BOL: Related items

The Day We Began Reading the DNA of the World

Jitendra Narayan — Sat, 05 Sep 2026 01:43:21 -0500

Picture waking up and knowing that in one lab, a scientist is reading the DNA of a whale. In another, a team is sequencing a rare plant. Meanwhile, researchers in India are decoding the genomes of different human populations.

Many organisms. Many countries. All share one remarkable goal: to understand the genetic story of life.

DNA is nature's instruction manual, written with just four letters: A, T, C, and G. For years, scientists could only read small sections of this huge book. Now, new sequencing technology lets us read entire genomes like never before.

One of the most ambitious projects is the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP). Its goal is to create reference genomes for about 1.5 million known eukaryotic species. This project links genome research across continents, species, and scientific fields.

But this story goes beyond just animals and plants.

A New Chapter in Human Genomics

Large human genome projects are changing how we understand our own genetic diversity.

India's GenomeIndia project has sequenced thousands of people from different populations. This work is uncovering genetic variation that global databases have often missed.

Similar population-scale effSimilar large-scale projects are happening worldwide. The All of Us Research Program in the United States, Europe's 1+ Million Genomes initiative, South Korea's national genomic data program, and projects in Saudi Arabia, Australia, and Singapore are all building huge genomic resources.collect DNA.

The real goal is to link genomes with health, disease, and other biological information. This creates a base for more accurate research and, in time, more personalized medicine.

A Race Against Time

There is also an important twist.

We are sequencing Earth's biodiversity even as many species face growing environmental threats.

A genome alone cannot save a species, but it does keep important information about its biology, evolution, and genetic diversity. This knowledge helps scientists understand risks, guide conservation, and find traits that could help agriculture or medicine.

Projects like the Darwin Tree of Life, which studies species in Britain and Ireland, and the African BioGenome Project, which is growing genomics work across Africa, are key parts of this worldwide effort.

Projects to Watch

Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) - A global effort to sequence and annotate roughly 1.5 million known eukaryotic species and create a comprehensive reference library of Earth's biodiversity.
Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP) - Focuses on producing high-quality reference genomes for vertebrate species, providing a major foundation for the wider Tree of Life.
Darwin Tree of Life - A UK and Ireland initiative aiming to sequence approximately 70,000 species, creating a detailed genomic map of regional biodiversity.
African BioGenome Project (AfricaBP) - A pan-African initiative focused on sequencing Africa's biodiversity while strengthening genomics and bioinformatics capacity across the continent.
European Reference Genome Atlas (ERGA) - A European effort to generate high-quality reference genomes for Europe's biodiversity and connect national sequencing efforts.
Canada BioGenome Project - Building reference genomes for Canadian biodiversity, supporting conservation, research and the study of ecosystems.
California Conservation Genomics Project - Uses genomics to understand and protect California's biodiversity and help inform conservation decisions.
Bat1K - An ambitious global effort to sequence the genomes of all known bat species, helping scientists study their evolution, longevity, immunity and unique biology.
Bird 10,000 (B10K) - A global project aiming to create genome resources covering the world's bird diversity and reconstruct avian evolutionary history.
Global Invertebrate Genomics Alliance (GIGA) - Builds genomic resources for the enormous and genetically diverse world of invertebrates.
GenomeIndia - India's national human-genome initiative, designed to capture the country's extraordinary population diversity and create a reference resource for Indian genomics.
All of Us Research Program - A US national research program combining genomic information with health and lifestyle data at population scale.
1+ Million Genomes / Genome of Europe - A European effort to enable secure, cross-border use of genomic and health data and develop genome-scale resources involving more than one million people.
Korea National Integrated Bio Big Data Project - South Korea's large-scale national effort combining genomic and health information from a very large population cohort.
Saudi Genome Program - A national genomics initiative focused on genetic diseases, population genomics and precision medicine in Saudi Arabia.
Australian Genomics / Genomics Health Futures Mission - Australia's growing investment in genomic medicine, rare disease research and population-scale health genomics.

The Library of Life

The fuThe future of genomics is not just about sequencing one genome at a time. Now, it is about creating a worldwide network of genomes—human and non-human, individual and species—linked by powerful databases and advanced computational tools.ine a library without shelves.

