BOL: Related items

Finding the Hidden Switches: The Story of KiNext and Protein Kinases

LEGE — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 02:51:28 -0500

Every newly sequenced genome contains thousands of proteins, but identifying what each protein does is a much harder task. Among these proteins are protein kinases, important molecular regulators that control processes such as cell growth, development, metabolism, stress responses, and signaling. Finding these kinases and determining which families they belong to can reveal important clues about how an organism functions and has evolved.

This is where KiNext comes into the picture. Introduced in a 2024 study published in BMC Bioinformatics, KiNext is a computational workflow designed to identify and classify protein kinases from predicted protein sequences. Instead of relying on a single search method, it brings together several approaches, including Hidden Markov Models, sequence alignment, phylogenetic analysis, and structural comparison.

The search begins with a simple question: does a protein contain the characteristics of a kinase? Protein kinases can change considerably during evolution, but important regions of their sequences often retain recognizable patterns. KiNext uses Hidden Markov Models, or HMMs, to detect these patterns. An HMM does not require a protein to be an exact match to a known kinase. Instead, it looks for a statistical sequence signature associated with kinase proteins, making it possible to detect more distant candidates.

Once potential kinases are identified, KiNext takes the analysis further. It distinguishes conventional eukaryotic protein kinases from atypical protein kinases and then attempts to classify them into different kinase groups and families. This distinction is important because simply identifying a protein as a kinase does not tell the complete story. Different kinase families can have very different evolutionary histories and biological functions.

The next stage brings evolution into the picture. KiNext can align kinase sequences and construct phylogenetic trees, allowing researchers to examine how newly identified proteins are related to previously characterized kinases. When sequence evidence alone is difficult to interpret, structural information can provide another clue. The workflow can incorporate AlphaFold-predicted structures and Foldseek-based structural comparisons to investigate whether an unusual protein resembles known kinase structures.

The researchers tested KiNext using two very different organisms: the Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas, and the green alga Ostreococcus tauri. In C. gigas, KiNext recovered previously reported kinases while identifying additional candidates. Structural analysis provided further evidence for many of the newly detected proteins. In O. tauri, the workflow similarly recovered most previously reported kinases and identified additional candidates while refining some of their classifications.

What makes KiNext particularly interesting is not just its ability to find kinases, but how the entire analysis is organized. The workflow uses Nextflow, allowing the different computational steps to be connected into a reproducible pipeline. Containers can also help manage software dependencies, making it easier to run the workflow across different computing environments.

This reproducibility becomes increasingly important as the number of available genomes continues to grow. A researcher studying one organism may be able to perform an analysis manually, but repeating the same process across hundreds or thousands of genomes quickly becomes impractical. A standardized workflow provides a way to perform the analysis consistently while keeping track of how the results were generated.

At its core, KiNext demonstrates a broader change taking place in modern genomics. Sequencing a genome provides an enormous amount of information, but the real scientific challenge begins afterward: understanding what all those sequences mean. Protein kinases are only one part of this larger puzzle, yet they are particularly important because they act as molecular switches throughout the cell.

By combining sequence profiles, evolutionary analysis, and structural evidence within a reproducible computational framework, KiNext provides researchers with a systematic way to uncover these molecular switches. Its real value lies not only in finding more kinases, but in making the process scalable, repeatable, and easier to apply to new genomes.

As genome sequencing continues to expand across the tree of life, tools such as KiNext can help turn enormous collections of protein sequences into meaningful biological stories—one kinase at a time.

GeneOverlap: An R package to test and visualize gene overlaps

Jit — Thu, 27 Dec 2018 19:45:52 -0600

Overlapping gene lists can reveal biological meanings and may lead to novel hypotheses. For example, histone modification is an important cellular mechanism that can pack and re-pack chromatin. By making the chromatin structure more dense or loose, the gene expression can be turned on or off. Tri-methylation on lysine 4 of histone H3 (H3K4me3) is associated with gene activation and its genome-wide enrichment can be mapped by using ChIP-seq experiments. Because of its activating role, if we overlap the genes that are bound by H3K4me3 with the genes that are highly expressed, we should expect a positive association. Similary, we can perform such kind of overlapping between the gene lists of different histone modifications with that of various expression groups and establish each histone modification’s role in gene regulation.

