Prospecting for Proposals for GSoC 2024

The Open Genome Informatics group and GMOD has submitted an application for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) this year, and we are soliciting project ideas from people and groups involved in the GMOD project.

GSoC is a global program run by Google to encourage students to get real-world experience of participating in a software project; students work on a project over the summer months and receive a stipend from Google for participating. Thousands of organizations of different sizes participate in GSoC, with the common factor being that they must produce open-source code.

Please take a look at the GSoC wiki page and think about any projects that might work well for a GSoC student, and add them to the wiki. If you are interested in being a mentor, don't hesitate to get in touch with us at robin.haw@oicr.on.ca help@gmod.org.

If you have any questions--e.g. what constitutes an appropriate project; whether your idea is sufficiently GMOD-related--please feel free to email rhaw@oicr.on.ca and help@gmod.org for advice!

JBrowse2 v1.1.0 Released

Contents

• 1 We're pleased to announce a new release of JBrowse Web!
  • 1.1 Changed callbacks language from JavaScript to Jexl
  • 1.2 Fetch intron and upstream/downstream sequences
  • 1.3 Interactive documentation using Storybook
  • 1.4 Enhanced navigation to drawer widget stack
  • 1.5 Downloads
  • 1.6 1.1.0 (2021-03-29)
    • 1.6.1 🚀 Enhancement
    • 1.6.2 🐛 Bug Fix
    • 1.6.3 📝 Documentation
    • 1.6.4 🏠 Internal
    • 1.6.5 Committers: 6

We're pleased to announce a new release of JBrowse Web!

(Reposted by permission from https://jbrowse.org/jb2/blog/2021/03/29/v1.1.0-release

Changed callbacks language from JavaScript to Jexl

To allow users to safely and seamlessly share advanced configurations in sessions, we now use Jexl to express configuration callbacks. Note that this is a breaking change, function()-style callbacks will no longer work.

For details, see the callbacks section of our configuration guide.

Fetch intron and upstream/downstream sequences

We also have several other improvements including the ability to get intron and upstream/downstream sequence in the feature details

<img alt="Upstream downstream.png" src="http://gmod.ohttps://raw.githubusercontent.com/GMOD/gmod.github.io/main/mediawiki/images/thumb/7/76/Upstream_downstream.png/700px-Upstream_downstream.png" width="700" height="248" srcsethttps://raw.githubusercontent.com/GMOD/gmod.github.io/main/mediawiki/images/thumb/7/76/Upstream_downstream.png/1050px-Upstream_downstream.png 1.5x, /mediawiki/images/thumb/7/76/Upstream_downstream.png/1400px-Upstream_downstream.png 2x" />

Interactive documentation using Storybook

Another new update is the first release of our interactive Storybook docs for the embeddable React Linear Genome View. The docs contain live examples of how the LGV component can be used, along with source-code examples. The site can be found here.

Enhanced navigation to drawer widget stack

We have added a dropdown to enhance navigation between stack of active widgets. The update also adds a minimize button to allow quick access to full screen JBrowse web.

See below for demos of the new navigation UI.

<img alt="Minimize button demo.gif" src="http://gmod.ohttps://raw.githubusercontent.com/GMOD/gmod.github.io/main/mediawiki/images/0/0f/Minimize_button_demo.gif" width="480" height="414" />

Demo of using the minimize button in the drawer

Downloads

• v1.1.0

To install JBrowse 2 for the web, you can download the link above, or you can use the JBrowse CLI to automatically download the latest version. See the JBrowse web quick start for more details.

