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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Processing sequence annotation data using the Lua programming language.

The data processing language in a graphical software tool that manages sequence annotation data from genome databases should provide flexible functions for the tasks in molecular biology research. Among currently available languages we adopted the Lua programming language. It fulfills our requirements to perform computational tasks for sequence map layouts, i.e. the handling of data containers, symbolic reference to data, and a simple programming syntax. Upon importing a foreign file, the original data are first decomposed in the Lua language while maintaining the original data schema. The converted data are parsed by the Lua interpreter and the contents are stored in our data warehouse. Then, portions of annotations are selected and arranged into our catalog format to be depicted on the sequence map. Our sequence visualization program was successfully implemented, embedding the Lua language for processing of annotation data and layout script. The program is available at http://staff.aist.go.jp/yutaka.ueno/guppy/.

Computational Biology↗

Evidence standards in experimental and inferential INSDC Third Party Annotation data.

The Third Party Annotation (TPA) project collects and presents high-quality annotation of nucleotide sequence. Annotation is submitted by researchers who have not themselves generated novel nucleotide sequence. In its first few years, the resource has proven to be popular with submitters from a range of biological research areas. Central to the project is the requirement for high-quality data, resulting from experimental and inferred analysis discussed in peer-reviewed publications. The data are divided into two tiers: those with experimental evidence and those with inferential evidence. Standards for TPA are detailed and illustrated with the aid of case studies.

Animals↗

maxdLoad2 and maxdBrowse: standards-compliant tools for microarray experimental annotation, data management and dissemination.

BACKGROUND: maxdLoad2 is a relational database schema and Java application for microarray experimental annotation and storage. It is compliant with all standards for microarray meta-data capture; including the specification of what data should be recorded, extensive use of standard ontologies and support for data exchange formats. The output from maxdLoad2 is of a form acceptable for submission to the ArrayExpress microarray repository at the European Bioinformatics Institute. maxdBrowse is a PHP web-application that makes contents of maxdLoad2 databases accessible via web-browser, the command-line and web-service environments. It thus acts as both a dissemination and data-mining tool. RESULTS: maxdLoad2 presents an easy-to-use interface to an underlying relational database and provides a full complement of facilities for browsing, searching and editing. There is a tree-based visualization of data connectivity and the ability to explore the links between any pair of data elements, irrespective of how many intermediate links lie between them. Its principle novel features are: the flexibility of the meta-data that can be captured, the tools provided for importing data from spreadsheets and other tabular representations, the tools provided for the automatic creation of structured documents, the ability to browse and access the data via web and web-services interfaces. Within maxdLoad2 it is very straightforward to customise the meta-data that is being captured or change the definitions of the meta-data. These meta-data definitions are stored within the database itself allowing client software to connect properly to a modified database without having to be specially configured. The meta-data definitions (configuration file) can also be centralized allowing changes made in response to revisions of standards or terminologies to be propagated to clients without user intervention.maxdBrowse is hosted on a web-server and presents multiple interfaces to the contents of maxd databases. maxdBrowse emulates many of the browse and search features available in the maxdLoad2 application via a web-browser. This allows users who are not familiar with maxdLoad2 to browse and export microarray data from the database for their own analysis. The same browse and search features are also available via command-line and SOAP server interfaces. This both enables scripting of data export for use embedded in data repositories and analysis environments, and allows access to the maxd databases via web-service architectures. CONCLUSION: maxdLoad2 http://www.bioinf.man.ac.uk/microarray/maxd/ and maxdBrowse http://dbk.ch.umist.ac.uk/maxdBrowse are portable and compatible with all common operating systems and major database servers. They provide a powerful, flexible package for annotation of microarray experiments and a convenient dissemination environment. They are available for download and open sourced under the Artistic License.

Data Interpretation, Statistical↗

Integrating structure and experimental data annotations with computational modeling framework for predicting micro-nanoplastics toxicities.

