BOL: Related items

GeneValidator - Identify problems with predicted genes

Poonam Mahapatra — Fri, 26 Aug 2016 06:00:03 -0500

GeneValidator helps in identifing problems with gene predictions and provide useful information extracted from analysing orthologs in BLAST databases. The results produced can be used by biocurators and researchers who need accurate gene predictions.

If you would like to use GeneValidator on a few sequences, see our online GeneValidator Web App -http://genevalidator.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk.

If you use GeneValidator in your work, please cite us as follows:

Dragan M‡, Moghul MI‡, Priyam A, Bustos C & Wurm Y. 2016. GeneValidator: identify problems with protein-coding gene predictions. Bioinformatics, doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btw015.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/wurmlab/genevalidator

DeCoSTAR - Detection of Co-evolution

Jit — Fri, 14 Apr 2017 06:27:25 -0500

DeCoSTAR is a software which aims at reconstructing ancestral gene or genome organizations, in the form of sets of neighborhood relations -adjacencies- between pairs of ancestral genes or gene domains.
Ancestral genes or domains are deduced from reconciled gene trees in a context of birth, speciation, duplication, loss, transfer, which are either given as input or computed with the ecceTERA package, to which DeCoSTAR is integrated. DeCoSTAR constructs parsimonious scenarios of gains and breakages of adjacencies, and contains in particular all the features of previous software DeCo, DeCoLT, ArtDeCo and DeClone. It provides statistical supports on ancestral adjacencies, or the possibility to handle badly assembled genomes.
DeCoSTAR is able to reconstruct the histories of domains inside genes, including gene fusion and fission events, as well as ancestral genome structures for dozens of whole genomes from all kingdoms of life in a few minutes.

Address of the bookmark: http://pbil.univ-lyon1.fr/software/DeCoSTAR/

BioGPS: Spotlight on the Gene Expression Atlas

Jit — Thu, 18 Oct 2018 12:15:12 -0500

BioGPS opened 2016 with a publication in Nucleic Acids Research, right after the New Year holiday. Throughout the year, new designs for the site were being created, reviewed, adjusted, reviewed, adjusted, and more review/adjustments in anticipation of a site redesign for 2017. A Plugin registration Blitz was held in March and April; followed by a Plugin Review Blitz in May. The BioGPS spotlight series was also restarted, with spotlights on BGEE, Intermine, and other Intermine-related plugins.

There were ~910,000 requests made to BioGPS in 2016. Requests to BioGPS peaked in March and at the lowest in December.

Address of the bookmark: http://biogps.org/

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

EGAD: Ultra-fast functional analysis of gene networks

Rahul Nayak — Fri, 14 Dec 2018 04:10:35 -0600

With the EGAD (Extending ‘Guilt-by-Association’ by Degree) package, we present a series of highly efficient tools to calculate functional properties in networks based on the guilt-by-association principle. These allow rapid controlled comparisons and analyses. Two of the core features are: a function prediction algorithm which is fully vectorized (neighbor_voting), allowing network characterization across even thousands of functional groups to be accomplished in minutes in cross-validation and an analytic determination of the optimal prior to guess candidates genes across multiple functional sets (calculate_multifunc, auc_multifunc).

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/sarbal/EGAD

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

Cytoscape

Anjana — Mon, 23 May 2016 02:32:00 -0500

Cytoscape is an open source software platform for visualizing complex networks and integrating these with any type of attribute data. A lot of Apps are available for various kinds of problem domains, including bioinformatics, social network analysis, and semantic web.

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

Tool: Gene Set Clustering based on Functional annotation (GeneSCF)

EagleEye — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 17:30:22 -0500

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Gene Set Clustering based on Functional annotation

GeneSCF serves as command line tool for clustering the list of genes given by the users based on functional annotation (Gene Ontology, KEGG, REACTOME and NCG 4.0). It requires gene list in the form of Entrez Gene ID (UIDs) or Official gene symbols as a input. GeneSCF supports more organisms from V1.1. Examples to download database as simple text file using GeneSCF "prepare_database" module, 1) https://www.biostars.org/p/197414/#197416 , 2) https://www.biostars.org/p/191532/#191540

The advantage of using GeneSCF over other enrichment tools is that, it performs enrichment analysis in real-time (v1.1 and above) by accessing source databases. With command-line versions of tools, as you know you can run multiple gene list simultaneously.

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Home page:

http://genescf.kandurilab.org/

Requirement:

GeneSCF only works on Linux system, it has been successfully tested on Ubuntu, Mint and Cent OS. Other distributions of Linux might work as well.

Documentation:

http://genescf.kandurilab.org/documentation.php

Report issues on Biostars or GitHub Project page

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VAGUE:Velvet Assembler Graphical Front End

Jit — Fri, 24 Feb 2017 08:56:49 -0600

VAGUE is a vague acronym for "Velvet Assembler Graphical Front End", which means it is a GUI for the Velvet de novo assembler. The command line version of Velvet can be complicated for beginners to use, but VAGUE makes it clear and simple

More at http://www.vicbioinformatics.com/software.vague.shtml

Address of the bookmark: http://www.vicbioinformatics.com/software.vague.shtml