Sample records for quantitative deep sequencing

  1. Quantitative phenotyping via deep barcode sequencing.

    PubMed

    Smith, Andrew M; Heisler, Lawrence E; Mellor, Joseph; Kaper, Fiona; Thompson, Michael J; Chee, Mark; Roth, Frederick P; Giaever, Guri; Nislow, Corey

    2009-10-01

    Next-generation DNA sequencing technologies have revolutionized diverse genomics applications, including de novo genome sequencing, SNP detection, chromatin immunoprecipitation, and transcriptome analysis. Here we apply deep sequencing to genome-scale fitness profiling to evaluate yeast strain collections in parallel. This method, Barcode analysis by Sequencing, or "Bar-seq," outperforms the current benchmark barcode microarray assay in terms of both dynamic range and throughput. When applied to a complex chemogenomic assay, Bar-seq quantitatively identifies drug targets, with performance superior to the benchmark microarray assay. We also show that Bar-seq is well-suited for a multiplex format. We completely re-sequenced and re-annotated the yeast deletion collection using deep sequencing, found that approximately 20% of the barcodes and common priming sequences varied from expectation, and used this revised list of barcode sequences to improve data quality. Together, this new assay and analysis routine provide a deep-sequencing-based toolkit for identifying gene-environment interactions on a genome-wide scale.

  2. Quantitative phenotyping via deep barcode sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Smith, Andrew M.; Heisler, Lawrence E.; Mellor, Joseph; Kaper, Fiona; Thompson, Michael J.; Chee, Mark; Roth, Frederick P.; Giaever, Guri; Nislow, Corey

    2009-01-01

    Next-generation DNA sequencing technologies have revolutionized diverse genomics applications, including de novo genome sequencing, SNP detection, chromatin immunoprecipitation, and transcriptome analysis. Here we apply deep sequencing to genome-scale fitness profiling to evaluate yeast strain collections in parallel. This method, Barcode analysis by Sequencing, or “Bar-seq,” outperforms the current benchmark barcode microarray assay in terms of both dynamic range and throughput. When applied to a complex chemogenomic assay, Bar-seq quantitatively identifies drug targets, with performance superior to the benchmark microarray assay. We also show that Bar-seq is well-suited for a multiplex format. We completely re-sequenced and re-annotated the yeast deletion collection using deep sequencing, found that ∼20% of the barcodes and common priming sequences varied from expectation, and used this revised list of barcode sequences to improve data quality. Together, this new assay and analysis routine provide a deep-sequencing-based toolkit for identifying gene–environment interactions on a genome-wide scale. PMID:19622793

  3. DNA Replication Profiling Using Deep Sequencing.

    PubMed

    Saayman, Xanita; Ramos-Pérez, Cristina; Brown, Grant W

    2018-01-01

    Profiling of DNA replication during progression through S phase allows a quantitative snap-shot of replication origin usage and DNA replication fork progression. We present a method for using deep sequencing data to profile DNA replication in S. cerevisiae.

  4. Making sense of deep sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Goldman, D.; Domschke, K.

    2016-01-01

    This review, the first of an occasional series, tries to make sense of the concepts and uses of deep sequencing of polynucleic acids (DNA and RNA). Deep sequencing, synonymous with next-generation sequencing, high-throughput sequencing and massively parallel sequencing, includes whole genome sequencing but is more often and diversely applied to specific parts of the genome captured in different ways, for example the highly expressed portion of the genome known as the exome and portions of the genome that are epigenetically marked either by DNA methylation, the binding of proteins including histones, or that are in different configurations and thus more or less accessible to enzymes that cleave DNA. Deep sequencing of RNA (RNASeq) reverse-transcribed to complementary DNA is invaluable for measuring RNA expression and detecting changes in RNA structure. Important concepts in deep sequencing include the length and depth of sequence reads, mapping and assembly of reads, sequencing error, haplotypes, and the propensity of deep sequencing, as with other types of ‘big data’, to generate large numbers of errors, requiring monitoring for methodologic biases and strategies for replication and validation. Deep sequencing yields a unique genetic fingerprint that can be used to identify a person, and a trove of predictors of genetic medical diseases. Deep sequencing to identify epigenetic events including changes in DNA methylation and RNA expression can reveal the history and impact of environmental exposures. Because of the power of sequencing to identify and deliver biomedically significant information about a person and their blood relatives, it creates ethical dilemmas and practical challenges in research and clinical care, for example the decision and procedures to report incidental findings that will increasingly and frequently be discovered. PMID:24925306

