BOL: Related items

PG2: Making Pangenome Graphs Easier to Understand

Jitendra Narayan — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 04:38:23 -0500

Genomics is moving beyond the traditional approach of studying DNA using a single reference genome. Today, researchers are increasingly using pangenomes, which represent genetic information from multiple genomes and capture a much broader range of genetic diversity.

However, pangenome graphs can be highly complex, making them difficult to visualize and interpret. A recent study published in BMC Bioinformatics introduces PG2 (PanGenoGrapher), an open-source, web-based tool designed to address this challenge. The source code and user guide are openly available on GitHub at https://github.com/iVis-at-Bilkent/pangenographer. A publicly accessible sample deployment is hosted at http://pg2.cs.bilkent.edu.tr. In addition, a demonstration video illustrating the primary use cases of PG2 is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCd7-aGY6CQ.

PG2 combines advanced graph-layout algorithms with an interactive visualization platform. It allows researchers to explore genomic paths, identify variations, and examine relationships between different parts of a pangenome graph more easily.

This is important because visualization can play a major role in bioinformatics. When complex genomic information is presented clearly, researchers can more easily identify patterns, understand genetic variation, and generate new biological insights.

The development of PG2 represents a step toward making pangenome analysis more accessible and intuitive. As genomic datasets continue to grow and graph-based representations become more common, tools like PG2 can help researchers navigate this increasing complexity.

Ultimately, PG2 demonstrates how combining genomics, graph algorithms, and interactive visualization can make sophisticated biological data easier to understand and analyze.

Reference: Solun, G. K., Dogrusoz, U., Bingöl, Z., & Alkan, C. (2026). PG2: algorithms and a web-based tool for effective layout and visual analysis of pangenome graphs. BMC Bioinformatics. DOI: 10.1186/s12859-026-06555-4.

RGFA: powerful and convenient handling of assembly graphs

Rahul Nayak — Thu, 25 Jan 2018 05:47:53 -0600

RGFA, an implementation of the proposed GFA specification in Ruby. It allows the user to conveniently parse, edit and write GFA files. Complex operations such as the separation of the implicit instances of repeats and the merging of linear paths can be performed. A typical application of RGFA is the editing of a graph, to finish the assembly of a sequence, using information not available to the assembler. We illustrate a use case, in which the assembly of a repetitive metagenomic fosmid insert was completed using a script based on RGFA.

https://github.com/ggonnella/rgfa

Address of the bookmark: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5103826/

GfaViz: flexible and interactive visualization of GFA sequence graphs

Jit — Thu, 23 Jan 2020 07:33:46 -0600

GFA (Graphical Fragment Assembly) is an emerging standard format for representing sequence graphs. Although it was originally conceived as a format for sequence assembly (hence the name), and this remains its core application, it is more general, and able to represent many different types of sequence graphs, including scaffolding graphs, alignment graphs, variant graphs and splicing graphs.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/ggonnella/gfaviz

VICUNA: a software tool that enables consensus assembly of ultra-deep sequence derived from diverse viral or other heterogeneous populations.

biogeek — Tue, 25 Aug 2020 03:40:17 -0500

VICUNA is a de novo assembly program targeting populations with high mutation rates. It creates a single linear representation of the mixed population on which intra-host variants can be mapped. For clinical samples rich in contamination (e.g., >95%), VICUNA can leverage existing genomes, if available, to assemble only target-alike reads. After initial assembly, it can also use existing genomes to perform guided merging of contigs. For each data set (e.g., Illumina paired read, 454), VICUNA outputs consensus sequence(s) and the corresponding multiple sequence alignment of constituent reads. VICUNA efficiently handles ultra-deep sequence data with tens of thousands fold coverage.

http://software.broadinstitute.org/viral/docs/vicuna_v1.0.pdf

Address of the bookmark: https://www.broadinstitute.org/viral-genomics/vicuna

Ventoy: an open source tool to create bootable USB drive

LEGE — Tue, 29 Jun 2021 10:16:19 -0500

Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files. With ventoy, you don't need to format the disk over and over, you just need to copy the image files to the USB drive and boot it. You can copy many image files at a time and ventoy will give you a boot menu to select them. x86 Legacy BIOS, IA32 UEFI, x86_64 UEFI, ARM64 UEFI and MIPS64EL UEFI are supported in the same way. Both MBR and GPT partition style are supported in the same way. Most type of OS supported(Windows/WinPE/Linux/Unix/Vmware/Xen...) 700+ ISO files are tested.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/ventoy/Ventoy

InteractiVenn: a web-based tool for the analysis of sets through Venn diagrams

Jit — Wed, 29 Jun 2022 03:22:26 -0500

InteractiVenn, a more flexible tool for interacting with Venn diagrams including up to six sets. It offers a clean interface for Venn diagram construction and enables analysis of set unions while preserving the shape of the diagram. Set unions are useful to reveal differences and similarities among sets and may be guided in our tool by a tree or by a list of set unions. The tool also allows obtaining subsets’ elements, saving and loading sets for further analyses, and exporting the diagram in vector and image formats. InteractiVenn has been used to analyze two biological datasets, but it may serve set analysis in a broad range of domains.

More at https://bmcbioinformatics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12859-015-0611-3

Address of the bookmark: http://www.interactivenn.net/

Minda: a tool for evaluating structural variant (SV) callers

LEGE — Sun, 31 Mar 2024 02:43:50 -0500

Minda is a tool for evaluating structural variant (SV) callers that

standardizes VCF records for compatibility with both germline and somatic SV callers,
benchmarks against a single VCF input file, or
benchmarks against an ensemble call set created from multiple VCF input files.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/KolmogorovLab/minda

LoVis4u: Locus Visualisation tool for comparative genomics

LEGE — Tue, 17 Sep 2024 02:30:57 -0500

Description

LoVis4u is a bioinformatics tool for Loci Visualisation.

LoVis4u, a command-line tool and Python API designed for highly customizable and fast visualisation of multiple genomic loci. LoVis4u generates vector images in PDF format based on annotation data from GenBank or GFF files. It is capable of visualising entire genomes of bacteriophages as well as plasmids and user-defined regions of longer prokaryotic genomes. Additionally, LoVis4u offers optional data processing steps to identify and highlight accessory and core genes in input sequences.

https://art-egorov.github.io/lovis4u/

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/art-egorov/lovis4u

Alfred: BAM Statistics and Feature Counting

Jit — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 05:28:38 -0600

The easiest way to get Alfred is to download a statically linked binary from the Alfred github release page. Alternatively, you can build Alfred from source. Alfred dependencies are included as submodules so you need to do a recursive clone.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/tobiasrausch/alfred.git

cd alfred/

make all

https://github.com/tobiasrausch/alfred/

Address of the bookmark: https://gear.embl.de/alfred

gfastats: The swiss army knife for genome assembly.

Abhi — Thu, 08 Sep 2022 06:03:05 -0500

gfastats is a single fast and exhaustive tool for summary statistics and simultaneous *fa* (fasta, fastq, gfa [.gz]) genome assembly file manipulation. gfastats also allows seamless fasta<>fastq<>gfa[.gz] conversion. It has been tested in genomes even >100Gbp.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/vgl-hub/gfastats