Normalization of Illumina Infinium whole-genome SNP data improves copy number estimates and allelic intensity ratios

Background  

Illumina Infinium whole genome genotyping (WGG) arrays are increasingly being applied in cancer genomics to study gene copy number alterations and allele-specific aberrations such as loss-of-heterozygosity (LOH). Methods developed for normalization of WGG arrays have mostly focused on diploid, normal samples. However, for cancer samples genomic aberrations may confound normalization and data interpretation. Therefore, we examined the effects of the conventionally used normalization method for Illumina Infinium arrays when applied to cancer samples.     

On the necessity of different statistical treatment for Illumina BeadChip and Affymetrix GeneChip data and its significance for biological interpretation

Background  

The original spotted array technology with competitive hybridization of two experimental samples and measuring relative expression levels is increasingly displaced by more accurate platforms that allow determining absolute expression values for a single sample (for example, Affymetrix GeneChip and Illumina BeadChip). Unfortunately, cross-platform comparisons show a disappointingly low concordance between lists of regulated genes between the latter two platforms.     

Variation in fiberoptic bead-based oligonucleotide microarrays: dispersion characteristics among hybridization and biological replicate samples

Background  

Gene expression microarray technology continues to evolve and its use has expanded into all areas of biology. However, the high dimensionality of the data makes analysis a difficult challenge. Evaluating measurements and estimating the significance of the observed differences among samples remain important issues that must be addressed for each technology platform. In this work we use a consecutive sampling method to characterize the dispersion patterns of data generated from Illumina fiberoptic bead-based oligonucleotide arrays.     

Comparison of Beta-value and M-value methods for quantifying methylation levels by microarray analysis

Background  

High-throughput profiling of DNA methylation status of CpG islands is crucial to understand the epigenetic regulation of genes. The microarray-based Infinium methylation assay by Illumina is one platform for low-cost high-throughput methylation profiling. Both Beta-value and M-value statistics have been used as metrics to measure methylation levels. However, there are no detailed studies of their relations and their strengths and limitations.     

Illumina WG-6 BeadChip strips should be normalized separately

Background  

Illumina Sentrix-6 Whole-Genome Expression BeadChips are relatively new microarray platforms which have been used in many microarray studies in the past few years. These Chips have a unique design in which each Chip contains six microarrays and each microarray consists of two separate physical strips, posing special challenges for precise between-array normalization of expression values.     

Interpretation of custom designed Illumina genotype cluster plots for targeted association studies and next-generation sequence validation

Background

High-throughput custom designed genotyping arrays are a valuable resource for biologically focused research studies and increasingly for validation of variation predicted by next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies. We investigate the Illumina GoldenGate chemistry using custom designed VeraCode and sentrix array matrix (SAM) assays for each of these applications, respectively. We highlight applications for interpretation of Illumina generated genotype cluster plots to maximise data inclusion and reduce genotyping errors.

Findings

We illustrate the dramatic effect of outliers in genotype calling and data interpretation, as well as suggest simple means to avoid genotyping errors. Furthermore we present this platform as a successful method for two-cluster rare or non-autosomal variant calling. The success of high-throughput technologies to accurately call rare variants will become an essential feature for future association studies. Finally, we highlight additional advantages of the Illumina GoldenGate chemistry in generating unusually segregated cluster plots that identify potential NGS generated sequencing error resulting from minimal coverage.

Conclusions

We demonstrate the importance of visually inspecting genotype cluster plots generated by the Illumina software and issue warnings regarding commonly accepted quality control parameters. In addition to suggesting applications to minimise data exclusion, we propose that the Illumina cluster plots may be helpful in identifying potential in-put sequence errors, particularly important for studies to validate NGS generated variation.

     

The Effects of Freezing on Faecal Microbiota as Determined Using MiSeq Sequencing and Culture-Based Investigations

Background

High-throughput sequencing has enabled detailed insights into complex microbial environments, including the human gut microbiota. The accuracy of the sequencing data however, is reliant upon appropriate storage of the samples prior to DNA extraction. The aim of this study was to conduct the first MiSeq sequencing investigation into the effects of faecal storage on the microbiota, compared to fresh samples. Culture-based analysis was also completed.