  5. De novo peptide sequencing by deep learning

    PubMed Central

    Tran, Ngoc Hieu; Zhang, Xianglilan; Xin, Lei; Shan, Baozhen; Li, Ming

    2017-01-01

    De novo peptide sequencing from tandem MS data is the key technology in proteomics for the characterization of proteins, especially for new sequences, such as mAbs. In this study, we propose a deep neural network model, DeepNovo, for de novo peptide sequencing. DeepNovo architecture combines recent advances in convolutional neural networks and recurrent neural networks to learn features of tandem mass spectra, fragment ions, and sequence patterns of peptides. The networks are further integrated with local dynamic programming to solve the complex optimization task of de novo sequencing. We evaluated the method on a wide variety of species and found that DeepNovo considerably outperformed state of the art methods, achieving 7.7–22.9% higher accuracy at the amino acid level and 38.1–64.0% higher accuracy at the peptide level. We further used DeepNovo to automatically reconstruct the complete sequences of antibody light and heavy chains of mouse, achieving 97.5–100% coverage and 97.2–99.5% accuracy, without assisting databases. Moreover, DeepNovo is retrainable to adapt to any sources of data and provides a complete end-to-end training and prediction solution to the de novo sequencing problem. Not only does our study extend the deep learning revolution to a new field, but it also shows an innovative approach in solving optimization problems by using deep learning and dynamic programming. PMID:28720701

  6. deepTools: a flexible platform for exploring deep-sequencing data.

    PubMed

    Ramírez, Fidel; Dündar, Friederike; Diehl, Sarah; Grüning, Björn A; Manke, Thomas

    2014-07-01

    We present a Galaxy based web server for processing and visualizing deeply sequenced data. The web server's core functionality consists of a suite of newly developed tools, called deepTools, that enable users with little bioinformatic background to explore the results of their sequencing experiments in a standardized setting. Users can upload pre-processed files with continuous data in standard formats and generate heatmaps and summary plots in a straight-forward, yet highly customizable manner. In addition, we offer several tools for the analysis of files containing aligned reads and enable efficient and reproducible generation of normalized coverage files. As a modular and open-source platform, deepTools can easily be expanded and customized to future demands and developments. The deepTools webserver is freely available at http://deeptools.ie-freiburg.mpg.de and is accompanied by extensive documentation and tutorials aimed at conveying the principles of deep-sequencing data analysis. The web server can be used without registration. deepTools can be installed locally either stand-alone or as part of Galaxy. © The Author(s) 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

  7. DeepBase: annotation and discovery of microRNAs and other noncoding RNAs from deep-sequencing data.

    PubMed

    Yang, Jian-Hua; Qu, Liang-Hu

    2012-01-01

    Recent advances in high-throughput deep-sequencing technology have produced large numbers of short and long RNA sequences and enabled the detection and profiling of known and novel microRNAs (miRNAs) and other noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) at unprecedented sensitivity and depth. In this chapter, we describe the use of deepBase, a database that we have developed to integrate all public deep-sequencing data and to facilitate the comprehensive annotation and discovery of miRNAs and other ncRNAs from these data. deepBase provides an integrative, interactive, and versatile web graphical interface to evaluate miRBase-annotated miRNA genes and other known ncRNAs, explores the expression patterns of miRNAs and other ncRNAs, and discovers novel miRNAs and other ncRNAs from deep-sequencing data. deepBase also provides a deepView genome browser to comparatively analyze these data at multiple levels. deepBase is available at http://deepbase.sysu.edu.cn/.

  8. Deep sequencing of evolving pathogen populations: applications, errors, and bioinformatic solutions

    PubMed Central

    2014-01-01

    Deep sequencing harnesses the high throughput nature of next generation sequencing technologies to generate population samples, treating information contained in individual reads as meaningful. Here, we review applications of deep sequencing to pathogen evolution. Pioneering deep sequencing studies from the virology literature are discussed, such as whole genome Roche-454 sequencing analyses of the dynamics of the rapidly mutating pathogens hepatitis C virus and HIV. Extension of the deep sequencing approach to bacterial populations is then discussed, including the impacts of emerging sequencing technologies. While it is clear that deep sequencing has unprecedented potential for assessing the genetic structure and evolutionary history of pathogen populations, bioinformatic challenges remain. We summarise current approaches to overcoming these challenges, in particular methods for detecting low frequency variants in the context of sequencing error and reconstructing individual haplotypes from short reads. PMID:24428920

  9. Deep Sequencing to Identify the Causes of Viral Encephalitis

    PubMed Central

    Chan, Benjamin K.; Wilson, Theodore; Fischer, Kael F.; Kriesel, John D.

