Assessing computational tools for the discovery of transcription factor binding sites

The prediction of regulatory elements is a problem where computational methods offer great hope. Over the past few years, numerous tools have become available for this task. The purpose of the current assessment is twofold: to provide some guidance to users regarding the accuracy of currently available tools in various settings, and to provide a benchmark of data sets for assessing future tools.     

P2BAT: a massive parallel implementation of PBAT for genome-wide association studies in R

The software tool P2BAT provides a massive parallel and user friendly implementation of the PBAT-analysis tools for family-based association tests (FBATs) in large-scale studies, including genome-wide association studies with several thousand subjects. Built on the original PBAT-implementation of the Lange-Van Steen algorithm to bypass the multiple testing problem in family-based association studies, P2BAT integrates all PBAT-analysis tools for binary and complex traits into R and makes them accessible through a user-friendly GUI. The genome-wide analysis tools are fully automated and can be ran massively parallel directly through the GUI. P2BAT is fully documented and contains graphical output tools for time-to-onset analysis. P2BAT also features the ability to test for gene and environment/drug interaction. AVAILABILITY: The P2BAT package is available as the R package 'pbatR' which can be downloaded from http://cran.r-project.org/. The PBAT-software is available at http://www.biostat.harvard.edu/~clange/.     

Genetic techniques appropriate for the biotechnological exploitation of cyanobacteria

A large collection of genetic tools are available for those who wish to manipulate laboratory strains of cyanobacteria. These tools have not yet been applied to strains that might be used for more practical ends. Applications in which a natural ability of a cyanobacterial strain is exploited would require different genetic tools than those in which a cyanobacterial strain is called upon to produce a foreign product. DNA can be transferred into cyanobacteria by three methods: transformation, conjugation, and electroporation. With each, efficiency is greatly affected by restriction enzymes within the recipient cyanobacterium. Transferred DNA may be propagated in the recipient strain if carried on a replicating plasmid or if integrated into the host chromosome. Different means of integration offer different advantages. Methods are available to increase and control the expression of genes of interest. These genetic tools are discussed with reference to specific problems that might be faced in the exploitation of cyanobacteria.     

LOX-DB-- database on lipoxygenases

SUMMARY: Lipoxygenases are a family of enzymes involved in a variety of human diseases like inflammation, asthma, artherosclerosis and cancer. The lipoxygenases database (LOX-DB) aims to be a web accessible compendium of information in particular on the mammalian members of this multigene family. This resource includes molecular structures, reference data, tools for structural and computational analysis as well as links to related information maintained by others. The data can be retrieved by the use of various search options and analyzed applying publicly available visualization tools. AVAILABILITY: LOX-DB is available at http://www.dkfz-heidelberg.de/spec/lox-db/     

The web server of IBM's Bioinformatics and Pattern Discovery group

We herein present and discuss the services and content which are available on the web server of IBM's Bioinformatics and Pattern Discovery group. The server is operational around the clock and provides access to a variety of methods that have been published by the group's members and collaborators. The available tools correspond to applications ranging from the discovery of patterns in streams of events and the computation of multiple sequence alignments, to the discovery of genes in nucleic acid sequences and the interactive annotation of amino acid sequences. Additionally, annotations for more than 70 archaeal, bacterial, eukaryotic and viral genomes are available on-line and can be searched interactively. The tools and code bundles can be accessed beginning at http://cbcsrv.watson.ibm.com/Tspd.html whereas the genomics annotations are available at http://cbcsrv.watson.ibm.com/Annotations/.     

A resource for benchmarking the usefulness of protein structure models

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Increasingly, biologists and biochemists use computational tools to design experiments to probe the function of proteins and/or to engineer them for a variety of different purposes. The most effective strategies rely on the knowledge of the three-dimensional structure of the protein of interest. However it is often the case that an experimental structure is not available and that models of different quality are used instead. On the other hand, the relationship between the quality of a model and its appropriate use is not easy to derive in general, and so far it has been analyzed in detail only for specific application RESULTS: This paper describes a database and related software tools that allow testing of a given structure based methods on models of a protein representing different levels of accuracy. The comparison of the results of a computational experiment on the experimental structure and on a set of its decoy models will allow developers and users to assess which is the specific threshold of accuracy required to perform the task effectively. CONCLUSIONS: The ModelDB server automatically builds decoy models of different accuracy for a given protein of known structure and provides a set of useful tools for their analysis. Pre-computed data for a non-redundant set of deposited protein structures are available for analysis and download in the ModelDB database.     

