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At least 73 records · Page 4

GNET2: an R package for constructing gene regulatory networks from transcriptomic data

Abstract Motivation The Gene Network Estimation Tool (GNET) is designed to build gene regulatory networks (GRNs) from transcriptomic gene expression data with a probabilistic graphical model. The data preprocessing, model construction and visualization modules of the original GNET software were developed on different programming platforms, which were inconvenient for users to deploy and use. Results Here, we present GNET2, an improved implementation of GNET as an integrated R package. GNET2 provides more flexibility for parameter initialization and regulatory module construction based on the core iterative modeling process of the original algorithm. The data exchange interface of GNET2 is handled within an R session automatically. Given the growing demand for regulatory network reconstruction from transcriptomic data, GNET2 offers a convenient option for GRN inference on large datasets. Availability and implementation The source code of GNET2 is available at https://github.com/jianlin-cheng/GNET2. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Predicting Coculture Substrate Depletion (PCSD) v1

(based on Erbilgin et al., BMC Bioinformatics, 2017, 18:57). Mixed cultures of microbial species are increasingly used to carry out a specific task in lieu of engineering a single microbe to do the same task. However, knowing how different species' metabolisms will integrate to reach a desired outcome is a difficult problem that has been studied in great detail--but only using steady-state models. Mixed cultures used for biotechnology processes, as well as microbial communities that exist in nature and crop agriculture, are metabolically dynamic systems. Studying the temporal substrate utilization by individuals is individuals in mixed cultures is an important first step in developing approaches to better model these biochemical processes and microbial communities found in nature. The 2017-004 software is comprised of four custom iPython notebooks that were used for all computational tasks in the experimental work described in "Dynamic substrate preferences predict metabolic properties of a simple microbial consortium" (Erbilgin et al., BMC Bioinformatics, 2017). The results indicate that a significant portion of a model community's overall metabolism can be predicted based on the metabolism of the individuals. The results further suggest that, when the mixed culture's substrate depletion significantly deviates from such a prediction, this may highlight potential metabolic pathways affected by species-species microbial interactions, leading to hypotheses about how a particular microbial community's structure and function may be modulated to perform a particular biotechnological goal.

Bowen, Benjamin↗

Nerpa: A Tool for Discovering Biosynthetic Gene Clusters of Bacterial Nonribosomal Peptides

Microbial natural products are a major source of bioactive compounds for drug discovery. Among these molecules, nonribosomal peptides (NRPs) represent a diverse class of natural products that include antibiotics, immunosuppressants, and anticancer agents. Recent breakthroughs in natural product discovery have revealed the chemical structure of several thousand NRPs. However, biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs) encoding them are known only for a few hundred compounds. Here, we developed Nerpa, a computational method for the high-throughput discovery of novel BGCs responsible for producing known NRPs. After searching 13,399 representative bacterial genomes from the RefSeq repository against 8368 known NRPs, Nerpa linked 117 BGCs to their products. We further experimentally validated the predicted BGC of ngercheumicin from Photobacterium galatheae via mass spectrometry. Nerpa supports searching new genomes against thousands of known NRP structures, and novel molecular structures against tens of thousands of bacterial genomes. The availability of these tools can enhance our understanding of NRP synthesis and the function of their biosynthetic enzymes.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

SBbadger: biochemical reaction networks with definable degree distributions

Abstract Motivation An essential step in developing computational tools for the inference, optimization and simulation of biochemical reaction networks is gauging tool performance against earlier efforts using an appropriate set of benchmarks. General strategies for the assembly of benchmark models include collection from the literature, creation via subnetwork extraction and de novo generation. However, with respect to biochemical reaction networks, these approaches and their associated tools are either poorly suited to generate models that reflect the wide range of properties found in natural biochemical networks or to do so in numbers that enable rigorous statistical analysis. Results In this work, we present SBbadger, a python-based software tool for the generation of synthetic biochemical reaction or metabolic networks with user-defined degree distributions, multiple available kinetic formalisms and a host of other definable properties. SBbadger thus enables the creation of benchmark model sets that reflect properties of biological systems and generate the kinetics and model structures typically targeted by computational analysis and inference software. Here, we detail the computational and algorithmic workflow of SBbadger, demonstrate its performance under various settings, provide sample outputs and compare it to currently available biochemical reaction network generation software. Availability and implementation SBbadger is implemented in Python and is freely available at https://github.com/sys-bio/SBbadger and via PyPI at https://pypi.org/project/SBbadger/. Documentation can be found at https://SBbadger.readthedocs.io. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

