BOL: Related items

Genetic basis of tail-loss evolution

LEGE — Tue, 04 Mar 2025 12:12:36 -0600

The paper "On the genetic basis of tail-loss evolution in humans and apes (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07095-8)", published in Nature, investigates the genetic mechanisms that led to the loss of tails in humans and apes. The study suggests that a specific genetic mutation, involving the insertion of an Alu element (a type of transposable DNA sequence), played a critical role in the evolutionary transition from tailed primates to tailless hominoids.

Key Findings of the Study:

Alu Insertion and Tail Loss:
The researchers discovered an Alu-mediated genetic change in a common ancestor of modern apes and humans. This change disrupted the normal function of a gene involved in tail development, leading to the suppression of tail formation.
Gene Disruption Mechanism:
The Alu insertion was found within a regulatory region of the TBXT gene (also known as T or Brachyury), which is crucial for tail development in vertebrates. This insertion likely altered the gene's expression patterns, leading to tail reduction over evolutionary time.
Functional Evidence from Model Organisms:
To test their hypothesis, the researchers introduced similar genetic modifications in mice. The modified mice exhibited shortened or absent tails, supporting the idea that the identified mutation played a role in tail loss in hominoids.
Evolutionary Implications:
The findings suggest that small, random genomic changes—such as transposable element insertions—can have profound effects on body morphology. This study provides evidence that mobile DNA elements (like Alu) can drive major evolutionary transitions.
Relevance to Human Evolution:
Understanding the genetic basis of tail loss helps in reconstructing the evolutionary history of hominins (the lineage that includes humans and our extinct relatives). It also sheds light on how genetic variations contribute to anatomical diversity among primates.

Significance of the Study:

This research highlights the role of transposable elements in shaping evolutionary traits and provides a concrete genetic explanation for a defining characteristic of humans and great apes. It also demonstrates how mutations in regulatory regions of developmental genes can lead to significant anatomical changes.

Regular Expression Cheat Sheet

Jitendra Narayan — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 17:38:42 -0500

The Regular Expression are the sole of Perl language, and for bioinformatician it is just a magical stick to resolve gingatic string data. We did not find any good and user friendly regular expression cheat sheet, hence write our own cheat sheet. The Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet, a quick reference guide for regular expressions, including symbols, ranges, grouping, assertions and some sample patterns to get you started.

Claus-Peter Stelzer Lab

Mon, 15 Mar 2021 15:24:41 -0500

Interested in various topics at the intersection of ecology and evolution. In my research I use rotifers as model organisms for experimental studies at the individual and population level. Rotifers are ideally suited for this, because populations of thousands can be kept in small containers in the lab, while single individuals can still be handled conveniently.

More at https://www.uibk.ac.at/limno/personnel/stelzer/index.html.en#research

TEDMED Great Challenges: Genomics and Medicine: Where promise meets clinical practice

Fri, 22 Nov 2013 12:05:32 -0600

November 21, 2013 - NHGRI Director Eric Green, M.D., Ph.D, hosted the TEDMED Google+ Hangout to discuss genomic medicine with an all-star cast that includes Carlos Bustamante, James Evans, Amy McGuire and Sharon Terry. More: http://www.tedmed.com/greatchallenges

Swabs to Genomes: A Comprehensive Workflow

Rahul Nayak — Sun, 10 Aug 2014 03:01:21 -0500

The sequencing, assembly, and basic analysis of microbial genomes, once a painstaking and expensive undertaking, has become almost trivial for research labs with access to standard molecular biology and computational tools. However, there are a wide variety of options available for DNA library preparation and sequencing, and inexperience with bioinformatics can pose a significant barrier to entry for many who may be interested in microbial genomics. The objective of the present study was to design, test, troubleshoot, and publish a simple, comprehensive workflow from the collection of an environmental sample (a swab) to a published microbial genome; empowering even a lab or classroom with limited resources and bioinformatics experience to perform it.

Address of the bookmark: https://peerj.com/preprints/453.pdf

deepTools

Martin Jones — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 15:02:08 -0600

deepTools addresses the challenge of handling the large amounts of data that are now routinely generated from DNA sequencing centers. To do so, deepTools contains useful modules to process the mapped reads data to create coverage files in standard bedGraph and bigWig file formats. By doing so, deepTools allows the creation of normalized coverage files or the comparison between two files (for example, treatment and control). Finally, using such normalized and standardized files, multiple visualizations can be created to identify enrichments with functional annotations of the genome.

Publicaton: http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/05/05/nar.gku365.full

Source Code and Wiki: https://github.com/fidelram/deepTools/wiki

Galaxy Tool Shed repository: http://toolshed.g2.bx.psu.edu/view/bgruening/deeptools

and example Galaxy workflows: http://toolshed.g2.bx.psu.edu/view/bgruening/deeptools_workflows

Vital-IT

Abhi — Thu, 18 Dec 2014 10:46:59 -0600

Vital-IT is a bioinformatics competence center that supports and collaborates with life scientists in Switzerland and beyond. The multi-disciplinary team provides expertise, training and maintains a high-performance computing (HPC) and storage infrastructure, so as to help develop, maintain and extend life science and medical research (activities).

Address of the bookmark: http://www.vital-it.ch/

LASTZ

Abhi — Mon, 18 Apr 2016 04:41:55 -0500

LASTZ is a program for aligning DNA sequences, a pairwise aligner. Originally designed to handle sequences the size of human chromosomes and from different species, it is also useful for sequences produced by NGS sequencing technologies such as Roche 454.

More at http://www.bx.psu.edu/~rsharris/lastz/

Thesis: http://www.bx.psu.edu/~rsharris/rsharris_phd_thesis_2007.pdf

Address of the bookmark: http://www.bx.psu.edu/~rsharris/lastz/

Postdoctoral Fellowship in Bioinformatics at pesolelab

Thu, 01 Oct 2015 07:20:48 -0500

Job Description: Bioinformatics postdoc positions are available in the area of genomics with main focus on exome and RNAseq technologies by ultra high-throughput sequencing platforms. Successful applicants should have the following qualities:

1) demonstrated experience in Bioinformatics research,
2) programing experience (python and/or R, C and C++ are very welcome),
3) knowledge of Linux/Unix environment,
4) experience in handling deep-seq data,
5) highly motivated and hard working, and
6) interested to work with a multi-disciplinary team combining bioinformatics, genomics, computational biology approaches with experimental biology.

Our research interest covers different areas of bioinformatics and genomics in order to achieve a deeper understanding of gene and genome structure and function (please look at our PubMed publications for more details about our research http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=pesole+g).

Interested applicants should email the curriculum vitae to Prof. Graziano Pesole at graziano.pesole@uniba.it or Dr. Ernesto Picardi at Ernesto.picardi@uniba.it.

Start date: immediate

Duration: up to 24 months
Contact Person (Referent): Ernesto Picardi
Ref. E-Mail: ernesto.picardi@uniba.it
Tel: +390805443308
Fax: +390805443317

Group Web Page: http://www.pesolelab.it/

BUSCO

Jitendra Narayan — Sun, 07 Feb 2016 16:02:39 -0600

Assessing genome assembly and annotation completeness with Benchmarking Universal Single-Copy Orthologs

More at http://busco.ezlab.org/

Address of the bookmark: http://busco.ezlab.org/