    2014-01-01

    Deep sequencing allows for a rapid, accurate characterization of microbial DNA and RNA sequences in many types of samples. Deep sequencing (also called next generation sequencing or NGS) is being developed to assist with the diagnosis of a wide variety of infectious diseases. In this study, seven frozen brain samples from deceased subjects with recent encephalitis were investigated. RNA from each sample was extracted, randomly reverse transcribed and sequenced. The sequence analysis was performed in a blinded fashion and confirmed with pathogen-specific PCR. This analysis successfully identified measles virus sequences in two brain samples and herpes simplex virus type-1 sequences in three brain samples. No pathogen was identified in the other two brain specimens. These results were concordant with pathogen-specific PCR and partially concordant with prior neuropathological examinations, demonstrating that deep sequencing can accurately identify viral infections in frozen brain tissue. PMID:24699691

  10. High-throughput sequencing and analysis of the gill tissue transcriptome from the deep-sea hydrothermal vent mussel Bathymodiolus azoricus

    PubMed Central

    2010-01-01

    Background Bathymodiolus azoricus is a deep-sea hydrothermal vent mussel found in association with large faunal communities living in chemosynthetic environments at the bottom of the sea floor near the Azores Islands. Investigation of the exceptional physiological reactions that vent mussels have adopted in their habitat, including responses to environmental microbes, remains a difficult challenge for deep-sea biologists. In an attempt to reveal genes potentially involved in the deep-sea mussel innate immunity we carried out a high-throughput sequence analysis of freshly collected B. azoricus transcriptome using gills tissues as the primary source of immune transcripts given its strategic role in filtering the surrounding waterborne potentially infectious microorganisms. Additionally, a substantial EST data set was produced and from which a comprehensive collection of genes coding for putative proteins was organized in a dedicated database, "DeepSeaVent" the first deep-sea vent animal transcriptome database based on the 454 pyrosequencing technology. Results A normalized cDNA library from gills tissue was sequenced in a full 454 GS-FLX run, producing 778,996 sequencing reads. Assembly of the high quality reads resulted in 75,407 contigs of which 3,071 were singletons. A total of 39,425 transcripts were conceptually translated into amino-sequences of which 22,023 matched known proteins in the NCBI non-redundant protein database, 15,839 revealed conserved protein domains through InterPro functional classification and 9,584 were assigned with Gene Ontology terms. Queries conducted within the database enabled the identification of genes putatively involved in immune and inflammatory reactions which had not been previously evidenced in the vent mussel. Their physical counterpart was confirmed by semi-quantitative quantitative Reverse-Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reactions (RT-PCR) and their RNA transcription level by quantitative PCR (qPCR) experiments. Conclusions We

  11. Geoseq: a tool for dissecting deep-sequencing datasets.

    PubMed

    Gurtowski, James; Cancio, Anthony; Shah, Hardik; Levovitz, Chaya; George, Ajish; Homann, Robert; Sachidanandam, Ravi

    2010-10-12

    Datasets generated on deep-sequencing platforms have been deposited in various public repositories such as the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), Sequence Read Archive (SRA) hosted by the NCBI, or the DNA Data Bank of Japan (ddbj). Despite being rich data sources, they have not been used much due to the difficulty in locating and analyzing datasets of interest. Geoseq http://geoseq.mssm.edu provides a new method of analyzing short reads from deep sequencing experiments. Instead of mapping the reads to reference genomes or sequences, Geoseq maps a reference sequence against the sequencing data. It is web-based, and holds pre-computed data from public libraries. The analysis reduces the input sequence to tiles and measures the coverage of each tile in a sequence library through the use of suffix arrays. The user can upload custom target sequences or use gene/miRNA names for the search and get back results as plots and spreadsheet files. Geoseq organizes the public sequencing data using a controlled vocabulary, allowing identification of relevant libraries by organism, tissue and type of experiment. Analysis of small sets of sequences against deep-sequencing datasets, as well as identification of public datasets of interest, is simplified by Geoseq. We applied Geoseq to, a) identify differential isoform expression in mRNA-seq datasets, b) identify miRNAs (microRNAs) in libraries, and identify mature and star sequences in miRNAS and c) to identify potentially mis-annotated miRNAs. The ease of using Geoseq for these analyses suggests its utility and uniqueness as an analysis tool.

  12. DEEP MOTIF DASHBOARD: VISUALIZING AND UNDERSTANDING GENOMIC SEQUENCES USING DEEP NEURAL NETWORKS.

    PubMed

    Lanchantin, Jack; Singh, Ritambhara; Wang, Beilun; Qi, Yanjun

    2017-01-01

    Deep neural network (DNN) models have recently obtained state-of-the-art prediction accuracy for the transcription factor binding (TFBS) site classification task. However, it remains unclear how these approaches identify meaningful DNA sequence signals and give insights as to why TFs bind to certain locations. In this paper, we propose a toolkit called the Deep Motif Dashboard (DeMo Dashboard) which provides a suite of visualization strategies to extract motifs, or sequence patterns from deep neural network models for TFBS classification. We demonstrate how to visualize and understand three important DNN models: convolutional, recurrent, and convolutional-recurrent networks. Our first visualization method is finding a test sequence's saliency map which uses first-order derivatives to describe the importance of each nucleotide in making the final prediction. Second, considering recurrent models make predictions in a temporal manner (from one end of a TFBS sequence to the other), we introduce temporal output scores, indicating the prediction score of a model over time for a sequential input. Lastly, a class-specific visualization strategy finds the optimal input sequence for a given TFBS positive class via stochastic gradient optimization. Our experimental results indicate that a convolutional-recurrent architecture performs the best among the three architectures. The visualization techniques indicate that CNN-RNN makes predictions by modeling both motifs as well as dependencies among them.

  13. Deep Motif Dashboard: Visualizing and Understanding Genomic Sequences Using Deep Neural Networks

    PubMed Central

    Lanchantin, Jack; Singh, Ritambhara; Wang, Beilun; Qi, Yanjun

    2018-01-01

    Deep neural network (DNN) models have recently obtained state-of-the-art prediction accuracy for the transcription factor binding (TFBS) site classification task. However, it remains unclear how these approaches identify meaningful DNA sequence signals and give insights as to why TFs bind to certain locations. In this paper, we propose a toolkit called the Deep Motif Dashboard (DeMo Dashboard) which provides a suite of visualization strategies to extract motifs, or sequence patterns from deep neural network models for TFBS classification. We demonstrate how to visualize and understand three important DNN models: convolutional, recurrent, and convolutional-recurrent networks. Our first visualization method is finding a test sequence’s saliency map which uses first-order derivatives to describe the importance of each nucleotide in making the final prediction. Second, considering recurrent models make predictions in a temporal manner (from one end of a TFBS sequence to the other), we introduce temporal output scores, indicating the prediction score of a model over time for a sequential input. Lastly, a class-specific visualization strategy finds the optimal input sequence for a given TFBS positive class via stochastic gradient optimization. Our experimental results indicate that a convolutional-recurrent architecture performs the best among the three architectures. The visualization techniques indicate that CNN-RNN makes predictions by modeling both motifs as well as dependencies among them. PMID:27896980

  14. Detection of Emerging Vaccine-Related Polioviruses by Deep Sequencing.

    PubMed

    Sahoo, Malaya K; Holubar, Marisa; Huang, ChunHong; Mohamed-Hadley, Alisha; Liu, Yuanyuan; Waggoner, Jesse J; Troy, Stephanie B; Garcia-Garcia, Lourdes; Ferreyra-Reyes, Leticia; Maldonado, Yvonne; Pinsky, Benjamin A

    2017-07-01

    Oral poliovirus vaccine can mutate to regain neurovirulence. To date, evaluation of these mutations has been performed primarily on culture-enriched isolates by using conventional Sanger sequencing. We therefore developed a culture-independent, deep-sequencing method targeting the 5' untranslated region (UTR) and P1 genomic region to characterize vaccine-related poliovirus variants. Error analysis of the deep-sequencing method demonstrated reliable detection of poliovirus mutations at levels of <1%, depending on read depth. Sequencing of viral nucleic acids from the stool of vaccinated, asymptomatic children and their close contacts collected during a prospective cohort study in Veracruz, Mexico, revealed no vaccine-derived polioviruses. This was expected given that the longest duration between sequenced sample collection and the end of the most recent national immunization week was 66 days. However, we identified many low-level variants (<5%) distributed across the 5' UTR and P1 genomic region in all three Sabin serotypes, as well as vaccine-related viruses with multiple canonical mutations associated with phenotypic reversion present at high levels (>90%). These results suggest that monitoring emerging vaccine-related poliovirus variants by deep sequencing may aid in the poliovirus endgame and efforts to ensure global polio eradication. Copyright © 2017 Sahoo et al.