Chembench: a cheminformatics workbench

MOTIVATION: Advances in the field of cheminformatics have been hindered by a lack of freely available tools. We have created Chembench, a publicly available cheminformatics portal for analyzing experimental chemical structure-activity data. Chembench provides a broad range of tools for data visualization and embeds a rigorous workflow for creating and validating predictive Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship models and using them for virtual screening of chemical libraries to prioritize the compound selection for drug discovery and/or chemical safety assessment. AVAILABILITY: Freely accessible at: http://chembench.mml.unc.edu CONTACT: alex_tropsha@unc.edu     

A toolkit for analysing large-scale plant small RNA datasets

Recent developments in high-throughput sequencing technologies have generated considerable demand for tools to analyse large datasets of small RNA sequences. Here, we describe a suite of web-based tools for processing plant small RNA datasets. Our tools can be used to identify micro RNAs and their targets, compare expression levels in sRNA loci, and find putative trans-acting siRNA loci. AVAILABILITY: The tools are freely available for use at http://srna-tools.cmp.uea.ac.uk.     

INCLUSive: A web portal and service registry for microarray and regulatory sequence analysis

INCLUSive is a suite of algorithms and tools for the analysis of gene expression data and the discovery of cis-regulatory sequence elements. The tools allow normalization, filtering and clustering of microarray data, functional scoring of gene clusters, sequence retrieval, and detection of known and unknown regulatory elements using probabilistic sequence models and Gibbs sampling. All tools are available via different web pages and as web services. The web pages are connected and integrated to reflect a methodology and facilitate complex analysis using different tools. The web services can be invoked using standard SOAP messaging. Example clients are available for download to invoke the services from a remote computer or to be integrated with other applications. All services are catalogued and described in a web service registry. The INCLUSive web portal is available for academic purposes at http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/inclusive.     

Knowledge-engineering software. A demonstration of a high-end tool

Many investigators wanting to apply knowledge-based systems (KBSs) as consultants for cancer diagnosis have turned to tools running on personal computers. While some of these tools serve well for small tasks, they lack the power available with such high-end KBS tools as KEE (Knowledge Engineering Environment) and ART (Automated Reasoning Tool). These tools were originally developed on Lisp machines and have the full functionality of the Lisp language as well as many additional features. They provide a rich and highly productive environment for the software developer. This paper illustrates the capability of one of these high-end tools. First, a table showing the classification of benign soft tissue tumors was converted into a KEE knowledge base. The tools available in KEE were then used to identify the tumor type for a hypothetical patient.     

Towards an integrated computational tool for spatial analysis in macroecology and biogeography

Because most macroecological and biodiversity data are spatially autocorrelated, special tools for describing spatial structures and dealing with hypothesis testing are usually required. Unfortunately, most of these methods have not been available in a single statistical package. Consequently, using these tools is still a challenge for most ecologists and biogeographers. In this paper, we present sam (Spatial Analysis in Macroecology), a new, easy-to-use, freeware package for spatial analysis in macroecology and biogeography. Through an intuitive, fully graphical interface, this package allows the user to describe spatial patterns in variables and provides an explicit spatial framework for standard techniques of regression and correlation. Moran's I autocorrelation coefficient can be calculated based on a range of matrices describing spatial relationships, for original variables as well as for residuals of regression models, which can also include filtering components (obtained by standard trend surface analysis or by principal coordinates of neighbour matrices). sam also offers tools for correcting the number of degrees of freedom when calculating the significance of correlation coefficients. Explicit spatial modelling using several forms of autoregression and generalized least-squares models are also available. We believe this new tool will provide researchers with the basic statistical tools to resolve autocorrelation problems and, simultaneously, to explore spatial components in macroecological and biogeographical data. Although the program was designed primarily for the applications in macroecology and biogeography, most of sam 's statistical tools will be useful for all kinds of surface pattern spatial analysis. The program is freely available at http://www.ecoevol.ufg.br/sam (permanent URL at http://purl.oclc.org/sam/ ).     

Integration of tools and resources for display and analysis of genomic data for protozoan parasites

Centralisation of tools for analysis of genomic data is paramount in ensuring that research is always carried out on the latest currently available data. As such, World Wide Web sites providing a range of online analyses and displays of data can play a crucial role in guaranteeing consistency of in silico work. In this respect, the protozoan parasite research community is served by several resources, either focussing on data and tools for one species or taking a broader view and providing tools for analysis of data from many species, thereby facilitating comparative studies. In this paper, we give a broad overview of the online resources available. We then focus on the GeneDB project, detailing the features and tools currently available through it. Finally, we discuss data curation and its importance in keeping genomic data 'relevant' to the research community.     

Gaining confidence in biological interpretation of the microarray data: the functional consistence of the significant GO categories

MOTIVATION: In microarray studies, numerous tools are available for functional enrichment analysis based on GO categories. Most of these tools, due to their requirement of a prior threshold for designating genes as differentially expressed genes (DEGs), are categorized as threshold-dependent methods that often suffer from a major criticism on their changing results with different thresholds. RESULTS: In the present article, by considering the inherent correlation structure of the GO categories, a continuous measure based on semantic similarity of GO categories is proposed to investigate the functional consistence (or stability) of threshold-dependent methods. The results from several datasets show when simply counting overlapping categories between two groups, the significant category groups selected under different DEG thresholds are seemingly very different. However, based on the semantic similarity measure proposed in this article, the results are rather functionally consistent for a wide range of DEG thresholds. Moreover, we find that the functional consistence of gene lists ranked by SAM metric behaves relatively robust against changing DEG thresholds. AVAILABILITY: Source code in R is available on request from the authors.     

