Source Code for Biology and Medicine最新文献

Background: Non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) has been introduced as an important method for mining biological data. Though there currently exists packages implemented in R and other programming languages, they either provide only a few optimization algorithms or focus on a specific application field. There does not exist a complete NMF package for the bioinformatics community, and in order to perform various data mining tasks on biological data.

Results: We provide a convenient MATLAB toolbox containing both the implementations of various NMF techniques and a variety of NMF-based data mining approaches for analyzing biological data. Data mining approaches implemented within the toolbox include data clustering and bi-clustering, feature extraction and selection, sample classification, missing values imputation, data visualization, and statistical comparison.

Conclusions: A series of analysis such as molecular pattern discovery, biological process identification, dimension reduction, disease prediction, visualization, and statistical comparison can be performed using this toolbox.

Background: The annotation of surface exposed bacterial membrane proteins is an important step in interpretation and validation of proteomic experiments. In particular, proteins detected by cell surface protease shaving experiments can indicate exposed regions of membrane proteins that may contain antigenic determinants or constitute vaccine targets in pathogenic bacteria.

Results: Inmembrane is a tool to predict the membrane proteins with surface-exposed regions of polypeptide in sets of bacterial protein sequences. We have re-implemented a protocol for Gram-positive bacterial proteomes, and developed a new protocol for Gram-negative bacteria, which interface with multiple predictors of subcellular localization and membrane protein topology. Through the use of a modern scripting language, inmembrane provides an accessible code-base and extensible architecture that is amenable to modification for related sequence annotation tasks.

Conclusions: Inmembrane easily integrates predictions from both local binaries and web-based queries to help gain an overview of likely surface exposed protein in a bacterial proteome. The program is hosted on the Github repository http://github.com/boscoh/inmembrane.

Background: Surrogate variable analysis (SVA) is a powerful method to identify, estimate, and utilize the components of gene expression heterogeneity due to unknown and/or unmeasured technical, genetic, environmental, or demographic factors. These sources of heterogeneity are common in gene expression studies, and failing to incorporate them into the analysis can obscure results. Using SVA increases the biological accuracy and reproducibility of gene expression studies by identifying these sources of heterogeneity and correctly accounting for them in the analysis.

Results: Here we have developed a web application called SVAw (Surrogate variable analysis Web app) that provides a user friendly interface for SVA analyses of genome-wide expression studies. The software has been developed based on open source bioconductor SVA package. In our software, we have extended the SVA program functionality in three aspects: (i) the SVAw performs a fully automated and user friendly analysis workflow; (ii) It calculates probe/gene Statistics for both pre and post SVA analysis and provides a table of results for the regression of gene expression on the primary variable of interest before and after correcting for surrogate variables; and (iii) it generates a comprehensive report file, including graphical comparison of the outcome for the user.

Conclusions: SVAw is a web server freely accessible solution for the surrogate variant analysis of high-throughput datasets and facilitates removing all unwanted and unknown sources of variation. It is freely available for use at http://psychiatry.igm.jhmi.edu/sva. The executable packages for both web and standalone application and the instruction for installation can be downloaded from our web site.

Background: Reproducibility is the hallmark of good science. Maintaining a high degree of transparency in scientific reporting is essential not just for gaining trust and credibility within the scientific community but also for facilitating the development of new ideas. Sharing data and computer code associated with publications is becoming increasingly common, motivated partly in response to data deposition requirements from journals and mandates from funders. Despite this increase in transparency, it is still difficult to reproduce or build upon the findings of most scientific publications without access to a more complete workflow.

Findings: Version control systems (VCS), which have long been used to maintain code repositories in the software industry, are now finding new applications in science. One such open source VCS, Git, provides a lightweight yet robust framework that is ideal for managing the full suite of research outputs such as datasets, statistical code, figures, lab notes, and manuscripts. For individual researchers, Git provides a powerful way to track and compare versions, retrace errors, explore new approaches in a structured manner, while maintaining a full audit trail. For larger collaborative efforts, Git and Git hosting services make it possible for everyone to work asynchronously and merge their contributions at any time, all the while maintaining a complete authorship trail. In this paper I provide an overview of Git along with use-cases that highlight how this tool can be leveraged to make science more reproducible and transparent, foster new collaborations, and support novel uses.

Background: The whole-genome sequences of many non-model organisms have recently been determined. Using these genome sequences, next-generation sequencing based experiments such as RNA-seq and ChIP-seq have been performed and comparisons of the experiments between related species have provided new knowledge about evolution and biological processes. Although these comparisons require transformation of the genome coordinates of the reads between the species, current software tools are not suitable to convert the massive numbers of reads to the corresponding coordinates of other species' genomes.

Results: Here, we introduce a set of programs, called REad COordinate Transformer (RECOT), created to transform the coordinates of short reads obtained from the genome of a query species being studied to that of a comparison target species after aligning the query and target gene/genome sequences. RECOT generates output in SAM format that can be viewed using recent genome browsers capable of displaying next-generation sequencing data.

Conclusions: We demonstrate the usefulness of RECOT in comparing ChIP-seq results between two closely-related fruit flies. The results indicate position changes of a transcription factor binding site caused sequence polymorphisms at the binding site.

Background: In population association studies, standard methods of statistical inference assume that study subjects are independent samples. In genetic association studies, it is therefore of interest to diagnose undocumented close relationships in nominally unrelated study samples.

Results: We describe the R package CrypticIBDcheck to identify pairs of closely-related subjects based on genetic marker data from single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). The package is able to accommodate SNPs in linkage disequibrium (LD), without the need to thin the markers so that they are approximately independent in the population. Sample pairs are identified by superposing their estimated identity-by-descent (IBD) coefficients on plots of IBD coefficients for pairs of simulated subjects from one of several common close relationships.

Conclusions: The methods implemented in CrypticIBDcheck are particularly relevant to candidate-gene association studies, in which dependent SNPs cluster in a relatively small number of genes spread throughout the genome. The accommodation of LD allows the use of all available genetic data, a desirable property when working with a modest number of dependent SNPs within candidate genes. CrypticIBDcheck is available from the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN).

Unlabelled:

Background: Large-scale sequence studies requiring BLAST-based analysis produce huge amounts of data to be parsed. BLAST parsers are available, but they are often missing some important features, such as keeping all information from the raw BLAST output, allowing direct access to single results, and performing logical operations over them.

Findings: We implemented BlaSTorage, a Python package that parses multi BLAST results and returns them in a purpose-built object-database format. Unlike other BLAST parsers, BlaSTorage retains and stores all parts of BLAST results, including alignments, without loss of information; a complete API allows access to all the data components.

Conclusions: BlaSTorage shows comparable speed of more basic parser written in compiled languages as C++ and can be easily integrated into web applications or software pipelines.

Background: Data processing in the bioinformatics field often involves the handling of diverse software programs in one workflow. The field is lacking a set of standards for file formats so that files have to be processed in different ways in order to make them compatible to different analysis programs. The problem is that mass spectrometry vendors at most provide only closed-source Windows libraries to programmatically access their proprietary binary formats. This prohibits the creation of an efficient and unified tool that fits all processing needs of the users. Therefore, researchers are spending a significant amount of time using GUI-based conversion and processing programs. Besides the time needed for manual usage, such programs also can show long running times for processing, because most of them make use of only a single CPU. In particular, algorithms to enhance data quality, e.g. peak picking or deconvolution of spectra, add waiting time for the users.

Results: To automate these processing tasks and let them run continuously without user interaction, we developed the FGCZ Converter Control (FCC) at the Functional Genomics Center Zurich (FGCZ) core facility. The FCC is a rule-based system for automated file processing that reduces the operation of diverse programs to a single configuration task. Using filtering rules for raw data files, the parameters for all tasks can be custom-tailored to the needs of every single researcher and processing can run automatically and efficiently on any number of servers in parallel using all available CPU resources.

Conclusions: FCC has been used intensively at FGCZ for processing more than hundred thousand mass spectrometry raw files so far. Since we know that many other research facilities have similar problems, we would like to report on our tool and the accompanying ideas for an efficient set-up for potential reuse.

Background: High-throughput (HT) technologies provide huge amount of gene expression data that can be used to identify biomarkers useful in the clinical practice. The most frequently used approaches first select a set of genes (i.e. gene signature) able to characterize differences between two or more phenotypical conditions, and then provide a functional assessment of the selected genes with an a posteriori enrichment analysis, based on biological knowledge. However, this approach comes with some drawbacks. First, gene selection procedure often requires tunable parameters that affect the outcome, typically producing many false hits. Second, a posteriori enrichment analysis is based on mapping between biological concepts and gene expression measurements, which is hard to compute because of constant changes in biological knowledge and genome analysis. Third, such mapping is typically used in the assessment of the coverage of gene signature by biological concepts, that is either score-based or requires tunable parameters as well, limiting its power.

Results: We present Knowledge Driven Variable Selection (KDVS), a framework that uses a priori biological knowledge in HT data analysis. The expression data matrix is transformed, according to prior knowledge, into smaller matrices, easier to analyze and to interpret from both computational and biological viewpoints. Therefore KDVS, unlike most approaches, does not exclude a priori any function or process potentially relevant for the biological question under investigation. Differently from the standard approach where gene selection and functional assessment are applied independently, KDVS embeds these two steps into a unified statistical framework, decreasing the variability derived from the threshold-dependent selection, the mapping to the biological concepts, and the signature coverage. We present three case studies to assess the usefulness of the method.

Conclusions: We showed that KDVS not only enables the selection of known biological functionalities with accuracy, but also identification of new ones. An efficient implementation of KDVS was devised to obtain results in a fast and robust way. Computing time is drastically reduced by the effective use of distributed resources. Finally, integrated visualization techniques immediately increase the interpretability of results. Overall, KDVS approach can be considered as a viable alternative to enrichment-based approaches.

Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) constitute the largest family of noncoding RNAs involved in gene silencing and represent critical regulators of cell and tissue differentiation. Microarray expression profiling of miRNAs is an effective means of acquiring genome-level information of miRNA activation and inhibition, as well as the potential regulatory role that these genes play within a biological system. As with mRNA expression profiling arrays, miRNA microarrays come in a variety of platforms from numerous manufacturers, and there are a multitude of techniques available for reducing and analyzing these data.

Results: In this paper, we present an analysis of a typical two-color miRNA microarray experiment using publicly available packages from R and Bioconductor, the open-source software project for the analysis of genomic data. Covered topics include visualization, normalization, quality checking, differential expression, cluster analysis, miRNA target identification, and gene set enrichment analysis. Many of these tools carry-over from the analysis of mRNA microarrays, but with some notable differences that require special attention. The paper is presented as a "compendium" which, along with the accompanying R package MmPalateMiRNA, contains all of the experimental data and source code to reproduce the analyses contained in the paper.

Conclusions: The compendium presented in this paper will provide investigators with an access point for applying the methods available in R and Bioconductor for analysis of their own miRNA array data.