Methods

Seven faecal samples were collected from healthy adults. Samples were separated into fresh (DNA extracted immediately), snap frozen on dry ice and frozen for 7 days at -80°C prior to DNA extraction or samples frozen at -80°C for 7 days before DNA extraction. Sequencing was completed on the Illumina MiSeq platform. Culturing of total aerobes, anaerobes and bifidobacteria was also completed.

Results

No significant differences at phylum or family levels between the treatment groups occurred. At genus level only Faecalibacterium and Leuconostoc were significantly different in the fresh samples compared to the snap frozen group (p = 0.0298; p = 0.0330 respectively). Diversity analysis indicated that samples clustered based on the individual donor, rather than by storage group. No significant differences occurred in the culture-based analysis between the fresh, snap or -80°C frozen samples.

Conclusions

Using the MiSeq platform coupled with culture-based analysis, this study highlighted that limited significant changes in microbiota occur following rapid freezing of faecal samples prior to DNA extraction. Thus, rapid freezing of samples prior to DNA extraction and culturing, preserves the integrity of the microbiota.     

Protein sequences classification by means of feature extraction with substitution matrices

Background  

This paper deals with the preprocessing of protein sequences for supervised classification. Motif extraction is one way to address that task. It has been largely used to encode biological sequences into feature vectors to enable using well-known machine-learning classifiers which require this format. However, designing a suitable feature space, for a set of proteins, is not a trivial task. For this purpose, we propose a novel encoding method that uses amino-acid substitution matrices to define similarity between motifs during the extraction step.     

iMSAT: a novel approach to the development of microsatellite loci using barcoded Illumina libraries

Background

Illumina sequencing with its high number of reads and low per base pair cost is an attractive technology for development of molecular resources for non-model organisms. While many software packages have been developed to identify short tandem repeats (STRs) from next-generation sequencing data, these methods do not inform the investigator as to whether or not candidate loci are polymorphic in their target populations.

Results

We provide a python program iMSAT that uses the polymorphism data obtained from mapping individual Illumina sequence reads onto a reference genome to identify polymorphic STRs. Using this approach, we identified 9,119 candidate polymorphic STRs for use with the parasitoid wasp Trioxys pallidus and 2,378 candidate polymorphic STRs for use with the aphid Chromaphis juglandicola. For both organisms we selected 20 candidate tri-nucleotide STRs for validation. Using fluorescent-labeled oligonucleotide primers, we genotyped 91 female T. pallidus collected in nine localities and 46 female C. juglandicola collected in 4 localities and found 15 of the examined markers to be polymorphic for T. pallidus and 12 of the examined markers to be polymorphic for C. juglandicola.

Conclusions

We present a novel approach that uses standard Illumina barcoding primers and a single Illumina HiSeq run to target polymorphic STR fragments to develop and test STR markers. We validate this approach using the parasitoid wasp T. pallidus and its aphid host C. juglandicola. This approach, which would also be compatible with 454 Sequencing, allowed us to quickly identify markers with known variability. Accordingly, our method constitutes a significant improvement over existing STR identification software packages.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/1471-2164-15-858) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Probabilistic base calling of Solexa sequencing data

Background  

Solexa/Illumina short-read ultra-high throughput DNA sequencing technology produces millions of short tags (up to 36 bases) by parallel sequencing-by-synthesis of DNA colonies. The processing and statistical analysis of such high-throughput data poses new challenges; currently a fair proportion of the tags are routinely discarded due to an inability to match them to a reference sequence, thereby reducing the effective throughput of the technology.     