The wide use of plastic materials leads to increased emissions of micro-nanoplastics (MNPs) into the environment, raising significant concerns about their impact on human health. Traditional experimental approaches for assessing MNPs toxicity are costly, time-consuming, and there are no experimental protocols that are universally acceptable. Computational modeling using machine learning (ML) approaches provides an efficient alternative to MNP toxicity assessment. However, most modeling studies of MNPs are limited due to the lack of high-quality data and there are few previous modeling studies considering complex structures of MNPs for model training. To address this challenge, we constructed three MNP datasets with popular toxicity endpoints from various resources and used nanostructure annotation techniques to create virtual MNPs (vMNPs) for all MNP structures. The MNP structures were digitalized from annotated vMNPs, and geometrical descriptors were calculated using the Delaunay Tessellation approach. Moreover, important experimental information, such as concentrations and cell lines, were transformed into extra training variables. Partial least squares regression (PLSR) models were built using both experimental and geometrical descriptors and validated through a leave-one-out cross validation procedure. The resulting models showed reasonable performance in predicting toxicity potentials of MNPs for the three endpoints in the present datasets. Moreover, an additional library of vMNPs with their predicted properties and bioactivities was constructed, directing further research of new MNPs. This study provides three novel ML models for MNPs by integrating geometrical and experimental descriptors, which have the potential to assess new MNPs for their toxicity. The modeling strategy developed in this study can be easily expanded to model other MNP toxicity endpoints and create promising new models for MNP toxicity assessments.

Data annotation↗

SWEET-DB: an attempt to create annotated data collections for carbohydrates.

Complex carbohydrates are known as mediators of complex cellular events. Concerning their structural diversity, their potential of information content is several orders of magnitude higher in a short sequence than any other biological macromolecule. SWEET-DB (http://www.dkfz.de/spec2/sweetdb/) is an attempt to use modern web techniques to annotate and/or cross-reference carbohydrate-related data collections which allow glycoscientists to find important data for compounds of interest in a compact and well-structured representation. Currently, reference data taken from three data sources can be retrieved for a given carbohydrate (sub)structure. The sources are CarbBank structures and literature references (linked to NCBI PubMed service), NMR data taken from SugaBase and 3D co-ordinates generated with SWEET-II. The main purpose of SWEET-DB is to enable an easy access to all data stored for one carbohydrate structure entering a complete sequence or parts thereof. Access to SWEET-DB contents is provided with the help of separate input spreadsheets for (sub)structures, bibliographic data, general structural data like molecular weight, NMR spectra and biological data. A detailed online tutorial is available at http://www.dkfz.de/spec2/sweetdb/nar/.

Carbohydrate Conformation↗

Djinn Lite: a tool for customised gene transcript modelling, annotation-data enrichment and exploration.

BACKGROUND: There is an ever increasing rate of data made available on genetic variation, transcriptomes and proteomes. Similarly, a growing variety of bioinformatic programs are becoming available from many diverse sources, designed to identify a myriad of sequence patterns considered to have potential biological importance within inter-genic regions, genes, transcripts, and proteins. However, biologists require easy to use, uncomplicated tools to integrate this information, visualise and print gene annotations. Integrating this information usually requires considerable informatics skills, and comprehensive knowledge of the data format to make full use of this information. Tools are needed to explore gene model variants by allowing users the ability to create alternative transcript models using novel combinations of exons not necessarily represented in current database deposits of mRNA/cDNA sequences. RESULTS: Djinn Lite is designed to be an intuitive program for storing and visually exploring of custom annotations relating to a eukaryotic gene sequence and its modelled gene products. In particular, it is helpful in developing hypothesis regarding alternate splicing of transcripts by allowing the construction of model transcripts and inspection of their resulting translations. It facilitates the ability to view a gene and its gene products in one synchronised graphical view, allowing one to drill down into sequence related data. Colour highlighting of selected sequences and added annotations further supports exploration, visualisation of sequence regions and motifs known or predicted to be biologically significant. CONCLUSION: Gene annotating remains an ongoing and challenging task that will continue as gene structures, gene transcription repertoires, disease loci, protein products and their interactions become more precisely defined. Djinn Lite offers an accessible interface to help accumulate, enrich, and individualize sequence annotations relating to a gene, its transcripts and translations. The mechanism of transcript definition and creation, and subsequent navigation and exploration of features, are very intuitive and demand only a short learning curve. Ultimately, Djinn Lite can form the basis for providing valuable clues to plan new experiments, providing storage of sequences and annotations for dedication to customised projects. The application is appropriate for Windows 98-ME-2000-XP-2003 operating systems.

Alternative Splicing↗

MADGE: scalable distributed data management software for cDNA microarrays.

