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

A Subway Map for the Genome

LEGE — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 04:14:14 -0500

Maya was looking at a genome graph on her computer. There were nodes, branches, and paths going in every direction.

“It’s like a subway map,” she said, “but for DNA.”

That idea is exactly what Sequence Tube Map brings to life.

Instead of showing a genome as one long, confusing sequence, it displays different genomic paths like routes on a metro map. Where sequences are shared, the paths travel together. Where genetic variation occurs, they branch into different routes and may join again later.

This makes complex genome graphs much easier to explore.

Maya could now see how different haplotypes moved through the same genomic region and where they took different paths. She could even view sequencing reads mapped onto the graph, helping her understand what was happening in regions with genetic variation.

What once looked like a tangled network now looked like a journey.

Sequence Tube Map turns the complexity of graph genomes into a visual story—making it easier for scientists to see how DNA can take different routes.

Read more at https://github.com/vgteam/sequencetubemap

and

https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/article/35/24/5318/5542397

Demo at https://vgteam.github.io/sequenceTubeMap/

The Genes That Travel Together: A Genomic Detective Story

BioStar — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 13:00:36 -0500

Imagine looking through thousands of microbial genomes and discovering two genes that repeatedly appear together. The obvious conclusion is that they must somehow be connected—that perhaps they work together, participate in the same pathway, or depend on each other. But evolution has a way of leaving misleading clues. What if these two genes are found together simply because they were inherited from the same ancient ancestor? In that case, their apparent association may have little to do with their biological function; it may simply be a reflection of shared evolutionary history. This is the intriguing problem addressed by CORGIAS (https://github.com/ynishimuraLv/corgias), a computational framework developed to distinguish genuine gene associations from correlations created by common ancestry.

Instead of asking only whether two genes occur together across genomes, CORGIAS asks a deeper question: did these genes actually evolve together, repeatedly gaining or losing their presence in concert, or are they merely travelling together because of their inherited history? The framework introduces two complementary approaches, Ancestral State Adjustment (ASA) and the Simultaneous EVolution test (SEV), which incorporate evolutionary information into the search for gene associations. This distinction becomes increasingly important as genome sequencing continues to uncover enormous numbers of microbial genomes, many from organisms that have never been cultured and whose genes remain functionally mysterious. In this growing genomic landscape, simply finding a gene is no longer enough—we need clues about what that gene might be doing. CORGIAS approaches this problem almost like a genomic detective: rather than treating every association as evidence, it reconstructs the evolutionary story behind the association and asks whether the evidence survives that history. By doing so, it offers a way to separate coincidence from biological connection and potentially uncover functional relationships hidden within the vast microbial genomic landscape. The broader message is beautifully simple: genes do not evolve in isolation, and understanding what they do may require us to look beyond where they are today and reconstruct how they arrived there. Sometimes, the most important clue in a genome is not the gene itself, but the evolutionary journey it has taken.

More at https://academic.oup.com/nargab/article/7/4/lqaf182/8377910?

The Centre for Bioinformatics (MCB) Lab

Sun, 14 Jul 2013 12:41:20 -0500

The Centre for Bioinformatics (MCB) is a diverse collection of professors, postdoctoral fellows, and students, who share a common interest in Bioinformatics.

Research Area

We are interested in the development of the statistics and computational methods for the analysis of this data in breast cancer.
We have worked on probabilistic models for subcellular localization, protein-protein interactions, and problems related to chemical genomics.
We are interested in the development of bioinformatics/biostatistical methodology in the analysis of epigenetic/epigenomic data.
We are interested in integrative bioinformatics approaches to learn the gene, gene products, interactions, and regulatory mechanisms involved in mental retardation.

Link @ http://www.mcgill.ca/mcb/

Jayaram Lab

Sun, 14 Jul 2013 14:04:37 -0500

Responsible (a) for developing Chemgenome, Bhageerath & Sanjeevini methods & softwares for genome annotation, protein tertiary structure prediction & computer aided drug design respectively, (b) for setting up a multi-teraflop supercomputing facility for Bioinformatics & Computational Biology at IIT Delhi, and (c) for making the hardware and software freely accessible at (www.scfbio-iitd.res.in) to the global scientific user community.

Faculty facilitator/Founder Director for two start-up companies (Leadinvent incubated at IIT, Delhi from 2006-2009 & Novoinformatics, under incubation at IIT Delhi since 2011).

Research Interest
Genome Analysis, Protein Structure Prediction and Drug Design.

Link @ http://www.scfbio-iitd.res.in/

Genomics for Bioinformatician

Jitendra Narayan — Sat, 20 Jul 2013 07:03:00 -0500

Genomics is the study of the genomes of organisms. The field includes intensive efforts to determine the entire DNA sequence of organisms and fine-scale genetic mapping efforts. The field also includes studies of intragenomic phenomena such as heterosis, epistasis, pleiotropy and other interactions between loci and alleles within the genome. In contrast, the investigation of the roles and functions of single genes is a primary focus of molecular biology or genetics and is a common topic of modern medical and biological research. Research of single genes does not fall into the definition of genomics unless the aim of this genetic, pathway, and functional information analysis is to elucidate its effect on, place in, and response to the entire genome's networks.

Genomics was established by Fred Sanger when he first sequenced the complete genomes of a virus and a mitochondrion. His group established techniques of sequencing, genome mapping, data storage, and bioinformatic analyses in the 1970-1980s. A major branch of genomics is still concerned with sequencing the genomes of various organisms, but the knowledge of full genomes has created the possibility for the field of functional genomics, mainly concerned with patterns of gene expression during various conditions. The most important tools here are microarrays and bioinformatics. Study of the full set of proteins in a cell type or tissue, and the changes during various conditions, is called proteomics. A related concept is materiomics, which is defined as the study of the material properties of biological materials (e.g. hierarchical protein structures and materials, mineralized biological tissues, etc.) and their effect on the macroscopic function and failure in their biological context, linking processes, structure and properties at multiple scales through a materials science approach. The actual term 'genomics' is thought to have been coined by Dr. Tom Roderick, a geneticist at the Jackson Laboratory (Bar Harbor, ME) over beer at a meeting held in Maryland on the mapping of the human genome in 1986.

