BOL: Related items

UnCoVar: Workflow for Transparent and Robust Virus Variant Calling, Genome Reconstruction and Lineage Assignment

BioStar — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 23:01:29 -0500

UnCoVar: Workflow for Transparent and Robust Virus Variant Calling, Genome Reconstruction and Lineage Assignment

Using state of the art tools, easily extended for other viruses
Tool and database updates for critical components via Conda
Built using modern design patterns with Conda and Snakemake
Extensible and easy to customize
Submission Ready Genomes
Customizable reporting with comprehensive visualization

https://ikim-essen.github.io/uncovar/

Github https://github.com/IKIM-Essen/uncovar

Address of the bookmark: https://ikim-essen.github.io/uncovar/

Early Genome Screening: The New Health Horoscope!

LEGE — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 19:44:36 -0600

In an era where precision medicine is reshaping healthcare, genome screening is emerging as the modern equivalent of a health horoscope. It offers insights into our biological "stars," unraveling predispositions to various conditions and empowering individuals with knowledge to navigate their health journeys proactively. But how reliable is this "horoscope," and how does it impact our lives?

Understanding Genome Screening

Genome screening involves analyzing an individual's DNA to identify genetic variations that may influence health and disease susceptibility. This can range from simple single-gene tests to comprehensive whole-genome sequencing. By peering into our genetic blueprint, we can uncover risks for conditions like cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and even rare genetic disorders.

The process is straightforward: a saliva or blood sample is collected, and advanced sequencing technologies decipher the genetic code. The results provide a personalized health map, guiding lifestyle modifications, preventive measures, or medical interventions.

A Shift from Reactive to Proactive Healthcare

Traditional healthcare often focuses on treating diseases after they manifest. Genome screening flips this model on its head, enabling a shift toward prevention and early intervention. For instance:

Cancer Risk Management: Individuals with BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations can opt for enhanced screening programs or preventive surgeries to mitigate their risk of breast and ovarian cancers.
Cardiovascular Health: Genetic predispositions to conditions like familial hypercholesterolemia can prompt early cholesterol monitoring and lifestyle adjustments.
Rare Diseases: Identifying carriers of genetic disorders can aid in family planning and reduce the incidence of inherited conditions.

The Ethical and Practical Concerns

While genome screening offers incredible promise, it is not without challenges:

Accuracy and Interpretation: Genetic predisposition does not guarantee disease. Misinterpretation of results can lead to unnecessary anxiety or unwarranted medical interventions.
Privacy and Data Security: Genetic data is highly sensitive. Ensuring robust data protection measures is crucial to prevent misuse.
Accessibility and Equity: High costs and limited availability may restrict access to genome screening, exacerbating health disparities.

Balancing Science and Pseudoscience

The comparison of genome screening to horoscopes isn’t entirely unfounded. Both offer predictive insights, but the scientific foundation of genome screening distinguishes it from astrology. Unlike the alignment of celestial bodies, genetic predictions are based on rigorous data and evidence. However, the probabilistic nature of genetic predispositions underscores the importance of interpreting results in conjunction with clinical and lifestyle factors.

The Road Ahead

As genome screening becomes more affordable and integrated into routine healthcare, its potential to transform lives is immense. Policymakers, healthcare providers, and genetic counselors must collaborate to ensure ethical implementation, public awareness, and equitable access.

Imagine a future where your genetic "horoscope" is a trusted guide, not just a prediction. Early genome screening could help chart a healthier path for generations, making it a cornerstone of personalized medicine. After all, our genes might just hold the key to unlocking a future of better health and well-being.

HiTE: a fast and accurate dynamic boundary adjustment approach for full-length Transposable Elements detection and annotation in Genome Assemblies

LEGE — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 09:34:04 -0500

HiTE is a Python software that uses a dynamic boundary adjustment approach to detect and annotate full-length Transposable Elements in Genome Assemblies. In comparison to other tools, HiTE demonstrates superior performance in detecting a greater number of full-length TEs.

panHiTE

We have developed panHiTE, a comprehensive and accurate pipeline for TE detection in large-scale population genomes. It has been successfully applied to hundreds of plant population genomes, demonstrating its effectiveness and scalability.

For detailed instructions, please refer to the panHiTE tutorial.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/CSU-KangHu/HiTE

poRe: an R package for the visualization and analysis of nanopore sequencing data

Jit — Thu, 23 Nov 2017 09:55:57 -0600

Motivation: The Oxford Nanopore MinION device represents a unique sequencing technology. As a mobile sequencing device powered by the USB port of a laptop, the MinION has huge potential applications. To enable these applications, the bioinformatics community will need to design and build a suite of tools specifically for MinION data.

Results: Here we present poRe, a package for R that enables users to manipulate, organize, summarize and visualize MinION nanopore sequencing data. As a package for R, poRe has been tested on Windows, Linux and MacOSX. Crucially, the Windows version allows users to analyse MinION data on the Windows laptop attached to the device.

