODE project uses Reference Genomes from NCBI or UCSC to provide a consistent framework for mapping high-throughput sequencing data. In general, ENCODE data are mapped consistently to 2 human (GRCH38, hg19) and 2 mouse (mm9/mm10) genomes for historical comparability. Drosophia melanogaster experiments are mapped to either dm3 or dm6 and Caenorhabdilis elegans experiments are mapped to ce10 or ce11. T

Address of the bookmark: https://www.encodeproject.org/data-standards/reference-sequences/

Large Language Models in Bioinformatics: Transforming Data Analysis and Interpretation

LEGE — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 11:26:29 -0600

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into bioinformatics has ushered in a new era of computational biology. Among the most transformative advancements are large language models (LLMs), such as GPT and BERT, which leverage deep learning to process and interpret vast amounts of text data. These models are reshaping bioinformatics by enhancing data analysis, hypothesis generation, and literature mining.

Understanding Large Language Models

LLMs are AI systems trained on extensive datasets of natural language. Their ability to model context, identify patterns, and generate coherent language has proven invaluable across domains, including bioinformatics. By fine-tuning these models on biological datasets, researchers can unlock insights into molecular biology, systems biology, and beyond.

Key Applications of LLMs in Bioinformatics

1. Annotating Biological Data

Annotating genomic and proteomic data is fundamental yet labor-intensive. LLMs streamline this process by extracting functional annotations from literature and databases, predicting gene and protein functions, and providing automated insights.

2. Mining Scientific Literature

The exponential growth of publications presents a challenge for researchers to stay updated. LLMs can process large volumes of text to extract key findings, summarize papers, and identify trends, thereby facilitating efficient literature reviews.

3. Predicting Gene and Protein Functions

By leveraging sequence data and annotations, LLMs can predict the functions of uncharacterized genes and proteins. This capability is particularly useful for studying non-model organisms and orphan genes.

4. Drug Discovery and Repurposing

LLMs enable pattern recognition across chemical, genomic, and clinical datasets, identifying novel drug candidates and repurposing existing drugs for new therapeutic targets. They can simulate interactions between drugs and biological molecules, accelerating the discovery pipeline.

5. Generating Hypotheses for Research

LLMs analyze complex datasets to propose testable hypotheses. For example, they can predict protein-protein interactions, identify regulatory motifs, or model evolutionary processes in genomes.

Advantages of LLMs in Bioinformatics

Scalability: LLMs process massive datasets rapidly, reducing the time required for data analysis.
Versatility: These models adapt to diverse bioinformatics tasks, from genomic annotation to network analysis.
Contextual Insights: By synthesizing information across disparate datasets, LLMs provide integrative insights into biological systems.

Challenges in Applying LLMs

Despite their promise, LLMs face limitations:

Data Quality and Bias: Inaccurate or biased datasets can affect model predictions, necessitating rigorous data curation.
Interpretability: Understanding the decision-making process of LLMs remains a critical challenge, especially in high-stakes fields like genomics and medicine.
Resource Intensity: Training and deploying LLMs require substantial computational power, which can limit accessibility.
Ethical Concerns: Handling sensitive genomic data raises privacy and security issues, emphasizing the need for ethical guidelines.

Future Prospects

The continued development of LLMs tailored for bioinformatics promises exciting advancements. Specialized models trained on omics data, open-access platforms, and interdisciplinary collaborations will expand the utility of LLMs. Moreover, integrating LLMs with other AI technologies, such as graph neural networks and reinforcement learning, can unlock deeper biological insights.

Conclusion

Large language models are revolutionizing bioinformatics by addressing longstanding challenges in data annotation, literature mining, and function prediction. Their ability to analyze complex biological datasets efficiently positions them as indispensable tools for modern research. As bioinformatics embraces AI, the synergy between LLMs and biological sciences holds the potential to unravel the complexities of life with unprecedented precision and scale.

shovill: Assemble bacterial isolate genomes from Illumina paired-end reads

BioStar — Sat, 02 Jan 2021 07:05:36 -0600

Shovill is a pipeline which uses SPAdes at its core, but alters the steps before and after the primary assembly step to get similar results in less time. Shovill also supports other assemblers like SKESA, Velvet and Megahit, so you can take advantage of the pre- and post-processing the Shovill provides with those too.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/tseemann/shovill

ARCS: scaffolding genome drafts with linked reads

Rahul Nayak — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 16:35:26 -0600

