BOL: Related items

320000 viruses in mammals yet to sequenced in future!!!

Rahul Agarwal — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 08:35:30 -0500

With current biological technique improvements, finally it is now possible to look at millions of unknown viruses at genomic level and understand the mechanism. According to available data, close to 70 per cent of emerging viral diseases such as HIV/AIDS, West Nile, Ebola, SARS, and influenza, are zoonoses - infections of animals that cross into humans.

To address the challenges of describing and estimating virodiversity, a team of investigators from Center for Infection and Immunity (CII) and EcoHealth Alliance began in jungles of Bangladesh - home to the flying fox.

Reference:

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/et-cetera/mammals-harbour-at-least-320000-new-viruses/articleshow/22253268.cms

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23932400

Tools to detect synteny blocks regions among multiple genomes

Jitendra Narayan — Mon, 16 Sep 2013 17:12:02 -0500

The synteny block (which etymologically means “on the same ribbon”) is a collection of contiguous genes located on the same chromosome. These block regions have mostly been preserved by genome rearrangements, and so synteny blocks from two related species (e.g., humans and mice) will be roughly similar but flipped around on the respective genomes. Ovcharenko et. al. define it as ‘any conserved sequence blocks, regardless of whether it encompasses multiple genes, an area containing single genes, or areas devoid of known genes to be considers as synteny block as long as there is conservation at the sequence level. Today, however, biologists usually refer to synteny as the conservation of blocks of order within two sets of chromosomes that are being compared with each other. This concept can also be referred to as shared synteny. The NHBLI/NCBI Glossary define synteny as “Two genes which occur on the same chromosome are syntenic; however, syntenic genes may or may not be "linked."

Now a day, geneticists have developed a language of their own. They are pouring lots of money and energy to read the entire genomic text and understand the gods own code ATGC. It is somewhat fascinating, not only for geneticist but also for non-biologist to know that there are several conserved blocks in genome which remain conserved over hundreds of millions of years. There have been several researches on conserved blocks and non-conserved regions to understand the mechanism and importance of all these regions (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2675965/). The finding indicates conservation and rearrangements of certain evolutionary important genes play an important role in evolution/adaptive changes (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7424/abs/nature11622.html https://academic.oup.com/gbe/article/8/8/2442/2198198/Novel-Insights-into-Chromosome-Evolution-in-Birds , http://science.sciencemag.org/content/346/6215/1311).

But the puzzle remains open, how to correctly define the synteny (presence of two or more genes on the same chromosome) and conserved synteny (presence of two or more genes on chromosome of each of the two species) on several genomes.

Figure: Image generated with Evolution Highway (EH) tool http://eh-demo.ncsa.illinois.edu/

Keeping the new approach to define conserved synteny in mind there have been various algorithms developed to identify the conserved homologous synteny blocks (HSB) amongst species. Some of them which were commonly used for synteny detections are:

SyntenyTracker ( http://www-app.igb.uiuc.edu/labs/lewin/donthu/Synteny_assign/html/),

SyntenyTracker was shown to be an efficient and accurate automated tool for defining HSBs using datasets that may contain minor errors resulting from limitations in map construction methodologies.

CoGe (http://genomevolution.org/CoGe/SynFind.pl )

Satsuma (http://evomics.org/learning/genomics/satsuma/)

Cinteny (http://cinteny.cchmc.org/) ,

Cinteny server can be used for finding regions syntenic across multiple genomes and measuring the extent of genome rearrangement using reversal distance as a measure.

OrthoCluster (http://krono.act.uji.es/noticias/orthocluster-a-new-tool-for-mining-syntenic-blocks)

A new tool for mining syntenic blocks in comparative genomics

SynMap (http://genomevolution.org/wiki/index.php/SynMap),

SyMAP (http://www.symapdb.org/)

SyMAP (Synteny Mapping and Analysis Program) v4.0 is an automated system for identifying and displaying genome synteny alignments. The genomes may be represented by sequenced chromosomes (pseudomolecules), by draft sequence contigs, or by FPC physical maps (with BAC-end or marker sequence).

http://genomevolution.org/CoGe/SynMap.pl

RegionMiner (http://www.genomatix.de/online_help/help_regionminer/orthologous.html)

SyntenyMiner is being developed as an application to visualize and interrogate comparisons among multiple complete genome sequences. http://syntenyminer.sourceforge.net/

AutoGRAPH ( http://autograph.genouest.org/),

AutoGRAPH is an integrated web server for multi-species comparative genomic analysis. It is designed for constructing and visualizing synteny maps between two or three species, determination and display of macrosynteny and microsynteny relationships among species, and for highlighting evolutionary breakpoints.