PIXiE: an algorithm for automated ion mobility arrival time extraction and collision cross section calculation using global data association

Abstract Motivation Drift tube ion mobility spectrometry coupled with mass spectrometry (DTIMS-MS) is increasingly implemented in high throughput omics workflows, and new informatics approaches are necessary for processing the associated data. To automatically extract arrival times for molecules measured by DTIMS at multiple electric fields and compute their associated collisional cross sections (CCS), we created the PNNL Ion Mobility Cross Section Extractor (PIXiE). The primary application presented for this algorithm is the extraction of data that can then be used to create a reference library of experimental CCS values for use in high throughput omics analyses. Results We demonstrate the utility of this approach by automatically extracting arrival times and calculating the associated CCSs for a set of endogenous metabolites and xenobiotics. The PIXiE-generated CCS values were within error of those calculated using commercially available instrument vendor software. Availability and implementation PIXiE is an open-source tool, freely available on Github. The documentation, source code of the software, and a GUI can be found at https://github.com/PNNL-Comp-Mass-Spec/PIXiE and the source code of the backend workflow library used by PIXiE can be found at https://github.com/PNNL-Comp-Mass-Spec/IMS-Informed-Library. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Ma, Jian↗

DOE BSSD Performance Management Metrics Report Q1

Microbes play key roles in our biosphere, from driving global nutrient cycling to impacting plant, animal and human health and disease. Complex data from microbial genomes, proteins, and metabolites provide a window into these tiny engines that drive life on our planet. Yet these data are dispersed among researchers’ laboratories and various repositories, making it difficult to access. This calls for new ways of managing data, improving data interoperability, advancing community standards, and creating an infrastructure where data are shared efficiently. We have built the National Microbiome Data Collaborative (NMDC) to advance how scientists create, use, and reuse data to redefine the way we understand and harness the power of microbes. The vision of the National Microbiome Data Collaborative (NMDC) is to drive a microbiome data sharing network connecting data, people, and ideas to advance microbiome innovation and discovery. The NMDC was launched in 2019 and brought together DOE National Laboratories to collaborate across resources, capabilities, and expertise. The NMDC team was strategically assembled to include software developers, microbial researchers, metadata experts, and multi-omics specialists. The diversity of the NMDC team reflects the inherently interdisciplinary nature of microbiome science, and we leverage the strengths of the DOE National Laboratory system. Towards BER’s goal of advancing an iterative systems biology approach to the understanding of microbial genomes, the NMDC serves as a foundation for infrastructure, data standards, and community building. Together with the flagship DOE User Facilities, the Joint Genome Institute (JGI) and the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), we are developing core capabilities in metadata standards for environmental descriptors and sample handling and processing; standardized bioinformatic workflows; an interface for data search and access; and robust community engagement activities. The NMDC production platform supports long-term data infrastructure and community building for BER’s bioenergy and environmental research goals. Our approach leverages lessons learned and an ambitious framework for collaborative, interdisciplinary data infrastructure to support microbiome research. The NMDC supports data, information, and knowledge access through three defined software tools – the Submission Portal, NMDC EDGE, and the Data Portal – driven by community needs. Herein, we describe the value proposition for the microbiome research community, our overarching strategy, and challenges and opportunities for developing the NMDC as both an infrastructure and community engagement program.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

SDN-NGenIA, a Software Defined Next Generation Integrated Architecture for HEP and Data Intensive Science