1.1.0 (2021-03-29)

🚀 Enhancement

core

1. 1846 Improve copy+paste in the data grids for feature details (@cmdcolin)
2. 1814 Add ability to get promoter sequence and intron sequence for genes from the feature details panel (@cmdcolin)
3. 1816 Remove some animation effects (@cmdcolin)
4. 1778 Adds dropdown to show drawer widget stack (@teresam856)
5. 1685 Change callbacks language from JavaScript to Jexl (@peterkxie)

Other

1. 1831 Add dialog for launching breakpoint split view from variant feature details (@cmdcolin)
2. 1803 Transcript and gene glyphs can now display implied UTRs, active by default (@cmdcolin)
3. 1808 Add another heuristic for returning gene features from BigBed (@cmdcolin)
4. 1774 Add warning dialog in LGV before returning to import form to prevent accidentally losing the current view (@cmdcolin)

🐛 Bug Fix

core

1. 1811 Check for existence of window more robustly to allow in SSR or node applications (@elliothershberg)
2. 1793 Fix dotplot rendering outside it's allowed bounds (@cmdcolin)
3. 1783 Add hic aborting and fix remoteAbort signal propagation (@cmdcolin)
4. 1723 A few bugfixes (@garrettjstevens)

Other

1. 1815 Clear tracks when using "Return to import form" (@cmdcolin)
2. 1819 Standardized sentence casing on drawer widget titles (@cmdcolin)
3. 1796 Bump generic-filehandle for fixing CORS errors from Chrome cache pollution (@cmdcolin)

📝 Documentation

1. 1824 Add storybook docs page for nextjs usage (@elliothershberg)
2. 1770 1469 storybook deploy (@elliothershberg)
3. 1807 Update developer guide to cover displays, and highlight working external plugins (@cmdcolin)
4. 1779 Collaborative release announcement editing (@rbuels)
5. 1791 Add a couple more demos for our live version with MDX (@cmdcolin)

🏠 Internal

Other

1. 1820 Create v1.1.0.md, draft of release announcements (@garrettjstevens)
2. 1823 Add note about previewing changelog to CONTRIBUTING.md (@garrettjstevens)

core

1. 1834 Change jbrowse-components monorepo default branch from 'master' to 'main' (@rbuels)

Committers: 6

• Colin Diesh (@cmdcolin)
• Elliot Hershberg (@elliothershberg)
• Garrett Stevens (@garrettjstevens)
• Peter Xie (@peterkxie)
• Robert Buels (@rbuels)
• Teresa Martinez (@teresam856)

Prospecting for Proposals for GSoC 2021

The Genome Informatics group and GMOD will be submitting an application for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) this year, and we are soliciting project ideas from people and groups involved in the GMOD project.

GSoC is a global program run by Google to encourage students to get real-world experience of participating in a software project; students work on a project over the summer months and receive a stipend from Google for participating. Thousands of organizations of many different sizes take part in GSoC, with the common factor being that they must produce open-source code.

Please take a look at the GSoC wiki page and think about any projects that might work well for a GSoC student, and add them to the wiki. If you are interested in being a mentor, please contact us at robin.haw@oicr.on.ca help@gmod.org.

If you have any questions--e.g. what constitutes an appropriate project; whether your idea is sufficiently GMOD-related--please feel free to email robin.haw@oicr.on.ca and help@gmod.org for advice!

Codefest 2020

Handlery Hotel in the Balboa room
(down the street from the Town and Country Hotel)
San Diego, California
January 9-10, 2020 </strong>

Immediately before Plant and Animal Genome XXVIII (PAG 2020)

</center>

Participant list now available

There will be a GMOD codefest occurring before the Plant and Animal Genomes meeting in San Diego. The codefest will be at the Town and Country hotel on January 9 and 10. If you would like to suggest a problem or project to address, add it to this Google Doc. The codefest is open to anyone who'd like to work on any GMOD project (or, better yet, any combination of GMOD projects), including but not limited to

• Tripal
• Chado
• JBrowse (1 and 2)
• Apollo
• Galaxy
• InterMine

We already know that there will be Tripal, Chado, Apollo and JBrowse developers present.

Agenda

Thursday:

Friday:

• Note: the Tripal steering committee will meet on Friday from 12:00 - 3:00 pm at the Postcard Bistro in the Handlery.