Address of the bookmark: https://bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/vignettes/GeneOverlap/inst/doc/GeneOverlap.pdf

IRscope: an online program to visualize the junction sites of chloroplast genomes

Neel — Wed, 25 Nov 2020 19:44:46 -0600

eMPRess, a software program for phylogenetic tree reconciliation under the duplication-transfer-loss model that systematically addresses the problems of choosing event costs and selecting representative solutions, enabling users to make more robust inferences.

Address of the bookmark: https://sites.google.com/g.hmc.edu/empress/home

Statistical for biological research

Neel — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 04:59:48 -0500

There is no disputing the importance of statistical analysis in biological research, but too often it is considered only after an experiment is completed, when it may be too late.

This collection highlights important statistical issues that biologists should be aware of and provides practical advice to help them improve the rigor of their work.

Nature Methods' Points of Significance column on statistics explains many key statistical and experimental design concepts. Other resources include an online plotting tool and links to statistics guides from other publishers.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.nature.com/collections/qghhqm

10 Books to Kickstart (and Level Up) Your Bioinformatics Journey

Neel — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 03:50:11 -0500

If you’re starting out in bioinformatics or looking to sharpen your computational biology skills, having the right learning resources makes all the difference.
Here’s my curated list of 10 must-read books — from beginner-friendly introductions to advanced computational genomics.

1️⃣ Data Analysis for the Life Sciences
A fantastic starting point to learn statistics, R programming, and exploratory data analysis in the context of biology. The best part? It’s available free online from HarvardX.

2️⃣ Practical Computing for Biologists
The very first book I picked up when I started learning computational biology. It’s beginner-friendly and focuses on essential computing skills every biologist needs.

3️⃣ A Primer for Computational Biology
An open-access, hands-on introduction to computational biology concepts and coding techniques. Perfect if you want to learn through real examples.

4️⃣ Computational Genomics with R
For those who already know R and want to dive deeper into genome-scale data analysis, from sequence alignment to gene expression.

5️⃣ The Biologist’s Guide to Computing
Bridges the gap between biological problems and computational thinking, making it easier for life scientists to approach programming and data analysis.

6️⃣ Bioinformatics Data Skills
A must-read to sharpen your bioinformatics toolkit — from command-line skills to reproducible research workflows. Ideal once you’ve covered the basics.

7️⃣ Bioinformatics Workbook
A practical tutorial series to help scientists design bioinformatics projects, analyze data, and understand best practices.

8️⃣ Modern Statistics for Modern Biology
An essential guide to modern statistical methods applied to biology, blending theory with hands-on examples in R.

9️⃣ Algorithms on Strings, Trees, and Sequences by Dan Gusfield
A classic reference for anyone wanting to understand the algorithms behind sequence alignment, genome assembly, and biological data structures.

Must read paper and books in evolution biology !

Abhi — Wed, 05 Oct 2022 18:33:01 -0500

1.       *Nick Barton:*

- The textbook "Evolution" by Nick Barton, with resources for
  exploring the literature: Barton, N. H., Briggs, D. E. G., Eisen, J.
  A., Goldstein, D. B., & Patel, N. H. (2007). Evolution. Cold Spring
  Harbor Laboratory Press.

- Papers from a course named "Classics in Evolutionary Biology":

Evolutionary Synthesis
1. Haldane, J. B. S. 1932. The causes of evolution. Longmans. New York.
   (esp. Ch. IV).
2. Fisher, R. A. 1930. The genetical theory of natural selection. Oxford
   University Press, Oxford. Selected Sections - Fundamental Theorem.

Genetic Variation
1a. Lewontin, R. C., and J. L. Hubby. 1966. A molecular approach to
the study of genic heterozygosity in natural populations. II. Amount
of variation and degree of heterozygosity in natural populations of
Drosophila pseudoobscura. Genetics. 54:595-609.

1b. Sachidandam et al. 2001. A map of human genome sequence variation
containing 1.42 million single nucleotide polymorphisms. 409: 928-33.

2. Wright S., Dobzhansky T., Hovanitz W. 1942 Genetics of natural
populations VII The allelism of lethals in the third chromosome of
Drosophila pseudoobscura. Genetics 27: 363-394.

