IndexToolkit: an open source toolbox to index protein databases for high-throughput proteomics

A software package, IndexToolkit, aimed at overcoming the disadvantage of FASTA-format databases for frequent searching, is developed to utilize an indexing strategy to substantially accelerate sequence queries. IndexToolkit includes user-friendly tools and an Application Programming Interface (API) to facilitate indexing, storage and retrieval of protein sequence databases. As open source, it provides a sequence-retrieval developing framework, which is easily extensible for high-speed-request proteomic applications, such as database searching or modification discovering. We applied IndexToolkit to database searching engine pFind to demonstrate its effect. Experimental studies show that IndexToolkit is able to support significantly faster searches of protein database. AVAILABILITY: The IndexToolkit is free to use under the open source GNU GPL license. The source code and the compiled binary can be freely accessed through the website http://pfind.jdl.ac.cn/IndexToolkit. In this website, the more detailed information including screenshots and documentations for users and developers is also available.     

中国遗传咨询网——我国首个在线遗传咨询与遗传教育网站的开发

随着互联网的普及, 网络用户已习惯从网上获取相关资讯, 包括求医问药。由于我国的临床遗传学体系尚未完全建立, 许多遗传病患者或遗传咨询者无法得到较为专业的知识和咨询服务。为此, 建立了中国首个提供常见遗传病科普和网上遗传咨询服务的公益性网站—中国遗传咨询网(http://www.gcnet.org.cn)。该网站主要介绍遗传病的基本知识以及常见遗传病的一般情况、临床表现、诊断与防治方法、遗传方式与遗传咨询要点等。通过组织国内外50多名遗传咨询医师或医学遗传学专家, 就咨询者关心的问题, 进行一般性咨询答复, 或指导咨询者就诊。在线遗传咨询是网络时代的一种新型的方式。该网站的运行在一定程度上弥补了我国现有遗传咨询工作的不足, 有助于推动我国临床遗传学、遗传教育和人口与健康事业的发展。     

WBSA: Web Service for Bisulfite Sequencing Data Analysis

Whole-Genome Bisulfite Sequencing (WGBS) and genome-wide Reduced Representation Bisulfite Sequencing (RRBS) are widely used to study DNA methylation. However, data analysis is complicated, lengthy, and hampered by a lack of seamless analytical pipelines. To address these issues, we developed a convenient, stable, and efficient web service called Web Service for Bisulfite Sequencing Data Analysis (WBSA) to analyze bisulfate sequencing data. WBSA focuses on not only CpG methylation, which is the most common biochemical modification in eukaryotic DNA, but also non-CG methylation, which have been observed in plants, iPS cells, oocytes, neurons and stem cells of human. WBSA comprises three main modules as follows: WGBS data analysis, RRBS data analysis, and differentially methylated region (DMR) identification. The WGBS and RRBS modules execute read mapping, methylation site identification, annotation, and advanced analysis, whereas the DMR module identifies actual DMRs and annotates their correlations to genes. WBSA can be accessed and used without charge either online or local version. WBSA also includes the executables of the Portable Batch System (PBS) and standalone versions that can be downloaded from the website together with the installation instructions. WBSA is available at no charge for academic users at http://wbsa.big.ac.cn.     

The Genome Sequence Archive Family: Toward Explosive Data Growth and Diverse Data Types

The Genome Sequence Archive (GSA) is a data repository for archiving raw sequence data, which provides data storage and sharing services for worldwide scientific communities. Considering explosive data growth with diverse data types, here we present the GSA family by expanding into a set of resources for raw data archive with different purposes, namely, GSA (https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/gsa/), GSA for Human (GSA-Human, https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/gsa-human/), and Open Archive for Miscellaneous Data (OMIX, https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/omix/). Compared with the 2017 version, GSA has been significantly updated in data model, online functionalities, and web interfaces. GSA-Human, as a new partner of GSA, is a data repository specialized in human genetics-related data with controlled access and security. OMIX, as a critical complement to the two resources mentioned above, is an open archive for miscellaneous data. Together, all these resources form a family of resources dedicated to archiving explosive data with diverse types, accepting data submissions from all over the world, and providing free open access to all publicly available data in support of worldwide research activities.     

