BOL: Related items

Aurora: A New Detective for Bacterial Genomes

BioStar — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 11:31:00 -0500

Imagine trying to solve a mystery with thousands of clues—but some of the clues are labelled incorrectly.

That is the challenge researchers face when studying how bacteria adapt to different environments. A bacterial gene may appear to be linked to a particular habitat, when the real reason is simply that closely related bacteria happen to live there.

In their 2025 Genome Biology paper, Bujdoš, Walter, and O’Toole introduce aurora, a machine-learning tool designed to tackle this problem.

Aurora identifies potentially mislabeled or unusual bacterial strains before performing genome-wide association studies (GWAS). By cleaning up the dataset and accounting for bacterial evolutionary relationships, it can help researchers find genetic features that are more genuinely connected to habitat adaptation.

The researchers tested aurora using simulated and real bacterial datasets and found that it could recover important genetic associations even when datasets contained misleading labels.

The bigger lesson is simple: better biological discoveries often begin with better data.

Aurora gives researchers a new way to separate real genetic clues from misleading ones—and could help us better understand how bacteria adapt, survive, and evolve in the environments they call home.

Based on Bujdoš et al., “aurora: a machine learning GWAS tool for analyzing microbial habitat adaptation,” Genome Biology (2025).[Read the original paper](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13059-025-03524-7?)

Luo Lab | Symbiosis Genomics & Evolution

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 03:30:30 -0500

We study the evolutionary genomics of marine invertebrates to understand their origins and diversity. Our lab combines high-throughput sequencing and single-cell transcriptomics to explore a wide range of non-model systems. We are particularly interested in how evolutionary novelty arises, with a focus on animal development and photosymbiosis.

Research Directions

Stony corals: evolution of novelty and photosymbiosis

Symbiotic acoels: cell type evolution and photosymbiosis

Animal genomes: structural evolution and gene regulation

https://sgel.biodiv.tw/home

RNA Sequencing Helps Identify Functional Variants from GWAS

Andaleeb — Fri, 22 Nov 2013 21:33:33 -0600

For Alzheimer’s and other complex disorders, mining the genome for disease-associated variants is no longer the obstacle. The challenge nowadays is figuring out how the identified loci relate to disease. As reported last month in Nature and its associated journals, advances in high-throughput RNA sequencing are providing new tools for understanding how disease loci influence gene expression—a starting point for understanding their connection to pathogenesis.

Address of the bookmark: http://schizophreniaforum.org/new/detail.asp?id=1953

Postdoctoral scientist genome analytics/ genome bioinformatics (m/f/*)

Sun, 16 Feb 2020 02:57:40 -0600

https://www.uksh.de/jobs/Stellenangebote-nr-20190570-p-8.html
Your profile:
Degree in bioinformatics, biostatistics, or equivalent
Experience in the processing and analysis of large-scale genomics data using compute clusters / high-performance computing
Strong competence in working in Unix/Linux environments (shell)
Strong programming skills (in particular: Python, R, Perl)
Experience with using git and snakemake
Fluent English language skills, both spoken and written
Strong communication skills and motivation to work in a young, interdisciplinary, dynamic team

Additional Information:

If you have any questions about scientific aspects of this position, please contact Prof. Lars Bertram, head of LIGA (lars.bertram@uni-luebeck.de).

Please contact Ms. Anna Wolbert for further questions about administrative details (recruiting@uksh.de).

Weitere Informationen erhalten Sie auch unter www.uksh.de/karriere.

Wir freuen uns auf Ihre Bewerbung bis zum 15.03.2020 unter Angabe unserer Ausschreibungsnummer 20190570.119.CL.

Comparative genomics educational material and papers bookmarks

Jit — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 16:23:30 -0600

Alignment of the porcine genome against seven other mammalian genomes (Supplementary Information) identified homologous synteny blocks (HSBs). Using porcine HSBs and stringent filtering criteria, 192 pig-specific evolutionary breakpoint regions (EBRs) were located. The number of porcine EBRs is comparable to the number of bovine-lineage-specific EBRs (100) reported earlier using a slightly lower resolution (500 kilobases (kb)), indicating that both lineages evolved with an average rate of ~2.1 large-scale rearrangements per million years after the divergence from a common cetartiodactyl ancestor ~60 Myr ago². This rate compares to ~1.9 rearrangements per million years within the primate lineage (Supplementary Table 11). A total of 20 and 18 cetartiodactyl EBRs (shared by pigs and cattle) were detected using the pig and human genomes as a reference, respectively.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7424/abs/nature11622.html

SynVisio: An Interactive Multiscale Synteny Visualization Tool for McScanX.

Jit — Sun, 31 May 2020 02:01:14 -0500

SynVisio lets you explore the results of McScanX a popular synteny and collinearity detection toolkit and generate publication ready images.

SynVisio requires two files to run:

The simplified gff file that was used as an input for a McScanX query.
The collinearity file generated as an output by McScanX for the same input query.
Optional track file in bedgraph format to annotate the generated charts.

SynVisio offers different types of visualizations such as Linear Parallel plots, Hive plots, Stacked Parallel Plots and Dot plots. Users can configure the type of plots required and then choose the source and the target chromosomes that need to be mapped. Users also have option to download the generated visualizations in publication ready SVG or PNG formats.

Address of the bookmark: https://synvisio.github.io/#/

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/

JCVI utility libraries

Jit — Sat, 08 May 2021 22:04:02 -0500

Collection of Python libraries to parse bioinformatics files, or perform computation related to assembly, annotation, and comparative genomics.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/tanghaibao/jcvi