Tripal 3.5 Released

This Tripal release includes major performance improvements including an improved and blazing fast GFF3 loader. Follow standard Drupal updating procedures to update. Changes in this version:

1. Performance improvements to the Cross References, Relationships, and References.
2. A rewritten GFF3 loader that is extremely fast, even with a fully populated Tripal site.
3. A new Sequences fields that combines reference-dervied sequences with primary sequences, and CDS/proteins for mRNA features and sequences now have more informative definition lines for FASTA sequences.
4. Updates to the online documentation
5. Bug fixes in web services
6. Bug fixes in the OBO loader for ontologies that won't import.

JBrowse 2 release

We are pleased to announce the first public release of JBrowse 2!

JBrowse 2 is the successor to JBrowse, but is a completely new application written with modern web standards and frameworks.

Some of the features new to JBrowse 2 include:

• New types of views, including circular, synteny, and dotplot views
• Graphical configuration editing
• Connections to resources such as UCSC Track Hubs

You can see some demos of JBrowse 2 in action here. To get started using JBrowse 2, visit our quickstart guide here.

We'd love to hear what you think! You can find information about how to contact us here.

The JBrowse Team

Prospecting for Proposals for GSoC 2020

The Genome Informatics group and GMOD will be submitting an application for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) this year, and we are soliciting project ideas from people and groups involved in the GMOD project.

GSoC is a global program run by Google to encourage students to get real-world experience of participating in a software project; students work on a project over the summer months and receive a stipend from Google for participating. Thousands of organizations of many different sizes take part in GSoC, with the common factor being that they must produce open-source code.

Please take a look at the GSoC wiki page and think about any projects that might work well for a GSoC student, and add them to the wiki. If you are interested in being a mentor, please contact us at robin.haw@oicr.on.ca help@gmod.org.

If you have any questions--e.g. what constitutes an appropriate project; whether your idea is sufficiently GMOD-related--please feel free to email robin.haw@oicr.on.ca and help@gmod.org for advice!

Call for PAG Abstracts

Call for PAG Abstracts

Time is short!

If you want to attend PAG and would like to present on a topic that would be of interest to the GMOD community, please send an abstract or at least a descriptive title to help@gmod.org. Types of talks typically include updates on GMOD software projects, usage stories for successful sites, proposals for new GMOD projects and descriptions of plugins for existing GMOD software projects like Tripal, JBrowse and Galaxy.

Please consider giving a talk and sharing your experience and ideas!

New GMOD Server

GMOD.org has a new home

Due to a old server being retired, gmod.org has a new home. In the course of migrating the server, we also had to update the version of MediaWiki that is powering the site. If you notice any problems with gmod.org, please send an email to help at gmod dot org to let us know what's going on.

GMOD-JBrowse 2016 Survey

Hello Genome Informaticians,

The following survey is aimed at users (and potential users) of GMOD genome databases, especially the JBrowse genome browser. It will directly inform the priorities for renewal of the R01 that funds JBrowse software development and the GMOD helpdesk.

We know surveys are thankless and dull. Your time in filling out this one is GREATLY appreciated.

https://goo.gl/forms/1bKIuAMjGKrS0hUi1

Thanks & best wishes,

The JBrowse team

GCC2016

The 2016 Galaxy Community Conference (GCC2016) will be held June 25-29, at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, United states, immediately before the June 2016 GMOD Meeting, also in Bloomington. Galaxy is a GMOD Component which interacts with many other GMOD Components, including:

• Tripal: A web front end for Chado databases. Galaxy is working with the Tripal project to make Galaxy be Tripal's analysis engine.
• JBrowse: A client-side genome browser and successor to the venerable GBrowse. JBrowse as a Galaxy Tool was presented by Helena Rasche at GCC2015. Ian Holmes, the JBrowse PI, has put JBrowse-Galaxy integration at "top of the list" for JBrowse's infrastructure upcoming infrastructure work.
• MAKER: A genome annotation pipeline that integrates several gene annotation engines, and combines them to produce annotation that is better than any individual tool produces. A MAKER-Galaxy by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada was presented at ISMB 2014.
• InterMine and BioMart: These are both popular data sources that are integrated with Galaxy.

