PubMed Health⌕ Search

SEARCH · PubMed Health

Results for “Bioinformatic software”

Explore indexed PubMed citations for clinical trials, systematic reviews and public health research. Read source abstracts and follow each citation to its original PubMed record.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 325 records · Page 18Linked to original sources

Swiss EMBnet node web server.

EMBnet is a consortium of collaborating bioinformatics groups located mainly within Europe (http://www.embnet.org). Each member country is represented by a 'node', a group responsible for the maintenance of local services for their users (e.g. education, training, software, database distribution, technical support, helpdesk). Among these services a web portal with links and access to locally developed and maintained software is essential and different for each node. Our web portal targets biomedical scientists in Switzerland and elsewhere, offering them access to a collection of important sequence analysis tools mirrored from other sites or developed locally. We describe here the Swiss EMBnet node web site (http://www.ch.embnet.org), which presents a number of original services not available anywhere else.

Databases, Protein↗

Analysis assistant for single-molecule force spectroscopy data on membrane proteins--MPTV.

UNLABELLED: Force-distance (F-D) curves of single membrane proteins reveal information on inter- and intramolecular interactions occurring within a protein and between proteins. However, the analysis of single-molecule force spectroscopy data is a time consuming and complex process requiring objective criteria. In most cases the user requires additional information to interpret F-D curves. Therefore we developed a software assistant representing the force or molecular interaction pattern and the topology or the 3D structure of the membrane protein. This representation establishes a basis for detailed interpretation of the protein structure and its underlying molecular interactions. Various integrated bioinformatic features further assist in the interpretation of measured and assigned molecular interactions that determine membrane protein folding, structure, stability and function. Web queries and programs about the topology are directly linked. Motifs, helix types, representation of Venn diagrams and the complete functionality of the program Jmol belong to it. AVAILABILITY: The program MPTV is freely available from the website at http://www.bioforscher.de/mptv.htm/.

Algorithms↗

Functional and structural genomics using PEDANT.

MOTIVATION: Enormous demand for fast and accurate analysis of biological sequences is fuelled by the pace of genome analysis efforts. There is also an acute need in reliable up-to-date genomic databases integrating both functional and structural information. Here we describe the current status of the PEDANT software system for high-throughput analysis of large biological sequence sets and the genome analysis server associated with it. RESULTS: The principal features of PEDANT are: (i) completely automatic processing of data using a wide range of bioinformatics methods, (ii) manual refinement of annotation, (iii) automatic and manual assignment of gene products to a number of functional and structural categories, (iv) extensive hyperlinked protein reports, and (v) advanced DNA and protein viewers. The system is easily extensible and allows to include custom methods, databases, and categories with minimal or no programming effort. PEDANT is actively used as a collaborative environment to support several on-going genome sequencing projects. The main purpose of the PEDANT genome database is to quickly disseminate well-organized information on completely sequenced and unfinished genomes. It currently includes 80 genomic sequences and in many cases serves as the only source of exhaustive information on a given genome. The database also acts as a vehicle for a number of research projects in bioinformatics. Using SQL queries, it is possible to correlate a large variety of pre-computed properties of gene products encoded in complete genomes with each other and compare them with data sets of special scientific interest. In particular, the availability of structural predictions for over 300 000 genomic proteins makes PEDANT the most extensive structural genomics resource available on the web.

Arabidopsis↗

PowerPoint in the classroom.