  15. Virus Identification in Unknown Tropical Febrile Illness Cases Using Deep Sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Balmaseda, Angel; Harris, Eva; DeRisi, Joseph L.

    2012-01-01

    Dengue virus is an emerging infectious agent that infects an estimated 50–100 million people annually worldwide, yet current diagnostic practices cannot detect an etiologic pathogen in ∼40% of dengue-like illnesses. Metagenomic approaches to pathogen detection, such as viral microarrays and deep sequencing, are promising tools to address emerging and non-diagnosable disease challenges. In this study, we used the Virochip microarray and deep sequencing to characterize the spectrum of viruses present in human sera from 123 Nicaraguan patients presenting with dengue-like symptoms but testing negative for dengue virus. We utilized a barcoding strategy to simultaneously deep sequence multiple serum specimens, generating on average over 1 million reads per sample. We then implemented a stepwise bioinformatic filtering pipeline to remove the majority of human and low-quality sequences to improve the speed and accuracy of subsequent unbiased database searches. By deep sequencing, we were able to detect virus sequence in 37% (45/123) of previously negative cases. These included 13 cases with Human Herpesvirus 6 sequences. Other samples contained sequences with similarity to sequences from viruses in the Herpesviridae, Flaviviridae, Circoviridae, Anelloviridae, Asfarviridae, and Parvoviridae families. In some cases, the putative viral sequences were virtually identical to known viruses, and in others they diverged, suggesting that they may derive from novel viruses. These results demonstrate the utility of unbiased metagenomic approaches in the detection of known and divergent viruses in the study of tropical febrile illness. PMID:22347512

  16. Quantiprot - a Python package for quantitative analysis of protein sequences.

    PubMed

    Konopka, Bogumił M; Marciniak, Marta; Dyrka, Witold

    2017-07-17

    The field of protein sequence analysis is dominated by tools rooted in substitution matrices and alignments. A complementary approach is provided by methods of quantitative characterization. A major advantage of the approach is that quantitative properties defines a multidimensional solution space, where sequences can be related to each other and differences can be meaningfully interpreted. Quantiprot is a software package in Python, which provides a simple and consistent interface to multiple methods for quantitative characterization of protein sequences. The package can be used to calculate dozens of characteristics directly from sequences or using physico-chemical properties of amino acids. Besides basic measures, Quantiprot performs quantitative analysis of recurrence and determinism in the sequence, calculates distribution of n-grams and computes the Zipf's law coefficient. We propose three main fields of application of the Quantiprot package. First, quantitative characteristics can be used in alignment-free similarity searches, and in clustering of large and/or divergent sequence sets. Second, a feature space defined by quantitative properties can be used in comparative studies of protein families and organisms. Third, the feature space can be used for evaluating generative models, where large number of sequences generated by the model can be compared to actually observed sequences.

  17. Dendrites, deep learning, and sequences in the hippocampus.

    PubMed

    Bhalla, Upinder S

    2017-10-12

    The hippocampus places us both in time and space. It does so over remarkably large spans: milliseconds to years, and centimeters to kilometers. This works for sensory representations, for memory, and for behavioral context. How does it fit in such wide ranges of time and space scales, and keep order among the many dimensions of stimulus context? A key organizing principle for a wide sweep of scales and stimulus dimensions is that of order in time, or sequences. Sequences of neuronal activity are ubiquitous in sensory processing, in motor control, in planning actions, and in memory. Against this strong evidence for the phenomenon, there are currently more models than definite experiments about how the brain generates ordered activity. The flip side of sequence generation is discrimination. Discrimination of sequences has been extensively studied at the behavioral, systems, and modeling level, but again physiological mechanisms are fewer. It is against this backdrop that I discuss two recent developments in neural sequence computation, that at face value share little beyond the label "neural." These are dendritic sequence discrimination, and deep learning. One derives from channel physiology and molecular signaling, the other from applied neural network theory - apparently extreme ends of the spectrum of neural circuit detail. I suggest that each of these topics has deep lessons about the possible mechanisms, scales, and capabilities of hippocampal sequence computation. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  18. Full genome virus detection in fecal samples using sensitive nucleic acid preparation, deep sequencing, and a novel iterative sequence classification algorithm.

