Archive for May, 2010

Bioinformatics strategies in life sciences: from data processing and data warehousing to biological knowledge extraction.

Authors: Thiele H, Glandorf J, Hufnagel P
With the large variety of Proteomics workflows, as well as the large variety of instruments and data-analysis software available, researchers today face major challenges validating and comparing their Proteomics data. Here we present a new generation of the ProteinScapeTM bioinformatics platform, now enabling researchers to manage Proteomics data from the generation and data warehousing to a central data repository with a strong focus on the improved accuracy, reproducibility and comparability demanded by many researchers in the field. It addresses scientists; current needs in proteomics identification, quantification and validation. But producing large protein lists is not the end point in Proteomics, where one ultimately aims to answer specif…

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PMirP: A pre-microRNA prediction method based on structure–sequence hybrid features

Conclusions: Experimental results show that the proposed method improves the prediction efficiency and accuracy over existing methods. In addition, the PMirP has lower computational complexity and higher throughput prediction capacity than Mipred web server. (Source: Artificial Intelligence in Medicine)

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Chem-Bioinformatics : Computational Modeling of TIBO Derivatives

(Source: Anti-Infective Agents in Medicinal Chemistry)

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Novel structural features in two ZHX homeodomains derived from a systematic study of single and multiple domains

Conclusions:
Although multiple-domain constructs of ZHX1 selected by bioinformatics studies could be expressed solubly, only single homeodomains yielded crystals. The crystal structure of ZHX1 HD4 showed additional hydrophobic interactions relative to many known homeodomains via extensive contacts formed by the novel C-terminal helix V with, in particular, helix I. Additionally, the replacement of some charged covariant residues (which are commonly observed to form salt bridges in non-homeotherms such as the Drosophila ‘engrailed’ homeodomain), by apolar residues further increases hydrophobic contacts within ZHX1 HD4, and potentially stability, relative to engrailed homeodomain. ZHX1 HD4 helix V points away from the normally observed DNA major groove binding site on homeodomains and thus …

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Spatio-structural granularity of biological material entities

Conclusions:
The here presented framework provides a spatio-structural granularity framework for all domain reference ontologies that model cumulative-constitutively organized material entities. With its multi-perspectives approach it allows querying an ontology stored in a database at one’s own desired different levels of detail: The contents of a database can be organized according to diverse granularity perspectives, which in their turn provide different views on its content (i.e. data, knowledge), each organized into different levels of detail. (Source: BMC Bioinformatics – Latest articles)

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GWAMA: software for genome-wide association meta-analysis

Background:
Despite the recent success of genome-wide association studies in identifying novel loci contributing effects to complex human traits, such as type 2 diabetes and obesity, much of the genetic component of variation in these phenotypes remains unexplained. One way to improving power to detect further novel loci is through meta-analysis of studies from the same population, increasing the effective sample size over any individual study. Although statistical software analysis packages incorporate routines for meta-analysis, they are ill equipped to meet the challenges of the scale and complexity of data generated in genome-wide association studies.
Results:
We have developed flexible, open-source software for the meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies. The software incorpo…

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Colonyzer: automated quantification of micro-organism growth characteristics on solid agar

Conclusion:
Colonyzer can automatically quantify culture growth from large batches of captured images of microbial cultures grown during genome-wide scans over the wide range of cell densities observable after highly dilute liquid spot inoculation, as well as after more concentrated pinning inoculation. Colonyzer is open-source, allowing users to assess it, adapt it to particular research requirements and to contribute to its development. (Source: BMC Bioinformatics – Latest articles)

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Bioinformatic identification and characterization of human endothelial cell-restricted genes

In this study, we used a systematic bioinformatics analysis approach to elucidate genes that exhibit an endothelial cell (EC) restricted expression pattern, and began to define their regulation, tissue distribution, and potential biological role.
Results:
Using a high throughput microarray platform, a primary set of 1,191 transcripts that are enriched in different primary ECs compared to non-ECs was identified (LCB >3, FDR (Source: BMC Genomics – Latest articles)

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TargetSpy: a supervised machine learning approach for microRNA target prediction

Conclusion:
Only a few algorithms can predict target sites without demanding a seed match and TargetSpy demonstrates a substantial improvement in prediction accuracy in that class. Furthermore, when conservation and the presence of a seed match are required, the performance is comparable with state-of-the-art algorithms. TargetSpy was trained on mouse and performs well in human and drosophila, suggesting that it may be applicable to a broad range of species. Moreover, we have demonstrated that the application of machine learning techniques in combination with upcoming deep sequencing data results in a powerful microRNA target site prediction tool (www.targetspy.org). (Source: BMC Bioinformatics – Latest articles)

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Washing scaling of GeneChip microarray expression

Conclusions:
Washing is among the factors which potentially distort expression measures. The proposed first-order correction method allows direct implementation in existing calibration algorithms for microarray data. We provide an experimental ‘washing data set’ which might be used by the community for developing amendments of the washing correction. (Source: BMC Bioinformatics – Latest articles)

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