Recombination and evolution
1. Hill, W. G., and A. Robertson. 1966. The effect of linkage on limits
to artificial selection. Genet. Res. 8:269-294.

2. Maynard Smith and Haigh. 1974. The hitch-hiking effect of a favourable
gene. Genet. Res. 23: 23-35.

Understanding sequence variation
1. Begun D. J., Aquadro C. F., 1992 Levels of naturally occurring DNA
polymorphism correlate with recombination rate in Drosophila melanogaster.
Nature 356: 519-520.

2. Green R. E., Reich D., Pääbo S., 2010 A draft sequence of the
Neandertal genome. Science 328: 710-722.

Quantitative Genetics:  variation in complex traits
1. Galton F., 1877 Typical laws of heredity. Nature 15: 492-495-
512-514- 532-533.

2. Turelli M., 1984 Heritable genetic variation via
mutation-selection balance: Lerch's Zeta meets the abdominal
bristle. Theor. Popul. Biol. 25: 138-193.

Quantitative Genetics:  finding the genes
1. Shrimpton A. E., Robertson A., 1988 The Isolation of polygenic factors
controlling bristle score in Drosophila melanogaster II Distribution of
third chromosome bristle effects within chromosome sections. Genetics
118: 445-459.

2. Boyle E. A., Li Y. I., Pritchard J. K., 2017 An expanded view of
complex traits: from polygenic to omnigenic. Cell 169: 1177-1186.

Neutral Evolution
1. Kimura, M. 1968. Evolutionary rate at the molecular level. Science.
217:624-626.

2a. Kern A. D., Hahn M. W., 2018 The Neutral Theory in Light of Natural
Selection. Molecular Biology and Evolution 110: 21077-6.

2b. Jensen J. D., Payseur B. A., Stephan W., Aquadro C. F., Lynch M.,
Charlesworth D., Charlesworth B., 2018 The importance of the Neutral Theory
in 1968 and 50 years on: a response to Kern and Hahn 2018. Evolution 112:
2109-4.

2c. Ellegren & Galtier. 2016. Determinants of genetic diversity. Nature
Reviews Genetics.

Mutation and Genetic Variability
1. Luria, S. E., and M. Delbrück. 1943. Mutations of Bacteria from Virus
Sensitivity to Virus Resistance. Genetics. 28(6):491-511.

2. Hill, W G. 1982. "Rates of Change in Quantitative Traits From Fixation
of New Mutations." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (U.S.A.)
79: 142-45.

Testing for selection
1. McDonald & Kreitman. 1991. Adaptive protein evolution at the Adh locus
in Drosophila. Nature.

2. Begun, et al. Mol. Biol. Evol. 16, 1816-1819 (1999).

3. Siddiq et al. 2016. Experimental test and refutation of a classic case
of molecular adaptation in Drosophila melanogaster.  Nature Ecology &
Evolution.

The shifting balance
1. Wright, S. 1932. The roles of mutation, inbreeding, crossbreeding and
selection in evolution. Proceedings of the VI International Congress of
Genetics: 1. pp 356-366.

2. Coyne, J.A., N.H. Barton, and M. Turelli. 1997. A critique of Wright's
shifting balance theory of evolution.  Evolution 51: 643-671.

3. Barton. 2016. Sewall Wright on Evolution in Mendelian Populations and
the "Shifting Balance". Genetics.

Evolution of Sex
1.  Muller, H.J. 1964. The relation of recombination to mutational advance.
Mutation Res. 1(1):2-9

2. McDonald et al. 2016. Sex speeds adaptation by altering the dynamics of
molecular evolution. Nature.

Kin Selection, Cooperation, and Conflict
1. Hamilton, W. D. 1964. The genetical evolution of social behaviour I.
Journal of Theoretical Biology. 7:1-52.

2. Trivers, R. L. 1974 Parent-offspring conflict. American Zoologist.
14(1):249-264.

Sexual Selection
1. Zahavi, A. 1975. Mate selection - a selection of a handicap. J. Theor.
Biol. 53:205-214.

2. Kirkpatrick, M., and Ryan, M.J. 1991. The evolution of mating
preferences and the paradox of the lek. Nature. 350:33-38.

Fitness Landscapes
1. Dean, A. 1995. A Molecular Investigation of Genotype by Environment
Interactions. Genetics. 139:19-33.