This project aims to enable the LHC and other leading programs in high energy physics and other global science domains funded by the DOE to operate with a new level of efficiency and control, through the development of a Next Generation Integrated Architecture (NGenIA) based on intelligent software defined network (SDN)-driven network systems coupled to high throughput applications. While the initial focus is on the challenging LHC use case, the systems and products being developed are general, and apply to many fields of data intensive science ranging from astrophysical sky surveys to bioinformatics and earth observation, as well as other organizations facing the challenges of extracting knowledge from distributed multi-petabyte data stores. A central concept in this development program is a new paradigm ‘consistent network operations’ among widely distributed computing and storage facilities, where stable high throughput flows, at set rates, cross load-balanced network paths, up to flexible high water marks that are adjusted in real time to accommodate other network traffic. The large smooth flows are launched and managed by SDN services that act in concert with the experiments’ site-resident data distribution and management systems, to meet the expanding needs of the science programs. The technical goals include the construction of autonomous, intelligent site-resident services that interact dynamically with network-resident services, and with the science programs’ principal data distribution and management tools, to request or command network resources in support of high throughput petascale to exascale workflow Specific work items include: 1. Developing compact Data Transfer Nodes (DTNs) with auto-tuning functions that support data transfer rates in the 100 Gbps to the 1 Tbps range when used with high throughput data transfer applications 2. Deep site orchestration among virtualized clusters, storage subsystems and subnets to successfully coschedule CPU, storage and network resources 3. Science-program designed site architectures, operational modes, and policy and resource usage priorities, adjudicated across multiple network domains and virtual organizations, using the orchestration functions and methods 4. Seamlessly extending end-to-end operation across both extra-site and intra-site boundaries through the use of Open vSwitch (OVS), FireQoS + next generation Science DMZs 5. Novel methods of system integration that enable granular control of extreme scale long distance transfers through flow matching of scattered source-destination address pairs to multi-domain dynamic circuits 6. Funneling massive sets of streams to DTNs at the site edge hosting petascale buffer pools configured for flows of 100 Gbps and up, exploiting state of the art data transfers 7. Adaptive scheduling based on pervasive end-to-end monitoring, including DTN or compute-node resident agents providing comprehensive end-system profiling 8. Developing unsupervised and supervised machine learning and modeling methods to optimize the workflow involving terabyte to multi-petabyte datasets.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

rcsb-api : Python Toolkit for Streamlining Access to RCSB Protein Data Bank APIs

The Protein Data Bank (PDB) was founded in 1971 as the first open-access digital data resource in biology to serve as the single global archive for three-dimensional (3D) macromolecular structure data. Current PDB holdings exceed 230,000 experimentally determined structures of proteins, nucleic acids, viruses, and macromolecular machines. The RCSB Protein Data Bank RCSB.org research-focused web portal facilitates search, analyses, and visualization of every PDB structure along with more than one million Computed Structure Models from AlphaFold DB and the ModelArchive. It is powered by a set of publicly available Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that both support RCSB.org users and provide programmatic access to PDB data. Given the breadth and levels of granularity encompassed in this rich data collection, efficiently accessing the information programmatically may be challenging for new users. RCSB PDB has developed a Python software package, rcsb-api , that facilitates easy and efficient use of RCSB PDB APIs within a Python environment. This software tool is designed to streamline access to the extensive corpus of data housed within the PDB, enabling researchers to search, retrieve, and analyze 3D biostructure data seamlessly. Its use will accelerate research in structural biology, molecular biology and biochemistry, drug discovery, and bioinformatics by providing more efficient tools for data integration and analysis. The new toolkit is available on GitHub (github.com/rcsb/py-rcsb-api) and published to the public Python package repository (PyPI) to foster wider usage and support basic and applied research in fundamental biology, biomedicine, and the energy sciences.

FAIR principles↗

Reactome and the Gene Ontology: digital convergence of data resources

Abstract Motivation Gene Ontology Causal Activity Models (GO-CAMs) assemble individual associations of gene products with cellular components, molecular functions and biological processes into causally linked activity flow models. Pathway databases such as the Reactome Knowledgebase create detailed molecular process descriptions of reactions and assemble them, based on sharing of entities between individual reactions into pathway descriptions. Results To convert the rich content of Reactome into GO-CAMs, we have developed a software tool, Pathways2GO, to convert the entire set of normal human Reactome pathways into GO-CAMs. This conversion yields standard GO annotations from Reactome content and supports enhanced quality control for both Reactome and GO, yielding a nearly seamless conversion between these two resources for the bioinformatics community. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

Unveiling the microbial realm with VEBA 2.0: a modular bioinformatics suite for end-to-end genome-resolved prokaryotic, (micro)eukaryotic and viral multi-omics from either short- or long-read sequencing