Gene recognition from questionable ORFs in bacterial and archaeal genomes

The ORFs of microbial genomes in annotation files are usually classified into two groups: the first corresponds to known genes; whereas the second includes 'putative', 'probable', 'conserved hypothetical', 'hypothetical', 'unknown' and 'predicted' ORFs etc. Since the annotation is not 100% accurate, it is essential to confirm which ORF of the latter group is coding and which is not. Starting from known genes in the former, this paper describes an improved Z curve method to recognize genes in the latter. Ten-fold cross-validation tests show that the average accuracy of the algorithm is greater than 99% for recognizing the known genes in 57 bacterial and archaeal genomes. The method is then applied to recognize genes of the latter group. The likely non-coding ORFs in each of the 57 bacterial or archaeal genomes studied here are recognized and listed at the website http://tubic.tju.edu.cn/ZCURVE_C_html/noncoding.html. The working mechanism of the algorithm has been discussed in details. A computer program, called ZCURVE_C, was written to calculate a coding score called Z-curve score for ORFs in the above 57 bacterial and archaeal genomes. Coding/non-coding is simply determined by the criterion of Z-curve score > 0/ Z-curve score < 0. A website has been set up to provide the service to calculate the Z-curve score. A user may submit the DNA sequence of an ORF to the server at http://tubic.tju.edu.cn/ZCURVE_C/Default.cgi, and the Z-curve score of the ORF is calculated and returned to the user immediately.     

CIRCpedia v2: An Updated Database for Comprehensive Circular RNA Annotation and Expression Comparison

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) from back-splicing of exon(s) have been recently identified to be broadly expressed in eukaryotes, in tissue- and species-specific manners. Although functions of most circRNAs remain elusive, some circRNAs are shown to be functional in gene expression regulation and potentially relate to diseases. Due to their stability, circRNAs can also be used as biomarkers for diagnosis. Profiling circRNAs by integrating their expression among different samples thus provides molecular basis for further functional study of circRNAs and their potential application in clinic. Here, we report CIRCpedia v2, an updated database for comprehensive circRNA annotation from over 180 RNA-seq datasets across six different species. This atlas allows users to search, browse, and download circRNAs with expression features in various cell types/tissues, including disease samples. In addition, the updated database incorporates conservation analysis of circRNAs between humans and mice. Finally, the web interface also contains computational tools to compare circRNA expression among samples. CIRCpedia v2 is accessible at http://www.picb.ac.cn/rnomics/circpedia.     

AcalPred: A Sequence-Based Tool for Discriminating between Acidic and Alkaline Enzymes

The structure and activity of enzymes are influenced by pH value of their surroundings. Although many enzymes work well in the pH range from 6 to 8, some specific enzymes have good efficiencies only in acidic (pH<5) or alkaline (pH>9) solution. Studies have demonstrated that the activities of enzymes correlate with their primary sequences. It is crucial to judge enzyme adaptation to acidic or alkaline environment from its amino acid sequence in molecular mechanism clarification and the design of high efficient enzymes. In this study, we developed a sequence-based method to discriminate acidic enzymes from alkaline enzymes. The analysis of variance was used to choose the optimized discriminating features derived from g-gap dipeptide compositions. And support vector machine was utilized to establish the prediction model. In the rigorous jackknife cross-validation, the overall accuracy of 96.7% was achieved. The method can correctly predict 96.3% acidic and 97.1% alkaline enzymes. Through the comparison between the proposed method and previous methods, it is demonstrated that the proposed method is more accurate. On the basis of this proposed method, we have built an online web-server called AcalPred which can be freely accessed from the website (http://lin.uestc.edu.cn/server/AcalPred). We believe that the AcalPred will become a powerful tool to study enzyme adaptation to acidic or alkaline environment.     

The lipocalin website

We introduce a website devoted to the lipocalins. The website contains data on lipocalin structures and sequences, as well as reviewing lipocalin biology and biochemistry. Our hope is that it can act as a focus for future research into the lipocalin protein family. The website can be accessed at the following URL: http://www. jenner.ac.uk/lipocalin.htm.     

GSA: Genome Sequence Archive

With the rapid development of sequencing technologies towards higher throughput and lower cost, sequence data are generated at an unprecedentedly explosive rate. To provide an efficient and easy-to-use platform for managing huge sequence data, here we present Genome Sequence Archive(GSA; http://bigd.big.ac.cn/gsa or http://gsa.big.ac.cn), a data repository for archiving raw sequence data. In compliance with data standards and structures of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration(INSDC), GSA adopts four data objects(Bio Project, Bio Sample,Experiment, and Run) for data organization, accepts raw sequence reads produced by a variety of sequencing platforms, stores both sequence reads and metadata submitted from all over the world,and makes all these data publicly available to worldwide scientific communities. In the era of big data, GSA is not only an important complement to existing INSDC members by alleviating the increasing burdens of handling sequence data deluge, but also takes the significant responsibility for global big data archive and provides free unrestricted access to all publicly available data in support of research activities throughout the world.     