SynChro(http://www.lgm.upmc.fr/CHROnicle/SynChro.html)

SynChro is a tool designed to define conserved synteny blocks. It reconstructs synteny blocks between pairwise comparison of multiple genomes. The reconstructed synteny blocks may overlap each other, be included in one another or duplicated due to micro-rearrangements.

SyntenyView ( http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/dtucourse/cookbooks/nikob/exercises/gf1_output_5.html),

Ensembl 'SyntenyView' shows conservation of large-scale gene order between species pairs. A brief summary of the calculation method appears at the bottom of this help page. The left of a 'SyntenyView' page displays a diagram of chromosomes with blocks of conserved synteny. The right of a page shows homology matches between individual genes within syntenic blocks.

SynBrowse ( http://www.synbrowse.org/),

SynBrowse (Synteny Browser) is a generic sequence comparison tool for visualizing genome alignments both within and between species. It is intended to help scientists study and analyze synteny, homologous genes and other conserved elements between sequences. This software is useful in studying genome duplication and evolution. It can also aid in identifying uncharacterized genes, putative regulatory elements and novel structural features of study species by comparing to a well annotated reference sequence, thus enabling genome curators to refine and edit annotations of species that have incomplete genome annotations.

Sibelia (http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.7941).

A comparative genomic tool: It assists biologists in analysing the genomic variations that correlate with pathogens, or the genomic changes that help microorganisms adapt in different environments. Sibelia will also be helpful for the evolutionary and genome rearrangement studies for multiple strains of microorganisms.

GSV (http://cas-bioinfo.cas.unt.edu/gsv/homepage.php)

Genome Synteny Viewer allows users to upload files which contain synteny regions between two or more genomes and interactively visualize the synteny between them. GSV also allows users to upload annotation files to visualize annotated regions in addition to synteny regions.

MicroSyn (http://www.lgm.upmc.fr/CHROnicle/SynChro.html)

MicroSyn software as a means of detecting microsynteny in adjacent genomic regions surrounding genes in gene families. MicroSyn searches for conserved, flanking colinear homologous gene pairs between two genomic fragments to determine the relationship between two members in a gene family.

SynOrth (http://synorth.genereg.net/)

Synorth [s n ôrth], named in combination of "synteny" and "ortholog", is designed for the study of evolutionary changes of genomic regulatory blocks (GRBs) in vertebrate genomes, and especially the changes following the whole-genome duplication in teleost fish, by tracing the ortholog genes gain and loss in ancient synteny blocks.

SyDiG (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21441096)

Uncovering Synteny in Distant Genomes.

MapSynteny (http://www.automatizacionysistemas.com/download.html)

MapSynteny is a macro in MS Excel® able to create images to show the relationship between genetic maps and large sequences (scaffolds, chromosomes, BACs, etc.). Based on tab – delimited BLAST results and some formulas, a suitable image of syntenic relationships or physical mapping can be obtained. http://www.automatizacionysistemas.com/Poster_MapSynteny.pdf

One of the best synteny tutorial for beginer @ http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/synteny-inferring-ancestral-genomes-44022

Reference:

http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/synteny-inferring-ancestral-genomes-44022

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7424/full/nature11622.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synteny

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2675965/

MedGenome is looking for Genome Analysts

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 11:06:23 -0600

MedGenome is looking for Genome Analysts (5-6 Positions), ambitious and energetic who will work both independently and as part of a collaborative team to generate data from various genomics-oriented workflows and assist in the optimization and validation of new technologies and procedures.
• Master’s in Science, 0 – 4 years of relevant experience
• Interpretation of variants/mutations causing genetic disorders using standard guidelines.
• Support in data analysis of projects

Reach out to careers@medgenome.com with your detailed profile.