    PubMed

    Cotten, Matthew; Oude Munnink, Bas; Canuti, Marta; Deijs, Martin; Watson, Simon J; Kellam, Paul; van der Hoek, Lia

    2014-01-01

    We have developed a full genome virus detection process that combines sensitive nucleic acid preparation optimised for virus identification in fecal material with Illumina MiSeq sequencing and a novel post-sequencing virus identification algorithm. Enriched viral nucleic acid was converted to double-stranded DNA and subjected to Illumina MiSeq sequencing. The resulting short reads were processed with a novel iterative Python algorithm SLIM for the identification of sequences with homology to known viruses. De novo assembly was then used to generate full viral genomes. The sensitivity of this process was demonstrated with a set of fecal samples from HIV-1 infected patients. A quantitative assessment of the mammalian, plant, and bacterial virus content of this compartment was generated and the deep sequencing data were sufficient to assembly 12 complete viral genomes from 6 virus families. The method detected high levels of enteropathic viruses that are normally controlled in healthy adults, but may be involved in the pathogenesis of HIV-1 infection and will provide a powerful tool for virus detection and for analyzing changes in the fecal virome associated with HIV-1 progression and pathogenesis.

  19. Full Genome Virus Detection in Fecal Samples Using Sensitive Nucleic Acid Preparation, Deep Sequencing, and a Novel Iterative Sequence Classification Algorithm

    PubMed Central

    Cotten, Matthew; Oude Munnink, Bas; Canuti, Marta; Deijs, Martin; Watson, Simon J.; Kellam, Paul; van der Hoek, Lia

    2014-01-01

    We have developed a full genome virus detection process that combines sensitive nucleic acid preparation optimised for virus identification in fecal material with Illumina MiSeq sequencing and a novel post-sequencing virus identification algorithm. Enriched viral nucleic acid was converted to double-stranded DNA and subjected to Illumina MiSeq sequencing. The resulting short reads were processed with a novel iterative Python algorithm SLIM for the identification of sequences with homology to known viruses. De novo assembly was then used to generate full viral genomes. The sensitivity of this process was demonstrated with a set of fecal samples from HIV-1 infected patients. A quantitative assessment of the mammalian, plant, and bacterial virus content of this compartment was generated and the deep sequencing data were sufficient to assembly 12 complete viral genomes from 6 virus families. The method detected high levels of enteropathic viruses that are normally controlled in healthy adults, but may be involved in the pathogenesis of HIV-1 infection and will provide a powerful tool for virus detection and for analyzing changes in the fecal virome associated with HIV-1 progression and pathogenesis. PMID:24695106

  20. Transcriptome sequences resolve deep relationships of the grape family.

    PubMed

    Wen, Jun; Xiong, Zhiqiang; Nie, Ze-Long; Mao, Likai; Zhu, Yabing; Kan, Xian-Zhao; Ickert-Bond, Stefanie M; Gerrath, Jean; Zimmer, Elizabeth A; Fang, Xiao-Dong

    2013-01-01

    Previous phylogenetic studies of the grape family (Vitaceae) yielded poorly resolved deep relationships, thus impeding our understanding of the evolution of the family. Next-generation sequencing now offers access to protein coding sequences very easily, quickly and cost-effectively. To improve upon earlier work, we extracted 417 orthologous single-copy nuclear genes from the transcriptomes of 15 species of the Vitaceae, covering its phylogenetic diversity. The resulting transcriptome phylogeny provides robust support for the deep relationships, showing the phylogenetic utility of transcriptome data for plants over a time scale at least since the mid-Cretaceous. The pros and cons of transcriptome data for phylogenetic inference in plants are also evaluated.