Points of View (POV) addresses issues faced within life science education. Cell Biology Education has launched the POV feature to present two or more opinions published in tandem on a common topic. We consider POVs to be "Op-Ed" pieces designed to stimulate thought and dialog on significant educational issues. Each author has the opportunity to revise a POV after reading drafts of the other POVs. In this issue, we ask the question, "Is PowerPoint the best instructional medium to use in your class?" Everyone seems to have an opinion on Microsoft, but the intellectual merits of using PowerPoint (or similar software) is a growing question as states and institutions put more and more money into information technology and distance learning. Four POVs are presented: 1) David Keefe and James Willett provide their case why PowerPoint is an ideal teaching software. Keefe is an educational researcher at the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International. Willett is a professor at George Mason University in the Departments of Microbial and Molecular Bioscience; as well as Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. 2) Kim McDonald highlights the causes of PowerPointlessness, a term which indicates the frequent use of PowerPoint as a crutch rather than a tool. She is a Bioscience Educator at the Shodor Education Foundation, Inc. 3) Diana Voss asks readers if PowerPoint is really necessary to present the material effectively or not. Voss is a Instructional Computing Support Specialist at SUNY Stony Brook. 4) Cynthia Lanius takes a light-hearted approach to ask whether PowerPoint is a technological improvement or just a change of pace for teacher and student presentations. Lanius is a Technology Integration Specialist in the Sinton (Texas) Independent School District. The authors span the range of teaching experiences and settings from which they bring different points of view to the debate. Readers are encouraged to participate in the online discussion forum hosted by CBE at www.cellbioed.org/discussion/public/main.cfm and/or contact the authors directly.

Audiovisual Aids↗

Development of a mass fingerprinting tool for automated interpretation of oligosaccharide fragmentation data.

The bioinformatic tool GlycosidIQ was developed for computerized interpretation of oligosaccharide mass spectrometric fragmentation based on matching experimental data with theoretically fragmented oligosaccharides generated from the database GlycoSuiteDB. This use of the software for glycofragment mass fingerprinting obviates a large part of the manual, labor intensive, and technically challenging interpretation of oligosaccharide fragmentation. Using 130 negative ion electrospray ionization-tandem mass spectrometry fragment spectra from identified oligosaccharide structures, it was shown that the GlycosidIQ scoring algorithms were able to correctly identify oligosaccharides in the great majority of cases (correct structure top ranked in 78% of the cases and an additional 17% were ranked second highest in the sample set).

Algorithms↗

Designing and executing scientific workflows with a programmable integrator.

MOTIVATION: As in many other fields of science, computational methods in molecular biology need to intersperse information access and algorithm execution in a computational workflow. Users often find difficulties when transferring data between data sources and applications. In most cases there is no standard solution for workflow design and execution and tailored scripting mechanisms are implemented in a case by case basis. RESULTS: In this paper, we present a general purpose 'programmable integrator' that can access information from a variety of sources in a coordinated manner. Its usefulness in complex bioinformatics applications is claimed and supported by some application examples. AVAILABILITY: Tools are freely available to non-profit educations and research institutions. Usage by commercial organizations requires a license agreement. Software requirements: Java v1.3 (http://java.sun.com), Xerces XML Parser (http://xml.apache.org/xerces-j) and Kweelt implementation of XQuery (http://kweelt.sourceforge.net/).

Algorithms↗

NERVE: new enhanced reverse vaccinology environment.

BACKGROUND: Since a milestone work on Neisseria meningitidis B, Reverse Vaccinology has strongly enhanced the identification of vaccine candidates by replacing several experimental tasks using in silico prediction steps. These steps have allowed scientists to face the selection of antigens from the predicted proteome of pathogens, for which cell culture is difficult or impossible, saving time and money. However, this good example of bioinformatics-driven immunology can be further developed by improving in silico steps and implementing biologist-friendly tools. RESULTS: We introduce NERVE (New Enhanced Reverse Vaccinology Environment), an user-friendly software environment for the in silico identification of the best vaccine candidates from whole proteomes of bacterial pathogens. The software integrates multiple robust and well-known algorithms for protein analysis and comparison. Vaccine candidates are ranked and presented in a html table showing relevant information and links to corresponding primary data. Information concerning all proteins of the analyzed proteome is not deleted along selection steps but rather flows into an SQL database for further mining and analyses. CONCLUSION: After learning from recent years' works in this field and analysing a large dataset, NERVE has been implemented and tuned as the first available tool able to rank a restricted pool (approximately 8-9% of the whole proteome) of vaccine candidates and to show high recall (approximately 75-80%) of known protective antigens. These vaccine candidates are required to be "safe" (taking into account autoimmunity risk) and "easy" for further experimental, high-throughput screening (avoiding possibly not soluble antigens). NERVE is expected to help save time and money in vaccine design and is available as an additional file with this manuscript; updated versions will be available at http://www.bio.unipd.it/molbinfo.

