In our day to day research activity, we need to securely copy our data from several to local computer and visa-versa. I am jotting down some of the commonly used SCP command for your future help. Hope you all will like it

What is Secure Copy?

scp allows files to be copied to, from, or between different hosts. It uses ssh for data transfer and provides the same authentication and same level of security as ssh.

Examples

Copy the file "gene.txt" from a remote host to the local host

    $ scp your_username@remotehost.edu:gene.txt /some/local/directory

Copy the file "foobar.txt" from the local host to a remote host

    $ scp gene.txt your_username@remotehost.edu:/some/remote/directory

Copy the directory "chromosome" from the local host to a remote host's directory "bar"

    $ scp -r chromosome your_username@remotehost.edu:/some/remote/directory/bar

Copy the file "gene.txt" from remote host "rh1.edu" to remote host "rh2.edu"

    $ scp your_username@rh1.edu:/some/remote/directory/gene.txt \
    your_username@rh2.edu:/some/remote/directory/

Copying the files "gene.txt" and "cancer.txt" from the local host to your home directory on the remote host

    $ scp gene.txt cancer.txt your_username@remotehost.edu:~

Copy the file "gene.txt" from the local host to a remote host using port 2264

    $ scp -P 2264 gene.txt your_username@remotehost.edu:/some/remote/directory

Copy multiple files from the remote host to your current directory on the local host

    $ scp your_username@remotehost.edu:/some/remote/directory/\{a,b,c\} .

    $ scp your_username@remotehost.edu:~/\{gene.txt,cancer.txt\} .

scp Performance

By default scp uses the Triple-DES cipher to encrypt the data being sent. Using the Blowfish cipher has been shown to increase speed. This can be done by using option -c blowfish in the command line.

    $ scp -c blowfish some_file your_username@remotehost.edu:~

It is often suggested that the -C option for compression should also be used to increase speed. The effect of compression, however, will only significantly increase speed if your connection is very slow. Otherwise it may just be adding extra burden to the CPU. An example of using blowfish and compression:

    $ scp -c blowfish -C local_file your_username@remotehost.edu:~

This idea, known as phylogenetic profiling, is the foundation of Profylo (https://github.com/MartinSchoenstein/Profylo), an open-source Python toolkit developed for comparing evolutionary profiles and discovering co-evolving genes. Profylo brings together seven profile-comparison methods and four approaches for identifying co-evolving gene clusters, making it easier to explore hidden functional relationships within genomes.

The study demonstrates that even a simple matrix of gene presence and absence can reveal meaningful biological patterns. By following these evolutionary footprints, researchers can generate new hypotheses about unknown genes, pathways, and molecular interactions. In a world where genomes are being sequenced faster than ever, tools like Profylo offer an exciting way to let evolution itself become a guide to understanding gene function.

More at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00239-025-10280-6 

snippy --cpus 16 --outdir mysnps --ref Listeria.gbk --R1 FDA_R1.fastq.gz --R2 FDA_R2.fastq.gz

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

• While there are many other tree drawing programs, slacTree was originally written in 2009 to fill a need for producing publication quality figures of circular trees with more than 1000 taxa with custom annotations
• Because it is a single Perl script with very few dependencies, it is easy to run, and easy to further customize
• SVG is used because it is a scalable format allowing for very small representations of entire trees or highly magnified regions with unlimited resolution
• Circular and radial trees are more compact than linear representations

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/mccrowjp/slacTree

Other tools

https://github.com/shenwei356/taxonkit

• ETE, version: 3.1.1
• BioPython, version: 1.73
• taxadb, version: 0.10.1
• TaxonKit, version: 0.5.0

Address of the bookmark: https://pypi.org/project/ete3/3.1.1/

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

Address of the bookmark: https://www.onezoom.org/

Screen is like a window manager for your console. It will allow you to keep multiple terminal sessions running and easily switch between them. It also protects you from disconnection, because the screen session doesn’t end when you get disconnected.

You’ll need to make sure that screen is installed on the server you are connecting to. If that server is Ubuntu or Debian, just use this command:

sudo apt-get install screen

Now you can start a new screen session by just typing screen at the command line. You’ll be shown some information about screen. Hit enter, and you’ll be at a normal prompt.

To disconnect (but leave the session running)

Hit Ctrl + A and then Ctrl + D in immediate succession. You will see the message [detached]

To reconnect to an already running session

screen -r

To reconnect to an existing session, or create a new one if none exists

screen -D -r

To create a new window inside of a running screen session

Hit Ctrl + A and then C in immediate succession. You will see a new prompt.

To switch from one screen window to another

Hit Ctrl + A and then Ctrl + A in immediate succession.

To list open screen windows

Hit Ctrl + A and then W in immediate succession

sort a space-delimited file based on its first column, then the second if the first is the same, and so on:
sort input.txt

sort a huge file (GNU sort ONLY):
sort -S 1500M -t $HOME/tmp input.txt > sorted.txt

sort starting from the third column, skipping the first two columns:
sort +2 input.txt

sort the second column as numbers, descending order; if identical, sort the 3rd as strings, ascending order:
sort -k2,2nr -k3,3 input.txt

sort starting from the 4th character at column 2, as numbers:
sort -k2.4n input.txt

More Linxu sort command information

If you have any sort commands you'd like to share, please add them to our comments section below. For more help, you can also type:

man sort

or

sort --help

on your Unix/Linux system.