View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/james-watson-on-how-he-discovered-dna Nobel laureate James Watson opens TED2005 with the frank and funny story of how he and his research partner, Francis Crick, discovered the structure of DNA. Talk by James Watson.

Transcription is the process by which the information in DNA is copied into messenger RNA (mRNA) for protein production. Originally created for DNA Interactive ( http://www.dnai.org ). TRANSCRIPT: The Central Dogma of Molecular Biology: "DNA makes RNA makes protein" Here the process begins. Transcription factors assemble at a specific promoter region along the DNA. The length of DNA following the promoter is a gene and it contains the recipe for a protein. A mediator protein complex arrives carrying the enzyme RNA polymerase. It manoeuvres the RNA polymerase into place... inserting it with the help of other factors between the strands of the DNA double helix. The assembled collection of all these factors is referred to as the transcription initiation complex... and now it is ready to be activated. The initiation complex requires contact with activator proteins, which bind to specific sequences of DNA known as enhancer regions. These regions may be thousands of base pairs distant from the start of the gene. Contact between the activator proteins and the initiation-complex releases the copying mechanism. The RNA polymerase unzips a small portion of the DNA helix exposing the bases on each strand. Only one of the strands is copied. It acts as a template for the synthesis of an RNA molecule which is assembled one sub-unit at a time by matching the DNA letter code on the template strand. The sub-units can be seen here entering the enzyme through its intake hole and they are joined together to form the long messenger RNA chain snaking out of the top.

https://bienkocrosettolabs.org/

Detail paper at https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-017-3927-8

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/VicugnaPacos/ALPACA

DeepVariant is an analysis pipeline that uses a deep neural network to call genetic variants from next-generation DNA sequencing data. DeepVariant relies on Nucleus, a library of Python and C++ code for reading and writing data in common genomics file formats (like SAM and VCF) designed for painless integration with the TensorFlow machine learning framework.

https://ai.googleblog.com/2017/12/deepvariant-highly-accurate-genomes.html

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/092890v6

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/google/deepvariant

There are Neanderthal bones. Denisovan remains. Fossils from ancient relatives of our species. Each specimen gives us another piece of the story of how Homo sapiens came to be.

But now imagine that one of the most important characters in that story has left behind no fossil, no skull, no bone, and no genome.

Nothing that a paleontologist could put behind glass.

And yet, somehow, that ancient population is still speaking.

It is speaking through us.

A fascinating new study published in Science (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aef8874?) introduces a computational method called TRACE, which allows scientists to search modern human genomes for genetic traces of ancient populations that have never been directly identified.

For years, scientists have known that our ancestors interacted with Neanderthals and Denisovans. Their DNA still survives in modern human populations. But these may not have been the only ancient humans who crossed paths with our ancestors.

Using TRACE, researchers found evidence of an unknown archaic population that contributed DNA to the ancestors of modern humans before humans spread beyond Africa.

Even more surprisingly, they found evidence of a much older lineage—possibly around 1.8 million years old—whose genetic legacy may have reached some modern humans indirectly through Denisovans.

The extraordinary part is that researchers did not need DNA from these mysterious populations to detect them. Instead, they studied the ancestry of modern genomes and looked for genetic patterns that revealed unusually ancient branches of our family history.

It is almost like finding the footprints of someone who disappeared thousands of years ago—without ever finding the person themselves.

These discoveries suggest that human evolution was far more complicated than a simple family tree. Ancient human populations repeatedly separated, migrated, met and exchanged genes. Some eventually disappeared, but pieces of their genetic legacy survived.

And that means our DNA is more than a biological instruction manual.

It is also an archive of human history.

Some of the people recorded in that archive may never have a name or a fossil. But thanks to methods like TRACE, their genetic echoes are finally becoming visible.

The next big discovery about our ancient past may not come from a fossil in the ground.

It may already be inside us.

Reference: Zhang et al., “Recovering signatures of archaic hominin introgression using ancestral recombination graphs,” Science (2026), DOI: 10.1126/science.aef8874. Detail paper @ https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aef8874?

The TRACE repository (https://github.com/YulinZhang9806/trace) contains the Python package and command-line tools used to infer archaic admixture tracts from ancestral recombination graphs.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/olarerin/metaPlotR

The enzyme portal integrates many resources, most of them hosted by EBI and also external ones such as BioPortal. Its main goal is to provide information about enzymes in a suitable format, with a usable interface designed for intended users. Instead of reinventing the wheel, it makes use of available and reliable resources to that end.

Related Literature:

http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/content/41/D1/D773.full

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/14/103

Address of the bookmark: http://www.ebi.ac.uk/enzymeportal/

Requirements

You are (or soon will be) a master in bio-informatics. You have strong ICT skills and you are eager to fully submerge into the world of protein modeling. You have good experience with Linux and one or more programming languages as well as knowledge of tertiary structure analysis. Candidates with a Master degree in one of the life sciences (Biomedical sciences, Biochemistry, Bio-engineering, Biostatistics, …), with relevant interest and extended experience in this field are also welcome. A general background cancer biology and genetics is needed. You are willing and eligible to apply for a personal PhD fellowship with the Flemish FWO (FWO.be). Therefore, it is required that you hold a master degree from a European university, and have not obtained your master diploma more than three years ago (see FWO website for detailed conditions). Proficiency in English, and good communication skills, both oral and written, are required. You are highly motivated, and you like to work in an interactive research team. You are willing to work on a 4-year PhD project starting beginning of 2020.

What we offer

We offer a one year position, as a PhD student, which can be extended up to 4 year upon positive evaluation, even if a personal fellowship application is not successful. Wages are according to the standard Flemish bursary levels for PhD students.

Interested?
For additional information please contact dr. Geert Vandeweyer. To apply, send a copy of your CV including details of your relevant skills and a motivation letter by e-mail to dr. Geert Vandeweyer (geert.vandeweyer@uantwerpen.be) before March 15, 2020.

Source:https://academicpositions.be/ad/university-of-antwerp/2020/phd-student-bio-informatician-in-computational-protein-modeling/141252?utm_source=jooble&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=jooble