In this library, the books are genomes. The pages are made of DNA. Scientists and machines are the readers. And this library is still being written. Each genome sequenced today adds a new page to the story of life and helps us better understand our place in it.

33rd Annual Convention of Indian Association for Cancer Research from 13th to 15th February 2014

Tue, 27 Aug 2013 10:37:08 -0500

RGCB is organizing the 33rd Annual Convention of Indian Association for Cancer Research from 13th to 15th February 2014 with the theme "Discovery, Innovation and Translation in Cancer Research"

Kindly log on to conference website http://rgcb.res.in/IACR2014 for further details and timely updates and registration. We shall truly appreciate if the same be circulated among your friends, scholars and students encouraging them to participate in the meet.

http://210.212.237.38/iacrconference/

Sorghum genome Sequenced!!

Jit — Sun, 01 Sep 2013 19:46:18 -0500

Sorghum, a staple food for 500 million resource-poor people in marginal environments and a model for other important crops, sorghum holds vital genetic resources as humanity confronts the nexus of food crisis and climate change. The recent research provides an unmatched resource to respond to these challenges by identifying a large high-quality SNP and indel data set in diverse sorghum genotypes.

In addition to providing a broad sample of the diversity in S. bicolor, the genotypes included in this study are known to display agronomically important traits including stay-green drought resistance, insect resistance, grain size and grain quality.

Find more at http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/130827/ncomms3320/full/ncomms3320.html

Genetics, epigenetics and disease

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 11:32:55 -0500

Royal Society GlaxoSmithKline Prize Lecture given by Professor Adrian Bird CBE FMedSci FRS on Tuesday 22 January 2013. Adrian Bird CBE FMedSci FRS is the Buchanan Chair of Genetics at the University of Edinburgh. The human genome sequence has been available for more than a decade, but its significance is still not fully understood. While most human genes have been identified, there is much to learn about the DNA signals that control them. This lecture described an unusually short DNA sequence, just two base pairs long, CG, which occurs in several chemically different forms. Defects in signalling by CG are implicated in disease. For example, the autism spectrum disorder Rett syndrome is caused by loss of a protein that reads methylated CG and affects the activity of genes. The Royal Society GlaxoSmithKline Prize Lecture is awarded for original contributions to medical and veterinary sciences published within ten years from the date of the award.

Update Genome Workbench 2.7.15 released

Surabhi Chaudhary — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 16:12:17 -0600

NCBI Genome Workbench is an integrated application for viewing and analyzing sequence data. With Genome Workbench, you can view data in publically available sequence databases at NCBI, and mix this data with your own private data.

Genome Workbench can display sequence data in many ways, including graphical sequence views, various alignment views, phylogenetic tree views, and tabular views of data. It can also align your private data to data in public databases, display your data in the context of public data, and retrieve BLAST results.

Genome Workbench is built on the NCBI C++ ToolKit and uses cross-platform APIs for graphics. It runs on your local machine, and is available for Windows 2000/XP, Linux, MacOS X, and various flavors of Unix.

NCBI Genome Workbench is an integrated application for viewing and analyzing sequence data. Genome Workbench was developed entirely in-house at NCBI and makes use of the NCBI C++ ToolKit. The C++ ToolKit provides a convenient and flexible cross-platform API for managing system internals, database connections, network sockets, and the NCBI data model. In addition, the C++ ToolKit provides the Object Manager, which abstracts handling of sequences and sequence-related objects.

New Features in Genome Workbench 2.7.15

Multiple Alignment View: implemented adaptive feature display when zooming in
Active Objects Inspector replaces Selection Inspector. New View should offer an improved selection context examination. See Using Active Objects Inspector tutorial for more details.
Binary packages for Linux OpenSUSE 13.1 are now available