Abstract The microbiome is a complex community of microorganisms, encompassing prokaryotic (bacterial and archaeal), eukaryotic, and viral entities. This microbial ensemble plays a pivotal role in influencing the health and productivity of diverse ecosystems while shaping the web of life. However, many software suites developed to study microbiomes analyze only the prokaryotic community and provide limited to no support for viruses and microeukaryotes. Previously, we introduced the Viral Eukaryotic Bacterial Archaeal (VEBA) open-source software suite to address this critical gap in microbiome research by extending genome-resolved analysis beyond prokaryotes to encompass the understudied realms of eukaryotes and viruses. Here we present VEBA 2.0 with key updates including a comprehensive clustered microeukaryotic protein database, rapid genome/protein-level clustering, bioprospecting, non-coding/organelle gene modeling, genome-resolved taxonomic/pathway profiling, long-read support, and containerization. We demonstrate VEBA’s versatile application through the analysis of diverse case studies including marine water, Siberian permafrost, and white-tailed deer lung tissues with the latter showcasing how to identify integrated viruses. VEBA represents a crucial advancement in microbiome research, offering a powerful and accessible software suite that bridges the gap between genomics and biotechnological solutions.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

A novel small RNA S042 increases acid tolerance in Lactococcus lactis F44

Lactococcus lactis, a gram-positive bacterium, encounters various environmental stresses, especially acid stress, during fermentation. Small RNAs (sRNAs) that serve as regulators at post-transcriptional level play important roles in acid stress response. Here, a novel sRNA S042 was identified by RNA-Seq, RT-PCR and Northern blot. The transcription level of s042 was upregulated 2.29-fold under acid stress by Quantitative RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis. Acid tolerance assay showed that overexpressing s042 increased the survival rate of L. lactis F44 and deleting s042 significantly inhibited the viability under acidic conditions. Moreover, the targets were predicted by online software and four genes were chosen as candidates. Among them, argR (arginine regulator) and accD (acetyl-CoA carboxylase carboxyl transferase subunit beta) were validated to be the direct targets activated by S042 through reporter fusion assay. The regulatory mechanism between S042 and its targets was further investigated through Bioinformatics and qRT-PCR. This study served to highlight the role of the novel sRNA S042 in acid resistance of L. lactis and provided new insights into the response mechanism of acid stress.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

KBase Narrative - SOMATA - Motivating Example

A systems view in the biological context is a useful approach to study complex and potentially interacting systems. In this narrative (accompanying an associated manuscript), we take a systems view of software tools themselves. Instead of using software as a single tool, we demonstrate how users can approach software with the same mindset as the organisms they study; as a complex system that can be optimized based on one’s environment and goals. We demonstrate this idea with an example KBase narrative showing how application parameters in KBase tools can change how a researcher perceives and interacts with bioinformatics tools while conducting a common experimental scenario. In this scenario we are trying to understand how different chemical compounds in a growth media change the metabolic pathways utilized in Escherichia coli.

Cashman, Mikaela↗

Parasail: SIMD C library for global, semi-global, and local pairwise sequence alignments

Sequence alignment algorithms are a key component of many bioinformatics applications. Though various fast Smith-Waterman local sequence alignment implementations have been developed for x86 CPUs, most are embedded into larger database search tools. In addition, fast implementations of Needleman-Wunsch global sequence alignment and its semi-global variants are not as widespread. This article presents the first software library for local, global, and semi-global pairwise intra-sequence alignments and improves the performance of previous intra-sequence implementations. As a result, a faster intra-sequence pairwise alignment implementation is described and benchmarked. Using a 375 residue query sequence a speed of 136 billion cell updates per second (GCUPS) was achieved on a dual Intel Xeon E5-2670 12-core processor system, the highest reported for an implementation based on Farrar’s ’striped’ approach. When using only a single thread, parasail was 1.7 times faster than Rognes’s SWIPE. For many score matrices, parasail is faster than BLAST. The software library is designed for 64 bit Linux, OS X, or Windows on processors with SSE2, SSE41, or AVX2. Source code is available from https://github.com/jeffdaily/parasail under the Battelle BSD-style license. In conclusion, applications that require optimal alignment scores could benefit from the improved performance. For the first time, SIMD global, semi-global, and local alignments are available in a stand-alone C library.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

$\mathrm{CROPSR}$: an automated platform for complex genome-wide $\mathrm{CRISPR}$ g$\mathrm{RNA}$ design and validation