MOTIVATION: The human genome project and the development of new high-throughput technologies have created unparalleled opportunities to study the mechanism of diseases, monitor the disease progression and evaluate effective therapies. Gene expression profiling is a critical tool to accomplish these goals. The use of nucleic acid microarrays to assess the gene expression of thousands of genes simultaneously has seen phenomenal growth over the past five years. Although commercial sources of microarrays exist, investigators wanting more flexibility in the genes represented on the array will turn to in-house production. The creation and use of cDNA microarrays is a complicated process that generates an enormous amount of information. Effective data management of this information is essential to efficiently access, analyze, troubleshoot and evaluate the microarray experiments. RESULTS: We have developed a distributable software package designed to track and store the various pieces of data generated by a cDNA microarray facility. This includes the clone collection storage data, annotation data, workflow queues, microarray data, data repositories, sample submission information, and project/investigator information. This application was designed using a 3-tier client server model. The data access layer (1st tier) contains the relational database system tuned to support a large number of transactions. The data services layer (2nd tier) is a distributed COM server with full database transaction support. The application layer (3rd tier) is an internet based user interface that contains both client and server side code for dynamic interactions with the user. AVAILABILITY: This software is freely available to academic institutions and non-profit organizations at http://www.genomics.mcg.edu/niddkbtc.

Database Management Systems↗

A tool for sharing annotated research data: the "Category 0" UMLS (Unified Medical Language System) vocabularies.

BACKGROUND: Large biomedical data sets have become increasingly important resources for medical researchers. Modern biomedical data sets are annotated with standard terms to describe the data and to support data linking between databases. The largest curated listing of biomedical terms is the the National Library of Medicine's Unified Medical Language System (UMLS). The UMLS contains more than 2 million biomedical terms collected from nearly 100 medical vocabularies. Many of the vocabularies contained in the UMLS carry restrictions on their use, making it impossible to share or distribute UMLS-annotated research data. However, a subset of the UMLS vocabularies, designated Category 0 by UMLS, can be used to annotate and share data sets without violating the UMLS License Agreement. METHODS: The UMLS Category 0 vocabularies can be extracted from the parent UMLS metathesaurus using a Perl script supplied with this article. There are 43 Category 0 vocabularies that can be used freely for research purposes without violating the UMLS License Agreement. Among the Category 0 vocabularies are: MESH (Medical Subject Headings), NCBI (National Center for Bioinformatics) Taxonomy and ICD-9-CM (International Classification of Diseases-9-Clinical Modifiers). RESULTS: The extraction file containing all Category 0 terms and concepts is 72,581,138 bytes in length and contains 1,029,161 terms. The UMLS Metathesaurus MRCON file (January, 2003) is 151,048,493 bytes in length and contains 2,146,899 terms. Therefore the Category 0 vocabularies, in aggregate, are about half the size of the UMLS metathesaurus.A large publicly available listing of 567,921 different medical phrases were automatically coded using the full UMLS metatathesaurus and the Category 0 vocabularies. There were 545,321 phrases with one or more matches against UMLS terms while 468,785 phrases had one or more matches against the Category 0 terms. This indicates that when the two vocabularies are evaluated by their fitness to find at least one term for a medical phrase, the Category 0 vocabularies performed 86% as well as the complete UMLS metathesaurus. CONCLUSION: The Category 0 vocabularies of UMLS constitute a large nomenclature that can be used by biomedical researchers to annotate biomedical data. These annotated data sets can be distributed for research purposes without violating the UMLS License Agreement. These vocabularies may be of particular importance for sharing heterogeneous data from diverse biomedical data sets. The software tools to extract the Category 0 vocabularies are freely available Perl scripts entered into the public domain and distributed with this article.

Algorithms↗

Code generation through annotation of macromolecular structure data.

The maintenance of software which uses a rapidly evolving data annotation scheme is time consuming and expensive. At the same time without current software the annotation scheme itself becomes limited and is less likely to be widely adopted. A solution to this problem has been developed for the macromolecular Crystallographic Information File (mmCIF) annotation scheme. The approach could be generalized for a variety of annotation schemes used or proposed for molecular biology data. mmCIF provides a highly structured and complete annotation for describing NMR and X-ray crystallographic data and the resulting macromolecular structures. This annotation is maintained in the mmCIF dictionary which currently contains over 3,200 terms. A major challenge is to maintain code for converting between mmCIF and Protein Data Bank (PDB) annotations while both continue to evolve. The solution has been to define a simple domain specific language (DSL) which is added to the extensive annotation already found in the mmCIF dictionary. The DSL calls specific mapping modules for each category of data item in the mmCIF dictionary. Adding or changing the mapping between PDB and mmCIF items of data is straightforward since data categories (and hence mapping modules) correspond to elements of macromolecular structure familiar to the experimentalist. Each time a change is made to the macromolecular annotation the appropriate change is made to the easily located and modifiable mapping modules. A code generator is then called which reads the mapping modules and creates a new executable for performing the data conversion. In this way code is easily kept current by individuals with limited programming skill, but who have an understanding of macromolecular structure and details of the annotation scheme. Most important, the conversion process becomes part of the global dictionary and is not open to a variety of interpretations by different research groups writing code based on dictionary contents. Details of the DSL and code generator are provided.