Bug Fixes and Improvements in Genome Workbench 2.7.15

Fixed major issue with OpenGL overlay/scrolling. Could cause crashes or view scrolling irregularities
Multiple Pane View: fixed crash on loading BLAST results
Graphical Sequence View: fixed crash on zooming in and out, related to SNP track
Graphical Sequence View: fixed Go To Position dialog to give better diagnostics in case of a user error
Graphical Sequence View: PDF export fixed rendering of Markers with commas in the name
Text View / Flat File: fixed Mac OS rendering issues
Text View / Flat File: performance optimization, extended capabilities of real-time rendering of molecules to tens of thousands
File Import: optimization improvement to speed up load of files containing multiple project items
File Import: remapping stage now shows accession.version and description of molecules, instead of plain GI numbers
Mac OS: improved tooltips for toolbar buttons
Phylogenetic Tree Builder Tool: improved diagnostics of errors
Multiple Alignment View: optimizations to avoid main GUI freezes
Open Dialog: removed duplicate elements in table of genomes (load Genome)
PDF export: fixed issue with XREF table errors
Tree View: fixed issues with showing Force Layout progress on Mac OS
Tree View: PDF export fixed issues for showing labels of collapsed nodes
Tree View: added an option to stop layout
Tree View: broadcasting mechanism fixed not to accumulate selected nodes

Reference:

NCBI news

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/tools/gbench/

The 8000 years old Tibetian gene mutation !!!

Neel — Wed, 20 Aug 2014 21:57:44 -0500

A new study has provided insight into how gene mutation around 8,000 years ago helped Tibetans' to survive in the thin air on the Tibetan Plateau, where an average elevation is of 14,800 feet.

A study led by University of Utah scientists is the first to find a genetic cause for the adaptation, a single DNA base pair change that dates back 8,000 years and demonstrate how it contributes to the Tibetans' ability to live in low oxygen conditions.

About 8,000 years ago, the gene EGLN1 changed by a single DNA base pair. Today, a relatively short time later on the scale of human history, 88 percent of Tibetans have the genetic variation, and it was virtually absent from closely related lowland Asians. The findings indicate the genetic variation endows its carriers with an advantage.

In those without the adaptation, low oxygen caused their blood to become thick with oxygen-carrying red blood cells, an attempt to feed starved tissues, which could cause long-term complications such as heart failure. The researchers found that the newly identified genetic variation protected Tibetans by decreasing the over-response to low oxygen.

Reference: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v512/n7513/abs/nature13408.html

Alien Genome !!!

Jit — Sat, 13 Dec 2014 00:24:32 -0600

Genome sequencing, analysis and expression of Alien genome.

Note: This image/cartoon is create only for fun. It has nothing to do with any scientific findings.

seqloc 0.6

Gudiya Pal — Sun, 28 Dec 2014 12:51:29 -0600

The Bio.SeqLoc modules in seqloc are designed to represent positions and locations (ranges of positions) on sequences, particularly nucleotide sequences. My original motivation for writing these packages was handing the locations of genes in eukaryotic genomes.

Handle sequence locations for bioinformatics http://www.ingolia-lab.org/seqloc-tutorial.html

Address of the bookmark: http://www.stackage.org/snapshot/nightly-2014-12-28/package/seqloc-0.6

Scripted DNA !!!

Jit — Mon, 17 Aug 2015 17:44:04 -0500

As per bioinformatician DNA is partially scripted ;) You dont believe in it. Please have a look at image carefully:)

Ensembl comparative genomics resources

Jitendra Narayan — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 17:10:20 -0600

The Ensembl comparative genomics resources are one such reference set that facilitates comprehensive and reproducible analysis of chordate genome data. Ensembl computes pairwise and multiple whole-genome alignments from which large-scale synteny, per-base conservation scores and constrained elements are obtained. Gene alignments are used to define Ensembl Protein Families, GeneTrees and homologies for both protein-coding and non-coding RNA genes. These resources are updated frequently and have a consistent informatics infrastructure and data presentation across all supported species. Specialized web-based visualizations are also available including synteny displays, collapsible gene tree plots, a gene family locator and different alignment views. The Ensembl comparative genomics infrastructure is extensively reused for the analysis of non-vertebrate species by other projects including Ensembl Genomes and Gramene and much of the information here is relevant to these projects. The consistency of the annotation across species and the focus on vertebrates makes Ensembl an ideal system to perform and support vertebrate comparative genomic analyses. We use robust software and pipelines to produce reference comparative data and make it freely available.

Database URL: http://www.ensembl.org.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4761110/