MakeHub:Fully Automated Generation of UCSC Genome Browser Assembly Hubs

Novel genomes are today often annotated by small consortia or individuals whose background is not from bioinformatics.This audience requires tools that are easy to use.Such need has been addressed by several genome annotation tools and pipelines.Visualizing resulting annotation is a crucial step of quality control.The UCSC Genome Browser is a powerful and popular genome visualization tool.Assembly Hubs,which can be hosted on any publicly available web server,allow browsing genomes via UCSC Genome Browser servers.The steps for creating custom Assembly Hubs are well documented and the required tools are publicly available.However,the number of steps for creating a novel Assembly Hub is large.In some cases,the format of input files needs to be adapted,which is a difficult task for scientists without programming background.Here,we describe Make Hub,a novel command line tool that generates Assembly Hubs for the UCSC Genome Browser in a fully automated fashion.The pipeline also allows extending previously created Hubs by additional tracks.Make Hub is freely available for downloading at https://github.com/Gaius-Augustus/Make Hub.     

ConSurf: identification of functional regions in proteins by surface-mapping of phylogenetic information

SUMMARY: We recently developed algorithmic tools for the identification of functionally important regions in proteins of known three dimensional structure by estimating the degree of conservation of the amino-acid sites among their close sequence homologues. Projecting the conservation grades onto the molecular surface of these proteins reveals patches of highly conserved (or occasionally highly variable) residues that are often of important biological function. We present a new web server, ConSurf, which automates these algorithmic tools. ConSurf may be used for high-throughput characterization of functional regions in proteins. AVAILABILITY: The ConSurf web server is available at:http://consurf.tau.ac.il. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: A set of examples is available at http://consurf.tau.ac.il under 'GALLERY'.     

Comparative studies of de novo assembly tools for next-generation sequencing technologies

MOTIVATION: Several new de novo assembly tools have been developed recently to assemble short sequencing reads generated by next-generation sequencing platforms. However, the performance of these tools under various conditions has not been fully investigated, and sufficient information is not currently available for informed decisions to be made regarding the tool that would be most likely to produce the best performance under a specific set of conditions. RESULTS: We studied and compared the performance of commonly used de novo assembly tools specifically designed for next-generation sequencing data, including SSAKE, VCAKE, Euler-sr, Edena, Velvet, ABySS and SOAPdenovo. Tools were compared using several performance criteria, including N50 length, sequence coverage and assembly accuracy. Various properties of read data, including single-end/paired-end, sequence GC content, depth of coverage and base calling error rates, were investigated for their effects on the performance of different assembly tools. We also compared the computation time and memory usage of these seven tools. Based on the results of our comparison, the relative performance of individual tools are summarized and tentative guidelines for optimal selection of different assembly tools, under different conditions, are provided.     

New bioinformatic tools for analysis of nucleotide modifications in eukaryotic rRNA

This report presents a valuable new bioinformatics package for research on rRNA nucleotide modifications in the ribosome, especially those created by small nucleolar RNA:protein complexes (snoRNPs). The interactive service, which is not available elsewhere, enables a user to visualize the positions of pseudouridines, 2'-O-methylations, and base methylations in three-dimensional space in the ribosome and also in linear and secondary structure formats of ribosomal RNA. Our tools provide additional perspective on where the modifications occur relative to functional regions within the rRNA and relative to other nearby modifications. This package of new tools is presented as a major enhancement of an existing but significantly upgraded yeast snoRNA database available publicly at http://people.biochem.umass.edu/sfournier/fournierlab/snornadb/. The other key features of the enhanced database include details of the base pairing of snoRNAs with target RNAs, genomic organization of the yeast snoRNA genes, and information on corresponding snoRNAs and modifications in other model organisms.     

ProteoMix: an integrated and flexible system for interactively analyzing large numbers of protein sequences

ProteoMix is a suite of JAVA programs for identifying, annotating and predicting regions of interest in large sets of amino acid sequences, according to systematic and consistent criteria. It is based on two concepts (1) the integration of results from different sequence analysis tools increases the prediction reliability; and (2) the integration protocol is critical and needs to be easily adaptable in a case-by-case manner. ProteoMix was designed to analyze simultaneously multiple protein sequences using several bioinformatics tools, merge the results of the analyses using logical functions and display them on an integrated viewer. In addition, new sequences can be added seamlessly to an analysis performed on an initial set of sequences. ProteoMix has a modular design, and bioinformatics tools are run on remote servers accessed using the Internet Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), ensuring the swift implementation of additional tools. ProteoMix has a user-friendly interactive graphical user interface environment and runs on PCs with Microsoft OS. AVAILABILITY: ProteoMix is freely available for academic users at http://bio.gsc.riken.jp/ProteoMix/