Algorithms↗

Automated biofilm morphology quantification from confocal laser scanning microscopy imaging.

In spite of the immediate visual appeal of confocal laser scanning microscopy images, the extraction of accurate reconstitutions of biofilm morphology requires a lengthy and computational intensive succession of processing steps. However, once performed, it provides ample reward by enabling the quantitative study of biofilm structure. A software suite of image processing tools for full automation of biofilm morphology quantification was developed by integrating preprocessing, segmentation and morphology quantification operations. This software toolbox was implemented in a web server and a user friendly interface was developed to facilitate image submission, storage and sharing, its access being unrestricted for scientific applications. The image bioinformatics tool which results from the integration of the processing operations can be accessed at http://www.itqb.unl.pt:111/clsmip/. Its use is described in this paper and is illustrated with an example of processing of experimental data describing the growth of a mixed species dentrifying biofilm.

Automation↗

Consistent integration of non-reliable heterogeneous information resources applied to the annotation of transmembrane proteins.

Information agents integrate multiple distributed heterogeneous information sources. The challenging yet unsolved problem that remains, is to ensure the semantic consistency of the integrated data. In this paper we set out to develop a general approach to inconsistency management for information agents. It is implemented as part of the EDITtoTrEMBL system and applied on a large real-world problem in the domain of bioinformatics.

Amino Acid Sequence↗

PROFbval: predict flexible and rigid residues in proteins.

UNLABELLED: The mobility of a residue on the protein surface is closely linked to its function. The identification of extremely rigid or flexible surface residues can therefore contribute information crucial for solving the complex problem of identifying functionally important residues in proteins. Mobility is commonly measured by B-value data from high-resolution three-dimensional X-ray structures. Few methods predict B-values from sequence. Here, we present PROFbval, the first web server to predict normalized B-values from amino acid sequence. The server handles amino acid sequences (or alignments) as input and outputs normalized B-value and two-state (flexible/rigid) predictions. The server also assigns a reliability index for each prediction. For example, PROFbval correctly identifies residues in active sites on the surface of enzymes as particularly rigid. AVAILABILITY: http://www.rostlab.org/services/profbval CONTACT: profbval@rostlab.org SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Computational Biology↗

XQTav: an XQuery processor for Taverna environment.

UNLABELLED: Taverna workbench is an environment for construction, visualization and execution of bioinformatic workflows that integrate specialized tools available through the internet. It is gaining popularity fast, because of supporting the most important bioinformatic services and its simple, yet robust graphical notation. Here we present XQTav-an extension of Taverna that provides full integration with XQuery (the query language for XML) engine. XQTav allows execution of XQuery scripts in Taverna workflow diagrams. All existing Taverna processors can be accessed in the XQuery scripts. This provides an alternative way of specifying subworkflows in Taverna and is useful when one deals with query-like algorithms (e.g. filters and inner joins). Moreover, XQtav may be used to automatically generate an XQuery script that is equivalent to Taverna's workflow. This constitutes another way of creating and enacting bioinformatic workflows: overall structure of a diagram is drawn in Taverna environment, XQuery code is generated and possibly adjusted by hand. It can be executed by XQuery engines or incorporated into other software environments. AVAILABILITY: XQtav is an open source software. It may be downloaded from http://xqtav.sourceforge.net/. The page also contains various tutorials and examples, including the one described in this report.

Algorithms↗

Automatic drawing of biological networks using cross cost and subcomponent data.