  1. Exploring fungal diversity in deep-sea sediments from Okinawa Trough using high-throughput Illumina sequencing

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Zhang, Xiao-Yong; Wang, Guang-Hua; Xu, Xin-Ya; Nong, Xu-Hua; Wang, Jie; Amin, Muhammad; Qi, Shu-Hua

    2016-10-01

    The present study investigated the fungal diversity in four different deep-sea sediments from Okinawa Trough using high-throughput Illumina sequencing of the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer-1 (ITS1). A total of 40,297 fungal ITS1 sequences clustered into 420 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) with 97% sequence similarity and 170 taxa were recovered from these sediments. Most ITS1 sequences (78%) belonged to the phylum Ascomycota, followed by Basidiomycota (17.3%), Zygomycota (1.5%) and Chytridiomycota (0.8%), and a small proportion (2.4%) belonged to unassigned fungal phyla. Compared with previous studies on fungal diversity of sediments from deep-sea environments by culture-dependent approach and clone library analysis, the present result suggested that Illumina sequencing had been dramatically accelerating the discovery of fungal community of deep-sea sediments. Furthermore, our results revealed that Sordariomycetes was the most diverse and abundant fungal class in this study, challenging the traditional view that the diversity of Sordariomycetes phylotypes was low in the deep-sea environments. In addition, more than 12 taxa accounted for 21.5% sequences were found to be rarely reported as deep-sea fungi, suggesting the deep-sea sediments from Okinawa Trough harbored a plethora of different fungal communities compared with other deep-sea environments. To our knowledge, this study is the first exploration of the fungal diversity in deep-sea sediments from Okinawa Trough using high-throughput Illumina sequencing.

  2. miRBase: integrating microRNA annotation and deep-sequencing data.

    PubMed

    Kozomara, Ana; Griffiths-Jones, Sam

    2011-01-01

    miRBase is the primary online repository for all microRNA sequences and annotation. The current release (miRBase 16) contains over 15,000 microRNA gene loci in over 140 species, and over 17,000 distinct mature microRNA sequences. Deep-sequencing technologies have delivered a sharp rise in the rate of novel microRNA discovery. We have mapped reads from short RNA deep-sequencing experiments to microRNAs in miRBase and developed web interfaces to view these mappings. The user can view all read data associated with a given microRNA annotation, filter reads by experiment and count, and search for microRNAs by tissue- and stage-specific expression. These data can be used as a proxy for relative expression levels of microRNA sequences, provide detailed evidence for microRNA annotations and alternative isoforms of mature microRNAs, and allow us to revisit previous annotations. miRBase is available online at: http://www.mirbase.org/.

  3. Reproducibility and quantitation of amplicon sequencing-based detection

    PubMed Central

    Zhou, Jizhong; Wu, Liyou; Deng, Ye; Zhi, Xiaoyang; Jiang, Yi-Huei; Tu, Qichao; Xie, Jianping; Van Nostrand, Joy D; He, Zhili; Yang, Yunfeng

    2011-01-01

    To determine the reproducibility and quantitation of the amplicon sequencing-based detection approach for analyzing microbial community structure, a total of 24 microbial communities from a long-term global change experimental site were examined. Genomic DNA obtained from each community was used to amplify 16S rRNA genes with two or three barcode tags as technical replicates in the presence of a small quantity (0.1% wt/wt) of genomic DNA from Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 as the control. The technical reproducibility of the amplicon sequencing-based detection approach is quite low, with an average operational taxonomic unit (OTU) overlap of 17.2%±2.3% between two technical replicates, and 8.2%±2.3% among three technical replicates, which is most likely due to problems associated with random sampling processes. Such variations in technical replicates could have substantial effects on estimating β-diversity but less on α-diversity. A high variation was also observed in the control across different samples (for example, 66.7-fold for the forward primer), suggesting that the amplicon sequencing-based detection approach could not be quantitative. In addition, various strategies were examined to improve the comparability of amplicon sequencing data, such as increasing biological replicates, and removing singleton sequences and less-representative OTUs across biological replicates. Finally, as expected, various statistical analyses with preprocessed experimental data revealed clear differences in the composition and structure of microbial communities between warming and non-warming, or between clipping and non-clipping. Taken together, these results suggest that amplicon sequencing-based detection is useful in analyzing microbial community structure even though it is not reproducible and quantitative. However, great caution should be taken in experimental design and data interpretation when the amplicon sequencing-based detection approach is used for quantitative

  4. Discovery radiomics via evolutionary deep radiomic sequencer discovery for pathologically proven lung cancer detection.