2. Costanzo et al. 2010. The Genetic Landscape of a Cell. Science.

Speciation
1. Coyne, J. A., and H. A. Orr. 1989. Patterns of speciation in Drosophila.
Evolution. 43:362-381.

2. Corbett-Detig et al. 2013. Genetic incompatibilities are widespread
within species. Nature.

2.       *Marcos Antezana:*

Valen, L. v. 1975. Energy and Evolution. University of Chicago, Department
of Biology.

3.       *Remco Folkertsma:*

1. The work by Hopi Hoekstra on local adaptation and oldfield mice

2. Poelstra, J. W., Vijay, N., Bossu, C. M., Lantz, H., Ryll, B., Müller,
I., ... & Wolf, J. B. (2014). The genomic landscape underlying phenotypic
integrity in the face of gene flow in crows. Science, 344(6190), 1410-1414.

4.       *Joshka Kaufmann and Leslie Turner*

They offer us a link to 'papers every evolutionary biologist should read',
the papers are collected by Leslie Turner.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53e8cb7ce4b02c4bc3aeeee4/t/5ab8fcb670a6ad55c67fcdf4/1522072758665/EvoBioClassicsRefList.pdf

5.       *Sarah Stockwell*

Matt Ridley collected classic papers in evolutionary biology and printed
part of these papers in his book Evolution (see Matt Ridley. Evolution
(Univ. of Oxford Press, 2nd edition, 2004))

Public Databases for Bioinformatics !

Jit — Tue, 23 Mar 2021 05:32:15 -0500

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17155-y

Server Infrastructure:

File Server:

dhara: Synology 3614 Storage Appliance
4 Core Xeon
108TB disk storage
10Gb ethernet to SCG3
Access atx: dhara:5000
Has btsync server (try it - its much better than dropbox)

Compute Servers:

nandi: Kundaje and Phi Server
24 intel cores
256GB RAM
500GB of SSD storage 
36TB RAID6 local storage
4 Intel Phi's (space for 4 more GPU's)


durga: Montgomery and sensitive data
24 intel cores
256GB RAM
500GB of SSD RAID0 storage 
60TB RAID6 local storage

mitra: Bassik and Web/DB Server
24 core
256GB RAM 
500GB of SSD RAID0 storage 
36TB RAID6 local storage

vayu: Kundaje GPU server
4 core
64GB RAM 
200GB of SSD storage 
8TB RAID10 local storage
4 Nvidia GTX 970 4GB GPUs

amold: Bickel and SGE server
32 AMD core
128GB RAM 
200GB of SSD storage 
12TB RAID5 local storage

wotan: Bickel and SGE server
64 AMD core
256GB RAM 
200GB of SSD storage 
12TB RAID5 local storage

Filesystem:

/users/$USER
default home directory
full backups nightly 
nfs mount to dhara
should store code, papers, and other highly processed data here

/mnt/data/
globally accessible data
should store common data here
e.g. genomes and indexes, annotations, ENCODE data  
if you dont want this to count towards your quote you must chown

/mnt/lab_data/$LAB/
lab accessible data
should store lab project data here 
e.g. ATAC-seq prediction data, enhancer prediction, motif calls

/srv/scratch/$USER
fast local storage
not backed up, but on raid and data will never be deleted
most analysis should be performed here

/srv/persistent/$USER
fast local storage
synced nightly, but not backed up
       ie if the hard drives fail or you delete something and notice 
       within 24 hours we can recover. Otherwise not. (vs home which is 
       properly backed up )  
intermediate analysis products that would be hard to recover should be stored here 
       e.g. stochastic analysis results that need to be kept so that paper 
       results can be reproduced

/srv/www/$LABNAME/
web accessible from mitra.stanford.edu
*NOT BACKED UP*

Some parallel programming patterns:

# gzip a bunch of files
parallel gzip -- *.FILESTOGZIP

# fork example in python:
(for more detailed examples look at 
 https://github.com/nboley/grit/ grit/lib/multiprocessing_utils.py)

import os
import time
import random

import multiprocessing

class ProcessSafeOPStream( object ):
    def __init__( self, writeable_obj ):
        self.writeable_obj = writeable_obj
        self.lock = multiprocessing.Lock()
        self.name = self.writeable_obj.name
        return
    
    def write( self, data ):
        self.lock.acquire()
        self.writeable_obj.write( data )
        self.writeable_obj.flush()
        self.lock.release()
        return
    
    def close( self ):
        self.writeable_obj.close()

def worker(queue, ofp):
    # Try without this
    random.seed()
    while True:
        i = queue.get()
        if i == 'FINISHED': return
        # simulate an expensive function
        x = random.random()
        time.sleep(x/10)
        print i, x
        ofp.write("%i\t%s\n" % (i, x))

NSIMS = 10000
NPROC = 25

# populate queue
todo = multiprocessing.Queue()
for i in xrange(NSIMS): todo.put(i)
for i in xrange(NPROC): todo.put('FINISHED')

ofp = ProcessSafeOPStream( open("output.txt", "w") )

pids = []
for i in xrange(NPROC):
    pid = os.fork()
    if pid == 0:
       worker(todo, ofp)
       os._exit(0)
    else:
       pids.append(pid)  

for pid in pids:
    os.waitpid(pid, 0)

ofp.close()

print "FINISHED"

For use case 1 we obtained the following ENCODE and ROADMAP datasets https://www.encodeproject.org/files/ENCFF446WOD/@@download/ENCFF446WOD.bed.gz, https://www.encodeproject.org/files/ENCFF546PJU/@@download/ENCFF546PJU.bam, https://www.encodeproject.org/files/ENCFF059BEU/@@download/ENCFF059BEU.bam. Blacklisted regions were obtained from http://mitra.stanford.edu/kundaje/akundaje/release/blacklists/hg38-human/hg38.blacklist.bed.gz. The human genome version hg38 was obtained from http://hgdownload.cse.ucsc.edu/goldenPath/hg38/bigZips/hg38.fa.gz.

For use case 2 we used the set of narrowPeak files summarized in https://github.com/wkopp/janggu_usecases/tree/master/extra/urls.txt (archived version v1.0.1). The human genome version hg19 was obtained from http://hgdownload.cse.ucsc.edu/goldenPath/hg19/bigZips/hg19.fa.gz

For use case 3 we used the ENCODE datasets https://www.encodeproject.org/files/ENCFF591XCX/@@download/ENCFF591XCX.bam, https://www.encodeproject.org/files/ENCFF736LHE/@@download/ENCFF736LHE.bigWig, https://www.encodeproject.org/files/ENCFF177HHM/@@download/ENCFF177HHM.bam as we as the GENCODE annotation v29 from ftp://ftp.ebi.ac.uk/pub/databases/gencode/Gencode_human/release_29/gencode.v29.annotation.gtf.gz.

Address of the bookmark: http://mitra.stanford.edu/

Ribbon: Visualizing complex genome alignments and structural variation:

Jit — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 07:40:22 -0600

Ribbon can be used for long reads, short reads, paired-end reads, and assembly/genome alignments. Instructions for each data format are available by clicking on "instructions" in each tab on the right.

Local installation:

You can install Ribbon locally from Github by following the instructions here: https://github.com/MariaNattestad/Ribbon

Address of the bookmark: http://genomeribbon.com/

jobTree based python wrapper to run the genome simulation tool suite Evolver

Jit — Fri, 08 Dec 2017 16:26:32 -0600

evolverSimControl (eSC) can be used to simulate multi-chromosome genome evolution on an arbitrary phylogeny (Newick format). In addition to simply running evolver, eSC also automatically creates statistical summaries of the simulation as it runs including text and image files. Also included are convenience scripts to: check on a running simulation and see detailed status and logging information; extract fasta sequence files from the leaf nodes of a completed simulation; extract pairwise multiple alignment files (.maf) from leaf and branch nodes from a completed simulation and with the help of mafJoin, join them together into a single maf covering the entire simulation.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/dentearl/evolverSimControl

Mash: fast genome and metagenome distance estimation using MinHash

Jit — Tue, 12 Dec 2017 17:30:12 -0600

Mash is normally distributed as a dependency-free binary for Linux or OSX (see https://github.com/marbl/Mash/releases). This source distribution is intended for other operating systems or for development. Mash requires c++11 to build, which is available in and GCC >= 4.8 and OSX >= 10.7.

See http://mash.readthedocs.org for more information.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/marbl/Mash/releases