BOL: Related items

gbtools: Interactive Visualization of Metagenome Bins in R

Jit — Sun, 26 Mar 2017 15:41:31 -0500

We have developed gbtools, a software package that allows users to visualize metagenomic assemblies by plotting coverage (sequencing depth) and GC values of contigs, and also to annotate the plots with taxonomic information. Different sets of annotations, including taxonomic assignments from conserved marker genes or SSU rRNA genes, can be imported simultaneously; users can choose which annotations to plot. Bins can be manually defined from plots, or be imported from third-party binning tools and overlaid onto plots, such that results from different methods can be compared side-by-side. gbtools reports summary statistics of bins including marker gene completeness, and allows the user to add or subtract bins with each other.

Tool at https://github.com/kbseah/genome-bin-tools

Address of the bookmark: http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fmicb.2015.01451/full

fragScaff: Genome Assembly with Contiguity Preserving Transposition

Jit — Mon, 14 May 2018 04:28:14 -0500

Contiguity preserving transposition and sequencing (CPT-seq) is an entirely in vitro means of generating libraries comprised of 9216 indexed pools, each of which contains thousands of sparsely sequenced long fragments ranging from 5 kilobases to >1 megabase. This software, fragScaff, leverages coincidences between the content of different pools as a source of contiguity information for scaffolding de novo genome assemblies. FragScaff is complementary to Lachesis, providing midrange contiguity to support robust, accurate chromosome-scale de novo genome assemblies without the need for laborious in vivo cloning steps.

Further information about fragScaff, including source code, is available at:https://sourceforge.net/projects/fragscaff/files.

Manuscript describing fragScaff was published as: Adey A, Kitzman JO, Burton JN, Daza R, Kumar A, Christiansen L, Ronaghi M, Amini S, L Gunderson K, Steemers FJ, Shendure J#. In vitro, long-range sequence information for de novo genome assembly via transposase contiguity. Genome Research 2014 Dec;24(12):2041-9. doi: 10.1101/gr.178319.114. PubMed PMID: 25327137.

Address of the bookmark: https://sourceforge.net/projects/fragscaff/files/

SALSA: A tool to scaffold long read assemblies with Hi-C

Jit — Fri, 15 Jun 2018 04:01:15 -0500

This code is used to scaffold your assemblies using Hi-C data. This version implements some improvements in the original SALSA algorithm. If you want to use the old version, it can be found in the old_salsa branch. To use the latest version, first run the following commands: cd SALSA make To run the code, you will need Python 2.7, BOOST libraries and Networkx(version lower than 1.2). If you consider using this tool, please cite our publication which describes the methods used for scaffolding. Ghurye, J., Pop, M., Koren, S., Bickhart, D., & Chin, C. S. (2017). Scaffolding of long read assemblies using long range contact information. BMC genomics, 18(1), 527. Link Ghurye, J., Rhie, A., Walenz, B.P., Schmitt, A., Selvaraj, S., Pop, M., Phillippy, A.M. and Koren, S., 2018. Integrating Hi-C links with assembly graphs for chromosome-scale assembly. bioRxiv, p.261149 Link For any queries, please either ask on github issue page or send an email to Jay Ghurye (jayg@cs.umd.edu).

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/machinegun/SALSA

CGView.js is a Circular Genome Viewing tool

LEGE — Wed, 27 Mar 2024 11:16:24 -0500

CGView.js is a Circular Genome Viewing tool for visualizing and interacting with small genomes. This software is an adaptation of the Java program CGView.

CGView.js is the genome viewer of Proksee, an expert system for genome assembly, annotation and visualization.

Features

Circular and linear views of genomes
Capable of drawing genomes up to 10 Mbp with 1000's of features and 100's contigs
Smooth zooming down to the sequence level
Easily generate features and plots directly form the sequence (e.g. ORFs, GC-content and GC-Skew)
Save high resolution PNG maps up to 8000x8000px
Fully documented API for interacting with CGView.js maps

Address of the bookmark: https://js.cgview.ca/

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.

ncbi-datasets-cli -- Quickstart: command line tools !

Jit — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 02:51:26 -0600

Install and use the NCBI Datasets command line tools

The NCBI Datasets datasets command line tools are datasets and dataformat .

Use datasets to download biological sequence data across all domains of life from NCBI.

Use dataformat to convert metadata from JSON Lines format to other formats.

Conda download:

https://anaconda.org/conda-forge/ncbi-datasets-cli

Buld Download

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/datasets/builder/?tax_id=29979

Address of the bookmark: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/datasets/docs/v1/quickstarts/command-line-tools/

RCircos: an R package for Circos 2D track plots

Jit — Fri, 20 May 2016 11:01:13 -0500

RCircos package provides a simple and flexible way to make Circos 2D track plots with R and could be easily integrated into other R data processing and graphic manipulation pipelines for presenting large-scale multi-sample genomic research data. It can also serve as a base tool to generate complex Circos images.

More at https://bitbucket.org/henryhzhang/rcircos/src

Address of the bookmark: https://bitbucket.org/henryhzhang/rcircos/src

BRAKER: pipeline for fully automated prediction of protein coding genes with GeneMark-ES/ET and AUGUSTUS in novel eukaryotic genomes

Jit — Thu, 01 Sep 2016 08:02:59 -0500

Gene finding in eukaryotic genomes is notoriously difficult to automate. The task is to design a work flow with a minimal set of tools that would reach state-of-the-art performance across a wide range of species. GeneMark-ET is a gene prediction tool that incorporates RNA-Seq data into unsupervised training and subsequently generates ab initio gene predictions. AUGUSTUS is a gene finder that usually requires supervised training and uses information from RNA-Seq reads in the prediction step. Complementary strengths of GeneMark-ET and AUGUSTUS provided motivation for designing a new combined tool for automatic gene prediction.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26559507

Address of the bookmark: http://bioinf.uni-greifswald.de/bioinf/braker/

Mugsy: multiple whole genome alignment tool

Jit — Fri, 08 Dec 2017 17:41:14 -0600

Mugsy is a multiple whole genome aligner. Mugsy uses Nucmer for pairwise alignment, a custom graph based segmentation procedure for identifying collinear regions, and the segment-based progressive multiple alignment strategy from Seqan::TCoffee. Mugsy accepts draft genomes in the form of multi-FASTA files and does not require a reference genome.

To cite Mugsy, use:

Angiuoli SV and Salzberg SL. Mugsy: Fast multiple alignment of closely related whole genomes.Bioinformatics 2011 27(3):334-4

Address of the bookmark: http://mugsy.sourceforge.net/

HASLR: a tool for rapid genome assembly of long sequencing reads

LEGE — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 05:50:15 -0600

HASLR is a tool for rapid genome assembly of long sequencing reads. HASLR is a hybrid tool which means it requires long reads generated by Third Generation Sequencing technologies (such as PacBio or Oxford Nanopore) together with Next Generation Sequencing reads (such as Illumina) from the same sample.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/vpc-ccg/haslr