Perl one-liner for bioinformatician !!!

Abhimanyu Singh — Fri, 30 May 2014 05:49:07 -0500

With the emergence of NGS technologies, and sequencing data most of the bioinformaticians mung and wrangle around massive amounts of genomics text. There are several "standardized" file formats (FASTQ, SAM, VCF, etc.) and some tools for manipulating them (fastx toolkit, samtools, vcftools, etc.), there are still times where knowing a little bit of Perl onliner is extremely helpful.

Perl one-liners are small and awesome Perl programs that fit in a single line of code and they do one thing really well. These things include changing line spacing, numbering lines, doing calculations, converting and substituting text, deleting and printing certain lines, parsing logs, editing files in-place, doing statistics, carrying out system administration tasks, updating a bunch of files at once, and many more. Perl one-liners will make you the shell warrior. Anything that took you minutes to solve, will now take you seconds!

perl -pe '$\="\n"'
#double space a file

perl -pe '$_ .= "\n" unless /^$/'
#double space a file except blank lines

perl -pe '$_.="\n"x7'
#7 space in a line.

perl -ne 'print unless /^$/'
#remove all blank lines

perl -lne 'print if length($_) < 20'
#print all lines with length less than 20.

perl -00 -pe ''
#If there are multiple spaces, delete all leaving one(make the file a single spaced file).

perl -00 -pe '$_.="\n"x4'
#Expand single blank lines into 4 consecutive blank lines

perl -pe '$_ = "$. $_"'
#Number all lines in a file

perl -pe '$_ = ++$a." $_" if /./'
#Number only non-empty lines in a file

perl -ne 'print ++$a." $_" if /./'
#Number and print only non-empty lines in a file

perl -pe '$_ = ++$a." $_" if /regex/'
#Number only lines that match a pattern

perl -ne 'print ++$a." $_" if /regex/'
#Number and print only lines that match a pattern

perl -ne 'printf "%-5d %s", $., $_ if /regex/'
#Left align lines with 5 white spaces if matches a pattern (perl -ne 'printf "%-5d %s", $., $_' : for all the lines)

perl -le 'print scalar(grep{/./}<>)'
#prints the total number of non-empty lines in a file

perl -lne '$a++ if /regex/; END {print $a+0}'
#print the total number of lines that matches the pattern

perl -alne 'print scalar @F'
#print the total number fields(words) in each line.

perl -alne '$t += @F; END { print $t}'
#Find total number of words in the file

perl -alne 'map { /regex/ && $t++ } @F; END { print $t }'
#find total number of fields that match the pattern

perl -lne '/regex/ && $t++; END { print $t }'
#Find total number of lines that match a pattern

perl -le '$n = 20; $m = 35; ($m,$n) = ($n,$m%$n) while $n; print $m'
#will calculate the GCD of two numbers.

perl -le '$a = $n = 20; $b = $m = 35; ($m,$n) = ($n,$m%$n) while $n; print $a*$b/$m'
#will calculate lcd of 20 and 35.

perl -le '$n=10; $min=5; $max=15; $, = " "; print map { int(rand($max-$min))+$min } 1..$n'
#Generates 10 random numbers between 5 and 15.

perl -le 'print map { ("a".."z",”0”..”9”)[rand 36] } 1..8'
#Generates a 8 character password from a to z and number 0 – 9.

perl -le 'print map { ("a",”t”,”g”,”c”)[rand 4] } 1..20'
#Generates a 20 nucleotide long random residue.

perl -le 'print "a"x50'
#generate a string of ‘x’ 50 character long

perl -le 'print join ", ", map { ord } split //, "hello world"'
#Will print the ascii value of the string hello world.

perl -le '@ascii = (99, 111, 100, 105, 110, 103); print pack("C*", @ascii)'
#converts ascii values into character strings.

perl -le '@odd = grep {$_ % 2 == 1} 1..100; print "@odd"'
#Generates an array of odd numbers.

