BOL: Related items

MGERT: Mobile Genetic Elements Retrieving Tool

Neel — Sat, 18 May 2019 08:58:01 -0500

MGERT is a computational pipeline for easy retrieving of MGE's coding sequences of a particular family from genome assemblies. MGERT utilizes several established bioinformatic tools combined into single pipeline which hides different technical quirks from an inexperienced user.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/andrewgull/MGERT

Flanker

Rahul Nayak — Sat, 27 Feb 2021 22:04:53 -0600

Flanker, a Python package which performs alignment-free clustering of gene flanking sequences in a consistent format, allowing investigation of mobile genetic elements (MGEs) without prior knowledge of their structure. Flanker can be flexibly parameterised to finetune outputs by characterising upstream and downstream regions separately and investigating variable lengths of flanking sequence.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/wtmatlock/flanker

dnaPipeTE: de-novo assembly & annotation Pipeline for Transposable Elements

Rahul Nayak — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 18:25:44 -0600

dnaPipeTE (for de-novo assembly & annotation Pipeline for Transposable Elements), is a pipeline designed to find, annotate and quantify Transposable Elements in small samples of NGS datasets. It is very useful to quantify the proportion of TEs in newly sequenced genomes since it does not require genome assembly and works on small datasets (< 1X).

dnaPipeTE is developped by Clément Goubert, Laurent Modolo and the TREEP team of the LBBE: http://lbbe.univ-lyon1.fr/-Equipe-Elements-transposables-.html?lang=en
You can find the original publication in GBE here: https://academic.oup.com/gbe/article/7/4/1192/533768

output examples of quantification and TE landscape (relative age) produced by dnaPipeTE

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/clemgoub/dnaPipeTE

HiTE: a fast and accurate dynamic boundary adjustment approach for full-length Transposable Elements detection and annotation in Genome Assemblies

LEGE — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 09:34:04 -0500

HiTE is a Python software that uses a dynamic boundary adjustment approach to detect and annotate full-length Transposable Elements in Genome Assemblies. In comparison to other tools, HiTE demonstrates superior performance in detecting a greater number of full-length TEs.

panHiTE

We have developed panHiTE, a comprehensive and accurate pipeline for TE detection in large-scale population genomes. It has been successfully applied to hundreds of plant population genomes, demonstrating its effectiveness and scalability.

For detailed instructions, please refer to the panHiTE tutorial.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/CSU-KangHu/HiTE

HELIANO: A fast and accurate tool for detection of Helitron-like elements

LEGE — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 07:16:34 -0500

Helitron-like elements (HLE1 and HLE2) are DNA transposons. They have been found in diverse species and seem to play significant roles in the evolution of host genomes. Although known for over twenty years, Helitron sequences are still challenging to identify. Here, we propose HELIANO (Helitron-like elements annotator) as an efficient solution for detecting Helitron-like elements.

https://academic.oup.com/nar/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nar/gkae679/7730539?login=true

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/Zhenlisme/heliano/

Genetic-mapper: SVG Genetic Map Drawer

Jit — Sun, 18 Jun 2017 14:11:10 -0500

Genetic-mapper is a perl script able to draw publication-ready vectorial genetic maps.

Perl script for creating a publication-ready vectorial genetic/linkage map in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format. The resulting file can either be submitted for publication and edited with any vectorial drawing software like Inkscape and Abobe Illustrator(R).

The input file must be a text file with at least the marker name (ID), linkage group (LG) and the position (POS) separeted by tabulations. Additionally a logarithm of odds (LOD score) can be provided. Any extra parameter will be ignored.

map.tsv

IDLGPOSLOD
13519  12     0       0.250840894
2718   12     1.0     0.250840893
11040  12     1.6     0.252843341
...

https://github.com/pseudogene/genetic-mapper

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/pseudogene/genetic-mapper

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.

Chromonomer: a tool set for repairing and enhancing assembled genomes through integration of genetic maps and conserved synteny

Jit — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 05:38:46 -0600

Chromonomer is a program designed to integrate a genome assembly with a genetic map. Chromonomer tries very hard to identify and remove markers that are out of order in the genetic map, when considered against their local assembly order; and to identify scaffolds that have been incorrectly assembled according to the genetic map, and split those scaffolds.

Address of the bookmark: http://catchenlab.life.illinois.edu/chromonomer/

RITA: Rapid identification of high-confidence taxonomic assignments for metagenomic data

Jit — Mon, 27 Nov 2017 08:25:33 -0600

RITA is a standalone software package and Web server for taxonomic assignment of metagenomic sequence reads. By combining homology predictions from BLAST or UBLAST with compositional classifications from a Naive Bayes classifier, RITA is able to achieve very high accuracy on short reads. Unlike other hybrid approaches which combine these predictions for all sequences to be classified, RITA uses a pipeline to first identify cases where both types of classifier are in agreement, which constitute the highest-confidence set. Sequences not classified in this manner are subjected to a series of downstream classification steps.

This work has been accepted for publication:

MacDonald NJ, Parks DH, and Beiko RG. Rapid identification of taxonomic assignments. Accepted to Nucleic Acids Research April 4, 2012.

If you have any questions or bug reports, please let us know at .

Address of the bookmark: http://kiwi.cs.dal.ca/Software/RITA

IgBLAST 1.17 is now available with improved identification of productive V gene sequences

Jit — Sun, 01 Nov 2020 16:52:58 -0600

A new release of IgBLAST (1.17), the popular package for classifying and analyzing immunoglobulin and T cell receptor sequences, is now available on the web and from the FTP site. The updated package is better at identifying productive V gene sequences. We added a new field , “V frame shift”, to the IgBLAST output to indicate whether the V gene translation frame contains a frame-shift. We have also updated the definition of a productive V(D)J sequence to now exclude those with internal frame shifts.

See the new IgBLAST manual on the NCBI GitHub site for more information on setting up and running IgBLAST.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at blast-help@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov