We define a new problem in comparative genomics, denoted PQ-Tree Search, that takes as input a PQ-tree $T$ representing the known gene orders of a gene cluster of interest, a gene-to-gene substitution scoring function $h$, integer parameters $d_T$ and $d_S$, and a new genome $S$. The objective is to identify in $S$ approximate new instances of the gene cluster that could vary from the known gene orders by genome rearrangements that are constrained by $T$, by gene substitutions that are governed by $h$, and by gene deletions and insertions that are bounded from above by $d_T$ and $d_S$, respectively. We prove that the PQ-Tree Search problem is NP-hard and propose a parameterized algorithm that solves the optimization variant of PQ-Tree Search in $O^*(2^γ)$ time, where $γ$ is the maximum degree of a node in $T$ and $O^*$ is used to hide factors polynomial in the input size. The algorithm is implemented as a search tool, denoted PQFinder, and applied to search for instances of chromosomal gene clusters in plasmids, within a dataset of 1,487 prokaryotic genomes. We report on 29 chromosomal gene clusters that are rearranged in plasmids, where the rearrangements are guided by the corresponding PQ-tree. One of these results, coding for a heavy metal efflux pump, is further analysed to exemplify how PQFinder can be harnessed to reveal interesting new structural variants of known gene clusters. The code for the tool as well as all the data needed to reconstruct the results are publicly available on GitHub (github.com/GaliaZim/PQFinder).
Genome sequence analysis has enabled significant advancements in medical and scientific areas such as personalized medicine, outbreak tracing, and the understanding of evolution. Unfortunately, it is currently bottlenecked by the computational power and memory bandwidth limitations of existing systems, as many of the steps in genome sequence analysis must process a large amount of data. A major contributor to this bottleneck is approximate string matching (ASM). We propose GenASM, the first ASM acceleration framework for genome sequence analysis. We modify the underlying ASM algorithm (Bitap) …
Analyzing a functional genomics experiment, such as ATAC-, ChIP- or RNA-sequencing, requires reference data including a genome assembly and gene annotation. These resources can generally be retrieved from different organizations and in different versions. Most bioinformatic workflows require the user to supply this genomic data manually, which can be a tedious and error-prone process. Here we present genomepy, which can search, download, and preprocess the right genomic data for your analysis. Genomepy can search genomic data on NCBI, Ensembl, UCSC and GENCODE, and compare available gene annot…
Motivation: Manual curation of genome-scale reconstructions is laborious, yet existing automated curation tools typically do not take species-specific experimental data and manually refined genome annotations into account. Results: We developed DEMETER, a COBRA Toolbox extension that enables the efficient simultaneous refinement of thousands of draft genome-scale reconstructions while ensuring adherence to the quality standards in the field, agreement with available experimental data, and refinement of pathways based on manually refined genome annotations. Availability: DEMETER and tutorials a…
CRISPR-Cas systems are an adaptive immunity that protects prokaryotes against foreign genetic elements. Genetic templates acquired during past infection events enable DNA-interacting enzymes to recognize foreign DNA for destruction. Due to the programmability and specificity of these genetic templates, CRISPR-Cas systems are potential alternative antibiotics that can be engineered to self-target antimicrobial resistance genes on the chromosome or plasmid. However, several fundamental questions remain to repurpose these tools against drug-resistant bacteria. For endogenous CRISPR-Cas self-targe…
Simon Fraser University（西蒙弗雷泽大学）；University of Toronto（多伦多大学）；Princess Margaret Cancer Centre（玛格丽特公主癌症中心）；Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence（矢量人工智能研究所）
Segmentation and genome annotation (SAGA) algorithms are widely used to understand genome activity and gene regulation. These algorithms take as input epigenomic datasets, such as chromatin immunoprecipitation-sequencing (ChIP-seq) measurements of histone modifications or transcription factor binding. They partition the genome and assign a label to each segment such that positions with the same label exhibit similar patterns of input data. SAGA algorithms discover categories of activity such as promoters, enhancers, or parts of genes without prior knowledge of known genomic elements. In this s…
Whole Genome Transformer for Gene Interaction Effects in Microbiome Habitat Specificity
Technical University of Munich（慕尼黑工业大学）；Helmholtz Munich（亥姆霍兹慕尼黑中心）；Technical University of Vienna（维也纳技术大学）；Max Planck Institute for Biology（马克斯·普朗克生物研究所）
Motivation: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have successfully identified thousands of genetic risk loci for complex traits and diseases. Most of these GWAS loci lie in regulatory regions of the genome and the gene through which each GWAS risk locus exerts its effects is not always clear. Many computational methods utilizing biological data sources have been proposed to identify putative casual genes at GWAS loci; however, these methods can be improved upon. Results: We present the Relations-Maximization Method, a dense module searching method to identify putative causal genes at GWAS lo…
Bayesian Genome- and Epigenome-wide Association Studies with Gene Level Dependence
高通量遗传和表观遗传数据经常被筛选与观察到的表型的关联。例如，人们可能希望测试数十万个遗传变异或DNA甲基化位点与疾病状态的关联。这些基因组变量可以自然地根据它们编码的基因以及其他标准进行分组。然而，在这种应用中的标准实践是独立筛选，具有对多重性的普遍校正。我们提出了一种贝叶斯方法，其中一个给定的基因组变量的关联的先验概率取决于它的基因，和基因特异性的概率建模非参数。这种分层模型允许适当的基因和全基因组多重性调整，并可以被纳入到各种贝叶斯关联筛选方法中，计算复杂性的增加可以忽略不计。我们描述了一个应用程序，以筛选低级别胶质瘤和多形性胶质母细胞瘤肿瘤样本之间的DNA甲基化差异的癌症基因组图谱。软件可通过https://github.com/lockEF/BayesianScreening上的BayesianScreening for R软件包获得。