perl -le '@even = grep {$_ % 2 == 0} 1..100; print "@even"'
#Generate an array of even numbers

perl -lpe 'y/A-Za-z/N-ZA-Mn-za-m/' file
#Convert the entire file into 13 characters offset(ROT13)

perl -nle 'print uc'
#Convert all text to uppercase:

perl -nle 'print lc'
#Convert text to lowercase:

perl -nle 'print ucfirst lc'
#Convert only first letter of first word to uppercas

perl -ple 'y/A-Za-z/a-zA-Z/'
#Convert upper case to lower case and vice versa

perl -ple 's/(\w+)/\u$1/g'
#Camel Casing

perl -pe 's|\n|\r\n|'
#Convert unix new lines into DOS new lines:

perl -pe 's|\r\n|\n|'
#Convert DOS newlines into unix new line

perl -pe 's|\n|\r|'
#Convert unix newlines into MAC newlines:

perl -pe '/regexp/ && s/foo/bar/'
#Substitute a foo with a bar in a line with a regexp.

Reference/Sources:

http://genomics-array.blogspot.in/2010/11/some-unixperl-oneliners-for.html

http://genomespot.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-selection-of-useful-bash-one-liners.html

http://biowize.wordpress.com/2012/06/15/command-line-magic-for-your-gene-annotations/

http://genomics-array.blogspot.com/2010/11/some-unixperl-oneliners-for.html

http://bioexpressblog.wordpress.com/2013/04/05/split-multi-fasta-sequence-file/

Dynamic chromosome breakpoints !!!

Jitendra Narayan — Wed, 13 Aug 2014 18:38:10 -0500

Cell division involves the distribution of identical genetic material, DNA, to two daughters’ cells. During this process, duplicated deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) goes through a condensation and decondensation process. This is followed by nuclear envelope dissolution, mitotic spindle assembly, migration of the sister chromatid pairs to the metaphase plate, division and segregation of identical sets of chromosomes into daughter nuclei and nuclear envelope reformation.

The vital metaphase stage of cell division, when the sister chromatids migrated to the centre and lined up in a row, and pulled apart using attached microtubules in such a way that half the DNA ends up in each daughter cell. However, before the mitotic spindle‐mediated movement gets start and pulled DNA apart, the chromosomes are free to undergo recombination which involves the exchange of genetic material either between multiple chromosomes or between different regions of the same chromosome.

During recombination, the precise breakage of each strand, exchange between the strands, and sealing of the resulting recombined molecules happens. The “chromosomal breakpoints” refers to these places where they break. Mostly, this process occurs with a high degree of accuracy at high frequency in both eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells. But occasionally this “break and sealing/ break and reattach” process goes wrong and the reattachment happens in the wrong place which usually create disaster (with few exceptions).These chromosome disaster or abnormalities involve the gain, loss or rearrangement of visible amounts of genetic material during cell division. These abnormalities are of two type, the first one is numerical abnormalities where severe disorders are caused by the loss or gain of whole chromosomes, which affect the copy number of hundreds or even thousands of genes. The second are structural abnormalities which can be unbalanced or balanced. The former are similar to numerical abnormalities in that genetic material is either gained or lost. The natural defects in chromosome segregation are linked to cancer and several genetic diseases (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genetic_disorders). Therefore, the enzymes involved in regulating cell division are still the attractive drug targets for many diseases.

Apart from certain chromosome abnormalities, these “crossing over” of segments of maternal and paternal chromosomes to form hybrid chromosomes have some evolutionary importance and considered as a driver of genetic variation. Moreover, the chromosome breakage in evolution is considered to be non-random in nature(http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.0020014). In addition the study of breakpoint regions and non-breakpoint (stable) regions of chromosomes indicates both the regions evolved in distinctly different ways ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2675965/). These breakage may lead to genetic diseases or participate to chromosomal rearranmgnets and contributed in development of new species.

I will try to explain the genome hotspots/Evolutionary Breakpoint Regions(EBRs)/fragile regions/weak fragments/ in my next blog.