Crystallography, X-Ray↗

MaXML: mouse annotation XML.

Although the sequencing of the human genome and several model organisms is almost complete, the number of genes in the human is still in debate. cDNA (complementary DNA) is generated from mRNA that is transcribed from the genome and can be regarded as a gene itself; therefore, decoding cDNA sequences is important in characterizing genes. Recently, biologists have been able to describe more knowledge about genes in order to characterize them, and this information is generally called 'annotation.' Furthermore, annotation is important in understanding the systems of organisms in various fields of research. We therefore constructed the MaXML (Mouse annotation XML) format with which mouse cDNA annotation data can be exchanged and shared between laboratories more efficiently. Defining strict data types for annotations is difficult, but we consider XML a feasible format for describing them. We have used the MaXML format to express mouse annotation data in FANTOM DB. We have also developed tools and systems utilizing these MaXML data, including a parser and a server to provide data on-the-fly.

Animals↗

Nomenclature-based data retrieval without prior annotation: facilitating biomedical data integration with fast doublet matching.

Assigning nomenclature codes to biomedical data is an arduous, expensive and error-prone task. Data records are coded to to provide a common representation of contained concepts, allowing facile retrieval of records via a standard terminology. In the medical field, cancer registrars, nurses, pathologists, and private clinicians all understand the importance of annotating medical records with vocabularies that codify the names of diseases, procedures, billing categories, etc. Molecular biologists need codified medical records so that they can discover or validate relationships between experimental data and clinical data. This paper introduces a new approach to retrieving data records without prior coding. The approach achieves the same result as a search over pre-coded records. It retrieves all records that contain any terms that are synonymous with a user's query-term. A recently described fast algorithm (the doublet method) permits quick iterative searches over every synonym for any term from any nomenclature occurring in a dataset of any size. As a demonstration, a 105+ Megabyte corpus of Pubmed abstracts was searched for medical terms. Query terms were matched against either of two vocabularies and expanded as an array of equivalent search items. A single search term may have over one hundred nomenclature synonyms, all of which were searched against the full database. Iterative searches of a list of concept-equivalent terms involves many more operations than a single search over pre-annotated concept codes. Nonetheless, the doublet method achieved fast query response times (0.05 seconds using Snomed and 5 seconds using the Developmental Lineage Classification of Neoplasms, on a computer with a 2.89 GHz processor). Pre-annotated datasets lose their value when the chosen vocabulary is replaced by a different vocabulary or by a different version of the same vocabulary. The doublet method can employ any version of any vocabulary with no pre-annotation. In many instances, the enormous effort and expense associated with data annotation can be eliminated by on-the-fly doublet matching. The algorithm for nomenclature-based database searches using the doublet method is described. Perl scripts for implementing the algorithm and testing execution speed are provided as open source documents available from the Association for Pathology Informatics (www.pathologyinformatics.org/informatics_r.htm).

Abstracting and Indexing↗

ASD: a bioinformatics resource on alternative splicing.

Alternative splicing is an important regulatory mechanism of mammalian gene expression. The alternative splicing database (ASD) consortium is systematically collecting and annotating data on alternative splicing. We present the continuation and upgrade of the ASD [T. A. Thanaraj, S. Stamm, F. Clark, J. J. Riethoven, V. Le Texier, J. Muilu (2004) Nucleic Acids Res. 32, D64-D69] that consists of computationally and manually generated data. Its largest parts are AltSplice, a value-added database of computationally delineated alternative splicing events. Its data include alternatively spliced introns/exons, events, isoform splicing patterns and isoform peptide sequences. AltSplice data are generated by examining gene-transcript alignments. The data are annotated for various biological features including splicing signals, expression states, (SNP)-mediated splicing and cross-species conservation. AEdb forms the manually curated component of ASD. It is a literature-based data set containing sequence and properties of alternatively spliced exons, functional enumeration of observed splicing events, characterization of observed splicing regulatory elements, and a collection of experimentally clarified minigene constructs. ASD includes a workbench, which is an analysis tool that enables users to carry out splicing related analysis such as characterization of introns for various splicing signals, identification of splicing regulatory elements on a given RNA sequence, prediction of putative exons and prediction of putative translation start codons. The different ASD modules are integrated and can be accessed through user-friendly interfaces and visualization tools. ASD data has been integrated with Ensembl genome annotation project as a Distributed Annotation System (DAS) resource and can be viewed on Ensembl genome browser. The ASD resource is presented at (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/asd).