TargetFinder: a software for antisense oligonucleotide target site selection based on MAST and secondary structures of target mRNA

SUMMARY: TargetFinder is a PC/Windows program for interactive effective antisense oligonucleotide (AO) selection based on mRNA accessible site tagging (MAST) and secondary structures of target mRNA. To make MAST result intuitive, both the alignment result and tag frequency profile is illustrated. As theoretical reference, secondary structure and single strand probability profile of target mRNA is also represented. All of these sequences and profiles are displayed in aligned mode, which facilitates identification of the accessible sites in target mRNA. Graphical, user-friendly interface makes TargetFinder a useful tool in AO target site selection. AVAILABILITY: The software is freely available at http://www.bioit.org.cn/ao/targetfinder.htm CONTACT: sqwang@nic.bmi.ac.cn.     

The DynDom database of protein domain motions

A relational database has been developed based on the results from the application of the DynDom program to a number of proteins for which multiple X-ray conformers are available. The database is populated via a web-based tool that allows visitors to the website to run the DynDom program server-side by selecting pairs of X-ray conformers by Protein Data Bank code and chain identifier. AVAILABILITY: The website can be found at: http://www.sys.uea.ac.uk/dyndom.     

Windows下16S rRNA基因扩增子测序数据分析的简易流程

微生物组数据分析需要掌握Linux系统操作,这对缺乏计算机知识的生物研究人员是一个很大的障碍。为此我们设计了一套在Windows的Linux子系统(WSL)下分析16S rRNA基因扩增子高通量测序数据的简易流程。本流程整合常用的开源软件VSEARCH与QIIME等,能对16S rRNA测序数据进行质量控制、OTU聚类、多样性分析及结果可视化呈现。以唾液微生物组分析为例,详细介绍从原始数据到多样性统计分析过程的参数和命令,及结果解读。教学实践证明,此流程易于学习,并有助于掌握微生物组的基本概念与方法。利用Windows系统最新的WSL功能,本流程方便Windows用户使用大量在Linux上运行的生物信息工具,有助于促进微生物组研究的发展。流程的安装程序与测序数据可从网址(http://www. ligene. cn/win16s/)免费下载使用。     

不同剂量的1318nm Nd:YAG激光对体外胰腺癌细胞增殖的影响

目的:研究不同剂量1318 nm Nd:YAG激光的生物学效应。方法:用波长为1318 nm的Nd:YAG激光连续照射体外培养的处于对数生长期的人胰腺癌PC-3细胞。在低剂量组内分组分别照射0 s、2 s、4 s、6 s、8 s、10 s、12 s、14 s,每天1次,连续照射3次;在高剂量组内分组分别照射0 s、10 s、15 s、20 s、25 s、35 s、50 s,照射1次。照射结束后,继续培养24 h,噻唑蓝比色法(MTT)测定各组OD值,研究细胞增殖情况。结果:在低剂量范围内,随着激光照射剂量的提高,PC-3细胞的OD值逐渐升高(P<0.05)。而在高剂量范围内,随着激光照射剂量的提高,PC-3细胞的OD值逐渐降低(P<0.05)。结论:1 318 nm Nd:YAG激光,在低剂量范围内照射PC-3细胞,具有明显促进其增值的作用,呈剂量依赖性,在临床应用上应避免该副作用的发生;而在高剂量范围内照射PC-3细胞,具有明显抑制其增殖的作用,呈剂量依赖性,对于指导临床应用具有重要价值。     

Genome Warehouse: A Public Repository Housing Genome-scale Data

The Genome Warehouse (GWH) is a public repository housing genome assembly data for a wide range of species and delivering a series of web services for genome data submission, storage, release, and sharing. As one of the core resources in the National Genomics Data Center (NGDC), part of the China National Center for Bioinformation (CNCB; https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn), GWH accepts both full and partial (chloroplast, mitochondrion, and plasmid) genome sequences with different assembly levels, as well as an update of existing genome assemblies. For each assembly, GWH collects detailed genome-related metadata of biological project, biological sample, and genome assembly, in addition to genome sequence and annotation. To archive high-quality genome sequences and annotations, GWH is equipped with a uniform and standardized procedure for quality control. Besides basic browse and search functionalities, all released genome sequences and annotations can be visualized with JBrowse. By May 21, 2021, GWH has received 19,124 direct submissions covering a diversity of 1108 species and has released 8772 of them. Collectively, GWH serves as an important resource for genome-scale data management and provides free and publicly accessible data to support research activities throughout the world. GWH is publicly accessible at https://ngdc.cncb.ac.cn/gwh.