Galaxy Community Conferences are an opportunity to participate in presentations, discussions, poster sessions, lightning talks and breakouts, all about high-throughput biology and the tools that support it.  The conference also includes two days of training offering in-depth topic coverage across several concurrent sessions, and two days of hackathons.

Oral presentation abstract submission closes April 8; poster and demo abstract submission close May 20; and scholarship applications close May 1.

2016 GMOD Meeting

The next GMOD Community Meeting will be held at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, United States, June 30-July 1, directly after the 2016 Galaxy Community Conference (GCC2016). GMOD Meetings are a mix of user and developer presentations, and are a great place to find out what is happening in the project, what's coming up, and what others are doing.

Please register online at Eventbrite by June 20th 2016. Early bird registration ends May 21.

For those who would like to present a talk or poster, the meeting registration form includes a section for submitting the presentation title and abstract.

If you have any suggestions or requests for the meeting, please contact the GMOD help desk.

Please Support EcoCyc

EcoCyc, the E. coli information resource and one of the resources offered by the Pathway Tools group, is in need of letters of support from the community after receiving a poor grant review, which could result in a complete loss of funding on July 1st, 2014. If you are a user of EcoCyc, please consider writing a short letter in support of this vital resource. The deadline for letters is May 26th, 2014.

From the Pathway Tools website

ECOCYC FUNDING CRISIS -- DEADLINE MAY 26

EcoCyc received a very unfavorable grant review in February 2014. We are in discussions with the NIH to resolve this situation.

EcoCyc's usage has steadily increased. We made very strong progress on our challenging aims from the current grant period, and the project has produced many publications. EcoCyc received excellent reviews on previous grant applications. Furthermore, the needs of the prokaryotic research community for the content and software tools offered by EcoCyc have never been higher.

In the worst case, we will lose all funding on July 1, 2014 and be forced to re-apply. Even in the best case, we may receive a crippling funding cut that causes us to fall behind in its manual literature curation effort, and requires us to lay off experienced curation staff until funding can be obtained.

These events could seriously undermine EcoCyc, end the project altogether, or force us to begin charging usage fees.

To maintain EcoCyc as the free, up to date, and high-quality resource that you depend on, please tell the NIH what EcoCyc means to your research. Please click the button below to submit a PDF letter of support on institutional letterhead, or a short support statement, explaining the importance of EcoCyc.

We ask all regular users to submit; a short statement will take less than two minutes of your time. Students and post-docs, please ask your lab head to submit in addition to your submission.

More information on what to write and where to submit letters is available at the Pathway Tools website.

June 2014 WebApollo Hackathon

Berkeley Bioinformatics Open-Source Projects (BBOP) invites you to join us this summer for a WebApollo Hackathon at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California.

When: Monday, June 2 - 6, 2014

Where: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Building 74 (B74), Room 104. 1 Cyclotron Rd, Berkeley, CA 94720

What: five days of intensive, collaborative WebApollo development!

For five days developers will work on new features of interest to their research communities, improve existing features, and collaborate on developing features of interest to other colleagues.

Participants should:

• be able to set up their own WebApollo server before arriving in Berkeley, including Postgres, Tomcat, etc.
• code comfortably in JavaScript (client) and Java (server).

What will we do while we are there? You tell us! Send your suggestions for feature development, your questions, and any additional comments to apollo [dash] dev [at] lists [dot] lbl [dot] gov

Registration is free of charge, but tickets are required. Register online!

Participants are responsible for arranging travel and accommodation on their own.

More details: WebApollo Hackathon information

via Monica Munoz-Torres

Applications Open for GMOD Online Training

GMOD will be holding its first online training course for those interested in the set up and use of GMOD components.

The course will be held from Monday 19th May to Friday 23rd May 2014, and will cover core GMOD software, including GBrowse and JBrowse, Galaxy, MAKER, Tripal, WebApollo, Canto, and the Chado database.

If you are interested in attending, please see GMOD Online Training 2014 for more information and to submit your application.