Alternative Splicing↗

Technical description of the IBIS data library. Improved Monitoring for Brain Dysfunction in Intensive Care and Surgery.

The IBIS Data Library (DL) is an annotated data library that contains practically all the monitored data and other clinical information from critically ill patients during surgery and in intensive care. The data have been collected at three sites: the intensive care unit of the Kuopio University Hospital, Finland; Royal Brompton Hospital, London, UK; and St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, UK. The purpose of the DL is to form the basis for development of biosignal interpretation methods in the Improved Monitoring for Brain Dysfunction in Intensive Care and Surgery project in the European Union (EU) BIOMED2 programme (BMH4-97-2570). The DL contains continuous electroencephalography signals, multimodal evoked potential recordings and diagnostic electrocardiography recorded during intensive care and surgery. In addition, signal types similar to those recorded during an earlier project, the EU-BIOMED1 project IMPROVE, are stored in the DL. In addition, trend data from patient monitors, laboratory data, annotations, nursing actions, and medications recorded and stored by a Patient Data Management System (PDMS) during routine care are included. The data obtained routinely are complemented by special annotations made by a physician who observes the patient during the data collection session. Annotations include, for example, assessment of the awareness of the patient and specific events during surgery not recorded routinely by the PDMS. Inclusion of information about the care plan and the aims of the care make the contents of the DL complete. The present paper describes the technical set-up used for recording of the DL and the contents of the DL. The paper also includes an appendix defining a new data format, the extended evoked potentials format, used for storage of sweep data in the DL.

Brain↗

Visualizing the genome: techniques for presenting human genome data and annotations.

BACKGROUND: In order to take full advantage of the newly available public human genome sequence data and associated annotations, biologists require visualization tools ("genome browsers") that can accommodate the high frequency of alternative splicing in human genes and other complexities. RESULTS: In this article, we describe visualization techniques for presenting human genomic sequence data and annotations in an interactive, graphical format. These techniques include: one-dimensional, semantic zooming to show sequence data alongside gene structures; color-coding exons to indicate frame of translation; adjustable, moveable tiers to permit easier inspection of a genomic scene; and display of protein annotations alongside gene structures to show how alternative splicing impacts protein structure and function. These techniques are illustrated using examples from two genome browser applications: the Neomorphic GeneViewer annotation tool and ProtAnnot, a prototype viewer which shows protein annotations in the context of genomic sequence. CONCLUSION: By presenting techniques for visualizing genomic data, we hope to provide interested software developers with a guide to what features are most likely to meet the needs of biologists as they seek to make sense of the rapidly expanding body of public genomic data and annotations.

Alternative Splicing↗

Data management and preliminary data analysis in the pilot phase of the HUPO Plasma Proteome Project.

The pilot phase of the HUPO Plasma Proteome Project (PPP) is an international collaboration to catalog the protein composition of human blood plasma and serum by analyzing standardized aliquots of reference serum and plasma specimens using a variety of experimental techniques. Data management for this project included collection, integration, analysis, and dissemination of findings from participating organizations world-wide. Accomplishing this task required a communication and coordination infrastructure specific enough to support meaningful integration of results from all participants, but flexible enough to react to changing requirements and new insights gained during the course of the project and to allow participants with varying informatics capabilities to contribute. Challenges included integrating heterogeneous data, reducing redundant information to minimal identification sets, and data annotation. Our data integration workflow assembles a minimal and representative set of protein identifications, which account for the contributed data. It accommodates incomplete concordance of results from different laboratories, ambiguity and redundancy in contributed identifications, and redundancy in the protein sequence databases. Recommendations of the PPP for future large-scale proteomics endeavors are described.

Algorithms↗