CRISPR/Cas9 technology has become an important tool to generate targeted, highly specific genome mutations. The technology has great potential for crop improvement, as crop genomes are tailored to optimize specific traits over generations of breeding. Many crops have highly complex and polyploid genomes, particularly those used for bioenergy or bioproducts. The majority of tools currently available for designing and evaluating gRNAs for CRISPR experiments were developed based on mammalian genomes that do not share the characteristics or design criteria for crop genomes. We have developed an open source tool for genome-wide design and evaluation of gRNA sequences for CRISPR experiments, CROPSR. The genome-wide approach provides a significant decrease in the time required to design a CRISPR experiment, including validation through PCR, at the expense of an overhead compute time required once per genome, at the first run. To better cater to the needs of crop geneticists, restrictions imposed by other packages on design and evaluation of gRNA sequences were lifted. A new machine learning model was developed to provide scores while avoiding situations in which the currently available tools sometimes failed to provide guides for repetitive, A/T-rich genomic regions. We show that our gRNA scoring model provides a significant increase in prediction accuracy over existing tools, even in non-crop genomes. CROPSR provides the scientific community with new methods and a new workflow for performing CRISPR/Cas9 knockout experiments. CROPSR reduces the challenges of working in crops, and helps speed gRNA sequence design, evaluation and validation. We hope that the new software will accelerate discovery and reduce the number of failed experiments.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

ZMPY3D: accelerating protein structure volume analysis through vectorized 3D Zernike moments and Python-based GPU integration

Abstract Motivation Volumetric 3D object analyses are being applied in research fields such as structural bioinformatics, biophysics, and structural biology, with potential integration of artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) techniques. One such method, 3D Zernike moments, has proven valuable in analyzing protein structures (e.g., protein fold classification, protein–protein interaction analysis, and molecular dynamics simulations). Their compactness and efficiency make them amenable to large-scale analyses. Established methods for deriving 3D Zernike moments, however, can be inefficient, particularly when higher order terms are required, hindering broader applications. As the volume of experimental and computationally-predicted protein structure information continues to increase, structural biology has become a “big data” science requiring more efficient analysis tools. Results This application note presents a Python-based software package, ZMPY3D, to accelerate computation of 3D Zernike moments by vectorizing the mathematical formulae and using graphical processing units (GPUs). The package offers popular GPU-supported libraries such as CuPy and TensorFlow together with NumPy implementations, aiming to improve computational efficiency, adaptability, and flexibility in future algorithm development. The ZMPY3D package can be installed via PyPI, and the source code is available from GitHub. Volumetric-based protein 3D structural similarity scores and transform matrix of superposition functionalities have both been implemented, creating a powerful computational tool that will allow the research community to amalgamate 3D Zernike moments with existing AI/ML tools, to advance research and education in protein structure bioinformatics. Availability and implementation ZMPY3D, implemented in Python, is available on GitHub (https://github.com/tawssie/ZMPY3D) and PyPI, released under the GPL License.

Lai, Jhih-Siang (ORCID:0000000156775890)↗

Morpheus Spectral Counter: A computational tool for label-free quantitative mass spectrometry using the Morpheus search engine

Label-free quantitative MS based on the Normalized Spectral Abundance Factor (NSAF) has emerged as a straightforward and robust method to determine the relative abundance of individual proteins within complex mixtures. Here, we present Morpheus Spectral Counter (MSpC) as the first computational tool that directly calculates NSAF values from output obtained from Morpheus, a fast, open-source, peptide-MS/MS matching engine compatible with high-resolution accurate-mass instruments. NSAF has distinct advantages over other MS-based quantification methods, including a higher dynamic range as compared to isobaric tags, no requirement to align and re-extract MS1 peaks, and increased speed. MSpC features an easy to use graphic user interface that additionally calculates both distributed and unique NSAF values to permit analyses of both protein families and isoforms/proteoforms. MSpC determinations of protein concentration were linear over several orders of magnitude based on the analysis of several high-mass accuracy datasets either obtained from PRIDE or generated with total cell extracts spiked with purified Arabidopsis 20S proteasomes. Lastly, the MSpC software was developed in C# and is open sourced under a permissive license with the code made available at http://dcgemperline.github.io/Morpheus_SpC/.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗

ATCCfinder - Download and Search the ATCC Genome Portal

Much strain-specific sequence data exists in research conducted before the deployment of large sequencing repositories, making it challenging to identify and validate the identity of strains used in these studies through bioinformatics and phenotyping. The American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) is an organization that sells a wide variety of microbes with strain-level taxonomy classification and associated sequenced reference genomes. Currently, ATCC does not provide a method for searching for sequence similarity between a query sequence and their database of reference genomes. Here I propose the software ATCCfinder, which utilizes ATCC application interface software (API) to generate query-able databases from ATCC Genome resources.

Koehler, Samuel↗