Availability and implementation: poRe is released as a package for R at http://sourceforge.net/projects/rpore/ . A tutorial and further information are available at https://sourceforge.net/p/rpore/wiki/Home/

Contact:mick.watson@roslin.ed.ac.uk

Address of the bookmark: https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/article/31/1/114/2365693

GPOPSIM: a simulation tool for whole-genome genetic data

Jit — Wed, 17 Jan 2018 03:47:46 -0600

GPOPSIM is a simulation tool for pedigree, phenotypes, and genomic data, with a variety of population and genome structures and trait genetic architectures. It provides flexible parameter settings for a wide discipline of users, especially can simulate multiple genetically correlated traits with desired genetic parameters and underlying genetic architectures.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/SCAU-AnimalGenetics/GPOPSIM

BFC: a standalone high-performance tool for correcting sequencing errors from Illumina sequencing data

Jit — Thu, 31 May 2018 09:35:23 -0500

BFC is a standalone high-performance tool for correcting sequencing errors from Illumina sequencing data. It is specifically designed for high-coverage whole-genome human data, though also performs well for small genomes. The BFC algorithm is a variant of the classical spectrum alignment algorithm introduced by Pevzner et al (2001). It uses an exhaustive search to find a k-mer path through a read that minimizes a heuristic objective function jointly considering penalties on correction, quality and k-mer support. This algorithm was first implemented in my fermi assembler and then refined a few times in fermi, fermi2 and now in BFC. In the k-mer counting phase, BFC uses a blocked bloom filter to filter out most singleton k-mers and keeps the rest in a hash table (Melsted and Pritchard, 2011). The use of bloom filter is how BFC is named, though other correctors such as Lighter and Bless actually rely more on bloom filter than BFC. https://github.com/lh3/bfc

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/lh3/bfc

NanoPack: visualizing and processing long-read sequencing data

Jit — Fri, 10 Aug 2018 18:41:34 -0500

The NanoPack tools are written in Python3 and released under the GNU GPL3.0 License. The source code can be found at https://github.com/wdecoster/nanopack, together with links to separate scripts and their documentation. The scripts are compatible with Linux, Mac OS and the MS Windows 10 subsystem for Linux and are available as a graphical user interface, a web service at http://nanoplot.bioinf.be and command line tools.

https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/article/34/15/2666/4934939

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/wdecoster/nanoQC

ALLHiC: Phasing and scaffolding polyploid genomes based on Hi-C data

BioStar — Thu, 20 Dec 2018 12:03:32 -0600

The major problem of scaffolding polyploid genome is that Hi-C signals are frequently detected between allelic haplotypes and any existing stat of art Hi-C scaffolding program links the allelic haplotypes together. To solve the problem, we developed a new Hi-C scaffolding pipeline, called ALLHIC, specifically tailored to the polyploid genomes. ALLHIC pipeline contains a total of 5 steps: prune, partition, rescue, optimize and build.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/tangerzhang/ALLHiC/wiki

kallisto: a program for quantifying abundances of transcripts from bulk and single-cell RNA-Seq data

Jit — Mon, 07 Jan 2019 10:35:14 -0600

kallisto is a program for quantifying abundances of transcripts from bulk and single-cell RNA-Seq data, or more generally of target sequences using high-throughput sequencing reads. It is based on the novel idea of pseudoalignment for rapidly determining the compatibility of reads with targets, without the need for alignment. On benchmarks with standard RNA-Seq data, kallisto can quantify 30 million human reads in less than 3 minutes on a Mac desktop computer using only the read sequences and a transcriptome index that itself takes less than 10 minutes to build. Pseudoalignment of reads preserves the key information needed for quantification, and kallisto is therefore not only fast, but also as accurate as existing quantification tools. In fact, because the pseudoalignment procedure is robust to errors in the reads, in many benchmarks kallisto significantly outperforms existing tools. kallisto is described in detail in:

Nicolas L Bray, Harold Pimentel, Páll Melsted and Lior Pachter, Near-optimal probabilistic RNA-seq quantification, Nature Biotechnology 34, 525–527 (2016), doi:10.1038/nbt.3519

Address of the bookmark: https://pachterlab.github.io/kallisto/about

heatmaply: popular graphical method for visualizing high-dimensional data

Neel — Sat, 11 Jan 2020 07:34:14 -0600

This work is based on ggplot2 and plotly.js engine. It produces similar heatmaps as d3heatmap, with the advantage of speed (plotly.js is able to handle larger size matrix), and the ability to zoom from the dendrogram.

heatmaply also provides an interface based around the plotly R package. This interface can be used by choosing plot_method = "plotly" instead of the default plot_method = "ggplot". This interface can provide smaller objects and faster rendering to disk in many cases and provides otherwise almost identical features.

Documentation for this package is also available as a pkgdown site: http://talgalili.github.io/heatmaply/

Address of the bookmark: http://talgalili.github.io/heatmaply/articles/heatmaply.html