Canto Workshop at Biocuration 2014

GMOD will be running a workshop at Biocuration 2014 to demonstrate the use of Canto, on Wednesday 9th April in the afternoon. Canto is a literature curation tool that allows users to create functional annotations for genes and gene products using OBO (ontology) terms. Canto will soon be added to GMOD in the Cloud, and this workshop will show participants how to get a GMOD in the Cloud instance up and running--it takes less than ten minutes!--and how to use Canto for literature curation.

We will have more information closer to the time.

Tripal 2.0a released

The Tripal Development Team is pleased to announce an alpha release of Tripal 2.0 for Drupal 7. This release is expected to have bugs and there is some functionality still under development. However, this release is made to help early adopters of Tripal for Drupal 7. Reports of bugs or other issues are highly welcomed. Below are available resources for Tripal 2.0a

   Download Instructions
   New Functionality
   Installation and Tutorial
   Tripal 2.0 API site
   Tripal Mailing List
   Tripal Developer's Mailing List

The Installation tutorial is still under development but should have enough information for complete installation of Tripal v2.0a as well as loading of organisms and features.

Precompiled Ontologies in Chado

Helena Rasche and the Center for Phage Technology at Texas A&M University are making Chado database dumps of precompiled ontologies publicly available to save other Chado users the time and hassle of downloading and compiling the ontologies themselves.

Go to the download site.

The ontologies currently available are:

• Chado Feature Properties
• Gene Ontology
• Plant Ontology
• Relationship Ontology
• Sequence Ontology

These are updated weekly; the workflow is as follows:

• clone Chado from SVN
• build
• load ontologies
• dump database as SQL
• upload to a publicly accessible webserver

Please contact Helena if you are interested in having other ontologies added to the dumps, other builds with different (sub)sets of ontologies, or archived copies of schemas over time.

Note that none of the Chado-related scripts are installed, and the GMOD conf files are not created in GMOD_ROOT. For remote access (e.g., via Artemis), and tools that do not make use of GMOD_ROOT locally, this is not a problem.

GCC2014 Registration is Open

We are pleased to announce that Early Registration and Talk and Poster Abstract Submission are now open for the 2014 Galaxy Community Conference (GCC2014).

GCC2014 will be held at the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University, in Baltimore, Maryland, United States, from June 30 through July 2, 2014. GCC2014 starts with a Training Day featuring five parallel tracks, each with three, two and half hour long workshops. There are 13 different topics spanning the full Galactic spectrum of topics. Take a look!

Early registration is now open. Register early and avoid paying 70% more for regular registration costs.  Early registration is very affordable, with combined registration (Training Day + main meeting) starting at $140 for post-docs and students. Registration is capped this year at 250 participants, and we expect to hit that limit. Registering early assures you a place at the conference and also a spot in the Training Day workshops you want to attend.

You can also book affordable conference housing at the same time you register. See the conference Logistics page for details on this and other housing options.

Abstract submission for both oral presentations and posters is also open.  Abstract submission for oral presentations closes April 4, while poster submission closes April 25. Poster authors will be notified of acceptance status within two weeks of submission, while presentation authors will be notified no later than May2.  Please consider presenting your work. If you are dealing with big biological data, then this meeting wants to hear about your work.

The GigaScience "Galaxy: Data Intensive and Reproducible Research" series announced for the last conference has published its first papers, and is continuing to take submissions for this year's meeting and beyond. BGI is also continuing to cover the article processing charges until the end of the year, and for more information see their latest update.

Thanks, and hope to see you in Baltimore!

The http:GCC2014 Organizing Committee

GMOD Paper Cuts, Feb 10th, 2014

__NOFACTBOX__

GMOD Paper Cuts is a periodic selection of choice cuts from the scientific literature featuring interesting, exciting, or otherwise eye-catching GMOD-related work.

If you would like a paper to appear in GMOD Paper Cuts, please email the details to the GMOD helpdesk. Ideally the paper should be in an open-access publication so that anyone can read it.

For more GMOD and GMOD-related papers, and to contribute your own GMOD-related publications, join our Mendeley group.