Automatic graph drawing function for biopathways is indispensable for biopathway databases and softwares. This paper proposes a new grid-based algorithm for biopathway layout that considers (a) edge-edge crossing, (b) node-edge crossing, (c) distance measures between nodes, as its costs, and (d) subcellular localization information from Gene Ontology, as its constraints. For this algorithm, we newly define cost functions, devise an efficient method for computing the costs (a)-(c) by employing a matrix representing the difference between two layouts, and take a steepest descent method for searching locally optimal solutions and multi-step layout method for finding better solutions. We implemented this algorithm on Cell Illustrator which is a biopathway modeling and simulation software. The algorithm is applied to a signal transduction pathway of apoptosis induced by fas ligand. We compare our layout with that of the grid-based algorithm by Li and Kurata (Bioinformatics 21 (9):2036-2042, 2005). The result shows that our algorithm reduces edge-edge crossings and node-edge crossings, and solves the ''isolated island problem'', that is, despite the intension, some groups of nodes are apart from other nodes in the layout. As a result, the biological understandability of the layout is fairly improved.

Algorithms↗

CountASAP: a lightweight, easy to use python package for processing ASAPseq data.

BACKGROUND: Declining sequencing costs coupled with the increasing availability of easy-to-use kits for the isolation of DNA and RNA transcripts from single cells have driven a rapid proliferation of studies centered around genomic and transcriptomic data. Simultaneously, a wealth of new techniques have been developed that utilize single cell technologies to interrogate a broad range of cell-biological processes. One recently developed technique, transposase-accessible chromatin with sequencing (ATAC) with select antigen profiling by sequencing (ASAPseq), provides a combination of chromatin accessibility assessments with measurements of cell-surface marker expression levels. While software exists for the characterization of these datasets, there currently exists no tool explicitly designed to reformat ASAP surface marker FASTQ data into a count matrix which can then be used for these downstream analyses. RESULTS: To address this lack of a dedicated tool for ASAPseq data processing, we created CountASAP, an easy-to-use Python package purposefully designed to transform FASTQ files from ASAP experiments into count matrices compatible with commonly-used downstream bioinformatic analysis packages. CountASAP takes advantage of the independence of the relevant data structures to perform fully parallelized matches of each sequenced read to user-supplied input ASAP oligos and unique cell-identifier sequences. We directly compare the performance and user-friendliness of CountASAP to existing tools using similarly-structured data from a more common sequencing experiment: cellular indexing of transcriptomes and epitopes by sequencing (CITEseq). Further benchmarking against existing tools helps to identify proper defaults for CountASAP and assess the agreement of outputs from all tested software. A final test using a novel ASAPseq dataset provides evidence that CountASAP can generate biologically meaningful results that correlate well with paired chromatin accessibility data. CONCLUSIONS: CountASAP shows good agreement with existing, well-tested data processing tools in the analysis of similarly-structured benchmarking data. CountASAP runs efficiently on a standard laptop, has user-friendly documentation, a one-step installation, and represents the first and only tool designed specifically for the processing of ASAPseq data.

Software↗

Reproducible research: a bioinformatics case study.

While scientific research and the methodologies involved have gone through substantial technological evolution the technology involved in the publication of the results of these endeavors has remained relatively stagnant. Publication is largely done in the same manner today as it was fifty years ago. Many journals have adopted electronic formats, however, their orientation and style is little different from a printed document. The documents tend to be static and take little advantage of computational resources that might be available. Recent work, Gentleman and Temple Lang (2003), suggests a methodology and basic infrastructure that can be used to publish documents in a substantially different way. Their approach is suitable for the publication of papers whose message relies on computation. Stated quite simply, Gentleman and Temple Lang (2003) propose a paradigm where documents are mixtures of code and text. Such documents may be self-contained or they may be a component of a compendium which provides the infrastructure needed to provide access to data and supporting software. These documents, or compendiums, can be processed in a number of different ways. One transformation will be to replace the code with its output -- thereby providing the familiar, but limited, static document. In this paper we apply these concepts to a seminal paper in bioinformatics, namely The Molecular Classification of Cancer, Golub et al (1999). The authors of that paper have generously provided data and other information that have allowed us to largely reproduce their results. Rather than reproduce this paper exactly we demonstrate that such a reproduction is possible and instead concentrate on demonstrating the usefulness of the compendium concept itself.

Journal Article↗