Software for recombination detection:

RAT http://cbr.jic.ac.uk/dicks/software/RAT/

Breakpointer https://github.com/ruping/Breakpointer

DRP http://web.cbio.uct.ac.za/~darren/rdp.html

RB-finder http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18707535

LDhat2.0 http://ldhat.sourceforge.net/LDhat2.0/instructions.shtml

Reference:

http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/genetic-recombination-514#

Image: Wikipedia , sciencelearn.org.nz

Recommended Articles:

http://www.friendshipcircle.org/blog/2012/05/22/13-chromosomal-disorders-youve-never-heard-of/

http://web.udl.es/usuaris/e4650869/docencia/segoncicle/genclin98/recursos_classe_%28pdf%29/revisionsPDF/chromosyndromes.pdf

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2775595/table/T2/

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/disorders/chromosomal/

http://www.ncert.nic.in/html/learning_basket/biology/cc&cd.pdf

A 3D Map of the Human Genome

Fri, 12 Dec 2014 22:27:55 -0600

Suhas Rao and Miriam Huntley (of the Aiden Lab) describe a 3D map of the human genome at kilobase resolution, revealing the principles of chromatin looping. Guest Origami Folding: Sarah Nyquist. Suhas S.P. Rao*, Miriam H. Huntley*, Neva C. Durand, Elena K. Stamenova, Ivan D. Bochkov, James T. Robinson, Adrian L. Sanborn, Ido Machol, Arina D. Omer, Eric S. Lander, Erez Lieberman Aiden. (2014). A 3D Map of the Human Genome at Kilobase Resolution Reveals Principles of Chromatin Looping. Cell.

Google Genomics

Tenzin Paul — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 11:05:42 -0600

Explore genetic variation interactively. Compare entire cohorts in seconds with SQL-like queries. Compute transition/transversion ratios, genome-wide association, allelic frequency and more.
Process big genomic data easily. Run batch analyses like principal component analysis and Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium on as many samples as you like, in minutes or hours, with just a little code.
Use Google's infrastructure and big data expertise. Store one genome or a million using Google Genomics and take advantage of the same infrastructure that powers Search, Maps, YouTube, Gmail and Drive.
Support emerging global standards. Google Genomics is implementing the API defined by the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health for visualization, analysis and more. Compliant software can access Google Genomics, local servers, or any other implementation.

Address of the bookmark: https://cloud.google.com/genomics/

Genome Stability Laboratory

Mon, 07 Mar 2016 04:16:32 -0600

The bakers yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae is an ideal model organism to understand mechanisms of meiotic chromosome segregation. In S. cerevisiae and in mammals, the majority of meiotic crossovers are formed through a highly conserved MSH4p-MSH5p, MLH1p-MLH3p dependent pathway. We are interested in charactering the role of these complexes in crossover formation and distribution among all homolog pairs. Errors in this process are linked to congenital birth defects in humans such as Down's syndrome.Our laboratory is also interested in understanding the effect of genetic background on mutation rate variation using S. cerevisiae as a model. These studies are relevant for understanding cancer progression, genome evolution and architecture. We use high- throughput genomic methods as well as classical genetics to achieve these aims.

More at http://faculty.iisertvm.ac.in/~nishantkt/index.html

MAKER

Jitendra Narayan — Sun, 07 Feb 2016 15:59:24 -0600

MAKER is a portable and easily configurable genome annotation pipeline.Its purpose is to allow smaller eukaryotic and prokaryotic genome projects to independently annotate their genomes and to create genome databases. MAKER identifies repeats, aligns ESTs and proteins to a genome, produces ab-initio gene predictions and automatically synthesizes these data into gene annotations having evidence-based quality values.

More at http://www.yandell-lab.org/software/maker.html

Address of the bookmark: http://www.yandell-lab.org/software/maker.html

Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide

Jit — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 04:50:51 -0600

This tutorial assumes no previous knowledge of scripting or programming, yet progresses rapidly toward an intermediate/advanced level of instruction . . . all the while sneaking in little nuggets of UNIX® wisdom and lore. It serves as a textbook, a manual for self-study, and as a reference and source of knowledge on shell scripting techniques. The exercises and heavily-commented examples invite active reader participation, under the premise that the only way to really learn scripting is to write scripts.

This book is suitable for classroom use as a general introduction to programming concepts.

More at http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/

Address of the bookmark: http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/