WebCARMA: a web application for the functional and taxonomic classification of unassembled metagenomic reads

Background  

Metagenomics is a new field of research on natural microbial communities. High-throughput sequencing techniques like 454 or Solexa-Illumina promise new possibilities as they are able to produce huge amounts of data in much shorter time and with less efforts and costs than the traditional Sanger technique. But the data produced comes in even shorter reads (35-100 basepairs with Illumina, 100-500 basepairs with 454-sequencing). CARMA is a new software pipeline for the characterisation of species composition and the genetic potential of microbial samples using short, unassembled reads.     

Whole genome co-expression analysis of soybean cytochrome P450 genes identifies nodulation-specific P450 monooxygenases

Background  

Cytochrome P450 monooxygenases (P450s) catalyze oxidation of various substrates using oxygen and NAD(P)H. Plant P450s are involved in the biosynthesis of primary and secondary metabolites performing diverse biological functions. The recent availability of the soybean genome sequence allows us to identify and analyze soybean putative P450s at a genome scale. Co-expression analysis using an available soybean microarray and Illumina sequencing data provides clues for functional annotation of these enzymes. This approach is based on the assumption that genes that have similar expression patterns across a set of conditions may have a functional relationship.     

An improved chloroplast DNA extraction procedure for whole plastid genome sequencing

Background

Chloroplast genomes supply valuable genetic information for evolutionary and functional studies in plants. The past five years have witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of completely sequenced chloroplast genomes with the application of second-generation sequencing technology in plastid genome sequencing projects. However, cost-effective high-throughput chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) extraction becomes a major bottleneck restricting the application, as conventional methods are difficult to make a balance between the quality and yield of cpDNAs.

Methodology/Principal Findings

We first tested two traditional methods to isolate cpDNA from the three species, Oryza brachyantha, Leersia japonica and Prinsepia utihis. Both of them failed to obtain properly defined cpDNA bands. However, we developed a simple but efficient method based on sucrose gradients and found that the modified protocol worked efficiently to isolate the cpDNA from the same three plant species. We sequenced the isolated DNA samples with Illumina (Solexa) sequencing technology to test cpDNA purity according to aligning sequence reads to the reference chloroplast genomes, showing that the reference genome was properly covered. We show that 40–50% cpDNA purity is achieved with our method.

Conclusion

Here we provide an improved method used to isolate cpDNA from angiosperms. The Illumina sequencing results suggest that the isolated cpDNA has reached enough yield and sufficient purity to perform subsequent genome assembly. The cpDNA isolation protocol thus will be widely applicable to the plant chloroplast genome sequencing projects.     

A realistic assessment of methods for extracting gene/protein interactions from free text

Background  

The automated extraction of gene and/or protein interactions from the literature is one of the most important targets of biomedical text mining research. In this paper we present a realistic evaluation of gene/protein interaction mining relevant to potential non-specialist users. Hence we have specifically avoided methods that are complex to install or require reimplementation, and we coupled our chosen extraction methods with a state-of-the-art biomedical named entity tagger.     

Preprocessing of gene expression data by optimally robust estimators

Background  

The preprocessing of gene expression data obtained from several platforms routinely includes the aggregation of multiple raw signal intensities to one expression value. Examples are the computation of a single expression measure based on the perfect match (PM) and mismatch (MM) probes for the Affymetrix technology, the summarization of bead level values to bead summary values for the Illumina technology or the aggregation of replicated measurements in the case of other technologies including real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) platforms. The summarization of technical replicates is also performed in other "-omics" disciplines like proteomics or metabolomics.     

Extended morphological processing: a practical method for automatic spot detection of biological markers from microscopic images

Background  

A reliable extraction technique for resolving multiple spots in light or electron microscopic images is essential in investigations of the spatial distribution and dynamics of specific proteins inside cells and tissues. Currently, automatic spot extraction and characterization in complex microscopic images poses many challenges to conventional image processing methods.     

Easy and rapid method for the determination of gene expression in cumulus cells incubated for oocyte maturation

Background  

The objectives of this study were to develop an easy and rapid method for measuring gene expression in a small number of cells by real-time PCR without RNA extraction and purification, and to use this method to determine more precisely IGF-I gene expression in the cumulus cells surrounding oocytes.