Finding the missing honey bee genes: lessons learned from a genome upgrade ^[1]

The first generation of genome sequence assemblies and annotations have had a significant impact upon our understanding of the biology of the sequenced species, the phylogenetic relationships among species, the study of populations within and across species, and have informed the biology of humans. As only a few Metazoan genomes are approaching finished quality (human, mouse, fly and worm), there is room for improvement of most genome assemblies. The honey bee (Apis mellifera) genome, published in 2006, was noted for its bimodal GC content distribution that affected the quality of the assembly in some regions and for fewer genes in the initial gene set (OGSv1.0) compared to what would be expected based on other sequenced insect genomes.

Here, we report an improved honey bee genome assembly (Amel_4.5) with a new gene annotation set (OGSv3.2), and show that the honey bee genome contains a number of genes similar to that of other insect genomes, contrary to what was suggested in OGSv1.0. The new genome assembly is more contiguous and complete and the new gene set includes ~5000 more protein-coding genes, 50% more than previously reported. About 1/6 of the additional genes were due to improvements to the assembly, and the remaining were inferred based on new RNAseq and protein data.

Lessons learned from this genome upgrade have important implications for future genome sequencing projects. Furthermore, the improvements significantly enhance genomic resources for the honey bee, a key model for social behavior and essential to global ecology through pollination.

Interesting findings from the new assembly of the honey bee genome, including many more genes than were found in the initial assembly. The Hymenoptera Genome Database uses numerous GMOD resources, including MAKER for automated genome annotation, JBrowse and GBrowse for sequence browsing, and WebApollo for community genome annotation.

Highly Specific and Efficient CRISPR/Cas9-Catalyzed Homology-Directed Repair in Drosophila ^[2]

We and others recently demonstrated that the readily programmable CRISPR/Cas9 system can be used to edit the Drosophila genome. However, most applications to date have relied on aberrant DNA repair to stochastically generate frame-shifting indels and adoption has been limited by a lack of tools for efficient identification of targeted events. Here we report optimized tools and techniques for expanded application of the CRISPR/Cas9 system in Drosophila through homology-directed repair (HDR) with double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) donor templates that facilitate complex genome engineering through the precise incorporation of large DNA sequences including screenable markers. Using these donors, we demonstrate the replacement of a gene with exogenous sequences and the generation of a conditional allele. To optimize efficiency and specificity, we generated transgenic flies that express Cas9 in the germline, and directly compared HDR and off-target cleavage rates of different approaches for delivering CRISPR components. We also investigated HDR efficiency in a mutant background previously demonstrated to bias DNA repair towards HDR. Finally, we developed a web-based tool that identifies CRISPR target sites and evaluates their potential for off-target cleavage using empirically rooted rules. Overall, we have found that injection of a dsDNA donor and guide RNA-encoding plasmids into vasa-Cas9 flies yields the highest efficiency HDR, and that target sites can be selected to avoid off-target mutations. Efficient and specific CRISPR/Cas9-mediated HDR opens the door to a broad array of complex genome modifications and greatly expands the utility of CRISPR technology for Drosophila research.

CRISPR is one of the most exciting recent technological advancements of the past couple of years. This paper reports new techniques and tools for using the CRISPR/Cas9 system for complex genome engineering. For more information, see the flyCRISPR website.

Analysis of Global Gene Expression in Brachypodium distachyon Reveals Extensive Network Plasticity in Response to Abiotic Stress ^[3]

Brachypodium distachyon is a close relative of many important cereal crops. Abiotic stress tolerance has a significant impact on productivity of agriculturally important food and feedstock crops. Analysis of the transcriptome of Brachypodium after chilling, high-salinity, drought, and heat stresses revealed diverse differential expression of many transcripts. Weighted Gene Co-Expression Network Analysis revealed 22 distinct gene modules with specific profiles of expression under each stress. Promoter analysis implicated short DNA sequences directly upstream of module members in the regulation of 21 of 22 modules. Functional analysis of module members revealed enrichment in functional terms for 10 of 22 network modules. Analysis of condition-specific correlations between differentially expressed gene pairs revealed extensive plasticity in the expression relationships of gene pairs. Photosynthesis, cell cycle, and cell wall expression modules were down-regulated by all abiotic stresses. Modules which were up-regulated by each abiotic stress fell into diverse and unique gene ontology GO categories. This study provides genomics resources and improves our understanding of abiotic stress responses of Brachypodium.