ARCS, an application that utilizes the barcoding information contained in linked reads to further organize draft genomes into highly contiguous assemblies. We show how the contiguity of an ABySS H.sapiensgenome assembly can be increased over six-fold, using moderate coverage (25-fold) Chromium data. We expect ARCS to have broad utility in harnessing the barcoding information contained in linked read data for connecting high-quality sequences in genome assembly drafts.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/bcgsc/ARCS/

Frequent Paired-end reads (PE 2x100) mapping command lines

Jit — Tue, 15 May 2018 08:59:29 -0500

bowtie2 -x hs37m -X 650 -q -1 r1.fq -2 r2.fq -S r12.bowtie2.sam

bwa aln hs37m.fa r1.fq > r1.sai && bwa aln hs37m.fa r2.fq > r2.sai \
&& bwa sampe hs37m r1.sai r2.sai r1.fq r2.fq > r12.bwa.sam

bwa bwasw ../index/bwa/hs37m.fa r12.fq > r12.bwasw.sam

gsnap -A sam -d hs37m r1.fq r2.fq > r12.gsnap.sam

novoalign -r Random -o SAM -f r1.fq r2.fq -i 500 50 -d hs37m-k14s3.novo > r12.novo.sam

smalt map -f samsoft -i 650 -o r12.smalt-k20s13.sam hs37m-k20s13 r1.fq r2.fq

stampy.py -g hs37m -h hs37m -o r12.stampy.sam -M r1.fq,r2.fq

soap -D hs37m.fa.index -a r1.fq -b r2.fq -l 32 -g 3 -u dummy -2 dummy -o r12.soap

minialign: fast and accurate alignment tool for PacBio and Nanopore long reads

Jit — Thu, 24 May 2018 08:33:26 -0500

Minialign is a little bit fast and moderately accurate nucleotide sequence alignment tool designed for PacBio and Nanopore long reads. It is built on three key algorithms, minimizer-based index of the minimap overlapper, array-based seed chaining, and SIMD-parallel Smith-Waterman-Gotoh extension.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/ocxtal/minialign

P_RNA_scaffolder: a fast and accurate genome scaffolder using paired-end RNA-sequencing reads

Jit — Tue, 12 Jun 2018 08:14:41 -0500

P_RNA_scaffolder, a fast and accurate tool using paired-end RNA-sequencing reads to scaffold genomes. This tool aims to improve the completeness of both protein-coding and non-coding genes. After this tool was applied to scaffolding human contigs, the structures of both protein-coding genes and circular RNAs were almost completely recovered and equivalent to those in a complete genome, especially for long proteins and long circular RNAs.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.fishbrowser.org/software/P_RNA_scaffolder/

ReMILO: reference assisted misassembly detection algorithm using short and long reads.

Jit — Fri, 06 Jul 2018 04:27:49 -0500

ReMILO, a reference assisted misassembly detection algorithm that uses both short reads and PacBio SMRT long reads. ReMILO aligns the initial short reads to both the contigs and reference genome, and then constructs a novel data structure called red-black multipositional de Bruijn graph to detect misassemblies. In addition, ReMILO also aligns the contigs to long reads and find their differences from the long reads to detect more misassemblies.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/songc001/remilo

SimLoRD: A read simulator for third generation sequencing reads

Aaryan Lokwani — Wed, 22 Aug 2018 10:40:27 -0500

SimLoRD is a read simulator for third generation sequencing reads and is currently focused on the Pacific Biosciences SMRT error model.

Reads are simulated from both strands of a provided or randomly generated reference sequence.

The reference can be read from a FASTA file or randomly generated with a given GC content. It can consist of several chromosomes, whose structure is respected when drawing reads. (Simulation of genome rearrangements may be incorporated at a later stage.)
The read lengths can be determined in four ways: drawing from a log-normal distribution (typical for genomic DNA), sampling from an existing FASTQ file (typical for RNA), sampling from a a text file with integers (RNA), or using a fixed length
Quality values and number of passes depend on fragment length.
Provided subread error probabilities are modified according to number of passes
Outputs reads in FASTQ format and alignments in SAM format

Address of the bookmark: https://bitbucket.org/genomeinformatics/simlord/

Rebaler: program for conducting reference-based assemblies using long reads.

Jit — Tue, 18 Sep 2018 07:52:41 -0500

Rebaler is a program for conducting reference-based assemblies using long reads. It relies mainly on minimap2 for alignment and Racon for making consensus sequences.

I made Rebaler for bacterial genomes (specifically for the task of testing basecallers). It should in principle work for non-bacterial genomes as well, but I haven't tested it.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/rrwick/Rebaler