The outcome of almost two years of intense discussions with literally hundreds of scientists and members of the public, has three major areas of focus: Genomics to Biology, Genomics to Health, and Genomics to Society.

Genomics to Biology:
The human genome sequence provides foundational information that now will allow development of a comprehensive catalog of all of the genome's components, determination of the function of all human genes, and deciphering of how genes and proteins work together in pathways and networks.

Genomics to Health:
Completion of the human genome sequence offers a unique opportunity to understand the role of genetic factors in health and disease, and to apply that understanding rapidly to prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. This opportunity will be realized through such genomics-based approaches as identification of genes and pathways and determining how they interact with environmental factors in health and disease, more precise prediction of disease susceptibility and drug response, early detection of illness, and development of entirely new therapeutic approaches.

Genomics to Society:
Just as the HGP has spawned new areas of research in basic biology and in health, it has created new opportunities in exploring the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of such work. These include defining policy options regarding the use of genomic information in both medical and non-medical settings and analysis of the impact of genomics on such concepts as race, ethnicity, kinship, individual and group identity, health, disease, and "normality" for traits and behaviors.

This vision for the future of genomics is not just about the NHGRI. It encompasses the whole field of genomics, including the work of all the other Institutes and Centers at the NIH and of a number of other federal agencies. All of the NIH Institutes are already taking full advantage of the sequence and will apply its data to the better understanding of both rare and common diseases, almost all of which have a genetic component. A recent example of the way that the HGP and the knowledge and new technologies it has spawned are already facilitating science is the extremely rapid sequencing by groups in Canada and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta of the genome of the virus that causes Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The sequencing of the SARS virus genome provides insight into this new and deadly disease at a speed never before possible in science. In turn, this should lead to the rapid development of diagnostic tests and, in time, vaccines and effective treatments.

Links for the addition material available on Net

Genomes and genomics:

Bioinformatics and Genomics:

Structural genomics tutorial:

Comparative Genomics Tutorial:

GENOME TUTORIAL:

Tools and resources for identifying protein families, domains and motifs

Bioinformatics Tools
Tips, Tutorials, and Terminology for Using Selected Resources in Genome Database Guide:

A Web-Based Comparative Genomics Tutorial for Investigating Microbial Genomes:

Free Online Tutorials Teach Anyone How to Use Genome Databases:

Circos to create concise, explanatory, unique and print-ready visualizations of your data:

Genomics and Comparative Genomics Learning Module:

Computational Challenges in Comparative Genomics

A Tutorial:

A Comparative Genomics Resource for Grains:

PLAZA: A Comparative Genomics Resource to Study Gene and Genome Evolution in Plants:

VISTA :

Software for Genomics

Artemis Artemis is a free genome viewer and annotation tool that allows visualization of sequence features and the results of analyses within the context of the sequence, and its six-frame translation.
Chromas It will display and prints chromatogram files from ABI automated DNA sequencers, and Staden SCF files which the analysis programs for ALF, Li-Cor and Visible Genetics OpenGene sequencers can create.
Glimmer A system for finding genes in microbial DNA, especially the genomes of bacteria and archaea.Glimmer (Gene Locator and Interpolated Markov Modeler) uses interpolated Markov models (IMMs) to identify the coding regions and distinguish them from noncoding DN
Glimmer HMM A fast and accurate gene finder based on a GHMM architecture, developed specifically for eukaryotes. It incorporates splice site models adapted from the GeneSplicer program and uses interpolated Markov models for evaluating the coding regions.
Glimmer M A gene finder derived from Glimmer, but developed specifically for eukaryotes. It is based on a dynamic programming algorithm that considers all combinations of possible exons for inclusion in a gene model and chooses the best of these combinations. The d
MUMmer MUMmer is a system for rapidly aligning entire genomes, whether in complete or draft form.
pDRAW pDRAW32 is being developed as a free time hobby project. It is far from finished, but as it has reached a point where it could be helpful for many labs, it is now available to the scientific community.
Sequin Sequin is a stand-alone software tool developed by the NCBI for submitting and updating entries to the GenBank, EMBL, or DDBJ sequence databases. It is capable of handling simple submissions that contain a single short mRNA sequence, and complex submissio
Staden The Staden Package consists of a series of tools for DNA sequence preparation (pregap4), assembly (gap4), editing (gap4) and DNA/protein sequence analysis (spin).

For more software @ http://bioinformaticsonline.com/bookmarks/view/926/list-of-popular-bioinformatics-softwaretools

Personalised Medicine - Animation

Tue, 27 Aug 2013 10:07:24 -0500

Two animated case scenarios set now and in the future. These highlight potential differences in the way patients are treated now, and how they might be treated as healthcare becomes more tailored.

List of pharmacogenomics companies in India

Jitendra Narayan — Fri, 09 Aug 2013 13:26:56 -0500

pharmacogenomics companies in India are making their good impacts. Here is the list of few pharmacogenomics companies. Please add more if not mentioned here.

Genomics in India
www.ganitlabs.in
www.sandor.co.in
www.igib.res.in
www.genotypic.co.in
www.ocimumbio.com
www.abcgenomics.com
www.xcelrisgenomics.com
www.ayugen.com
www.geneombiotech.com