Check out the JBrowse-powered Brachypodium web genome browser and other resources on the new Brachypodium website!

Analyses of Hypomethylated Oil Palm Gene Space^[4]

Demand for palm oil has been increasing by an average of ~8% the past decade and currently accounts for about 59% of the world's vegetable oil market. This drives the need to increase palm oil production. Nevertheless, due to the increasing need for sustainable production, it is imperative to increase productivity rather than the area cultivated. Studies on the oil palm genome are essential to help identify genes or markers that are associated with important processes or traits, such as flowering, yield and disease resistance. To achieve this, 294,115 and 150,744 sequences from the hypomethylated or gene-rich regions of Elaeis guineensis and E. oleifera genome were sequenced and assembled into contigs. An additional 16,427 shot-gun sequences and 176 bacterial artificial chromosomes (BAC) were also generated to check the quality of libraries constructed. Comparison of these sequences revealed that although the methylation-filtered libraries were sequenced at low coverage, they still tagged at least 66% of the RefSeq supported genes in the BAC and had a filtration power of at least 2.0. A total 33,752 microsatellites and 40,820 high-quality single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers were identified. These represent the most comprehensive collection of microsatellites and SNPs to date and would be an important resource for genetic mapping and association studies. The gene models predicted from the assembled contigs were mined for genes of interest, and 242, 65 and 14 oil palm transcription factors, resistance genes and miRNAs were identified respectively. Examples of the transcriptional factors tagged include those associated with floral development and tissue culture, such as homeodomain proteins, MADS, Squamosa and Apetala2. The E. guineensis and E. oleifera hypomethylated sequences provide an important resource to understand the molecular mechanisms associated with important agronomic traits in oil palm.

The newly-sequenced oil palm genome used the MAKER automated annotation pipeline. The oil palm is one of a number of genomics projects taking off in Malaysia at the moment. Perfect timing for a GMOD workshop!

Production of a reference transcriptome and transcriptomic database (EdwardsiellaBase) for the lined sea anemone, Edwardsiella lineata, a parasitic cnidarian ^[5]

The lined sea anemone Edwardsiella lineata is an informative model system for evolutionary-developmental studies of parasitism. In this species, it is possible to compare alternate developmental pathways leading from a larva to either a free-living polyp or a vermiform parasite that inhabits the mesoglea of a ctenophore host. Additionally, E. lineata is confamilial with the model cnidarian Nematostella vectensis, providing an opportunity for comparative genomic, molecular and organismal studies.

[...]

The transcriptomic data and database described here provide a platform for studying the evolutionary developmental genomics of a derived parasitic life cycle. In addition, these data from E. lineata will aid in the interpretation of evolutionary novelties in gene sequence or structure that have been reported for the model cnidarian N. vectensis (e.g., the split NF-κB locus). Finally, we include custom computational tools to facilitate the annotation of a transcriptome based on high-throughput sequencing data obtained from a “non-model system.”

Information and resources for the newly-sequenced cnidarian E. lineata; all genomic data is publicly available at EdwardsiellaBase, and can be searched according to contig ID, gene ontology, protein family motif (Pfam), enzyme commission number, and BLAST. The alignment of the raw reads to the contigs can also be visualized via JBrowse.

Happy reading!

1. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named DOI:10.1186.2F1471-2164-15-86
2. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named DOI:10.1534.2Fgenetics.113.160713
3. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named DOI:10.1371.2Fjournal.pone.0087499
4. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named DOI:10.1371.2Fjournal.pone.0086728
5. ↑ Cite error: Invalid <ref> tag; no text was provided for refs named DOI:10.1186.2F1471-2164-15-71