    PubMed

    Shafiee, Mohammad Javad; Chung, Audrey G; Khalvati, Farzad; Haider, Masoom A; Wong, Alexander

    2017-10-01

    While lung cancer is the second most diagnosed form of cancer in men and women, a sufficiently early diagnosis can be pivotal in patient survival rates. Imaging-based, or radiomics-driven, detection methods have been developed to aid diagnosticians, but largely rely on hand-crafted features that may not fully encapsulate the differences between cancerous and healthy tissue. Recently, the concept of discovery radiomics was introduced, where custom abstract features are discovered from readily available imaging data. We propose an evolutionary deep radiomic sequencer discovery approach based on evolutionary deep intelligence. Motivated by patient privacy concerns and the idea of operational artificial intelligence, the evolutionary deep radiomic sequencer discovery approach organically evolves increasingly more efficient deep radiomic sequencers that produce significantly more compact yet similarly descriptive radiomic sequences over multiple generations. As a result, this framework improves operational efficiency and enables diagnosis to be run locally at the radiologist's computer while maintaining detection accuracy. We evaluated the evolved deep radiomic sequencer (EDRS) discovered via the proposed evolutionary deep radiomic sequencer discovery framework against state-of-the-art radiomics-driven and discovery radiomics methods using clinical lung CT data with pathologically proven diagnostic data from the LIDC-IDRI dataset. The EDRS shows improved sensitivity (93.42%), specificity (82.39%), and diagnostic accuracy (88.78%) relative to previous radiomics approaches.

  5. Transcriptome Sequences Resolve Deep Relationships of the Grape Family

    PubMed Central

    Wen, Jun; Xiong, Zhiqiang; Nie, Ze-Long; Mao, Likai; Zhu, Yabing; Kan, Xian-Zhao; Ickert-Bond, Stefanie M.; Gerrath, Jean; Zimmer, Elizabeth A.; Fang, Xiao-Dong

    2013-01-01

    Previous phylogenetic studies of the grape family (Vitaceae) yielded poorly resolved deep relationships, thus impeding our understanding of the evolution of the family. Next-generation sequencing now offers access to protein coding sequences very easily, quickly and cost-effectively. To improve upon earlier work, we extracted 417 orthologous single-copy nuclear genes from the transcriptomes of 15 species of the Vitaceae, covering its phylogenetic diversity. The resulting transcriptome phylogeny provides robust support for the deep relationships, showing the phylogenetic utility of transcriptome data for plants over a time scale at least since the mid-Cretaceous. The pros and cons of transcriptome data for phylogenetic inference in plants are also evaluated. PMID:24069307

  6. Deep whole-genome sequencing of 90 Han Chinese genomes.

    PubMed

    Lan, Tianming; Lin, Haoxiang; Zhu, Wenjuan; Laurent, Tellier Christian Asker Melchior; Yang, Mengcheng; Liu, Xin; Wang, Jun; Wang, Jian; Yang, Huanming; Xu, Xun; Guo, Xiaosen

    2017-09-01

    Next-generation sequencing provides a high-resolution insight into human genetic information. However, the focus of previous studies has primarily been on low-coverage data due to the high cost of sequencing. Although the 1000 Genomes Project and the Haplotype Reference Consortium have both provided powerful reference panels for imputation, low-frequency and novel variants remain difficult to discover and call with accuracy on the basis of low-coverage data. Deep sequencing provides an optimal solution for the problem of these low-frequency and novel variants. Although whole-exome sequencing is also a viable choice for exome regions, it cannot account for noncoding regions, sometimes resulting in the absence of important, causal variants. For Han Chinese populations, the majority of variants have been discovered based upon low-coverage data from the 1000 Genomes Project. However, high-coverage, whole-genome sequencing data are limited for any population, and a large amount of low-frequency, population-specific variants remain uncharacterized. We have performed whole-genome sequencing at a high depth (∼×80) of 90 unrelated individuals of Chinese ancestry, collected from the 1000 Genomes Project samples, including 45 Northern Han Chinese and 45 Southern Han Chinese samples. Eighty-three of these 90 have been sequenced by the 1000 Genomes Project. We have identified 12 568 804 single nucleotide polymorphisms, 2 074 210 short InDels, and 26 142 structural variations from these 90 samples. Compared to the Han Chinese data from the 1000 Genomes Project, we have found 7 000 629 novel variants with low frequency (defined as minor allele frequency < 5%), including 5 813 503 single nucleotide polymorphisms, 1 169 199 InDels, and 17 927 structural variants. Using deep sequencing data, we have built a greatly expanded spectrum of genetic variation for the Han Chinese genome. Compared to the 1000 Genomes Project, these Han Chinese deep sequencing data enhance the

  7. FANSe2: a robust and cost-efficient alignment tool for quantitative next-generation sequencing applications.

    PubMed

    Xiao, Chuan-Le; Mai, Zhi-Biao; Lian, Xin-Lei; Zhong, Jia-Yong; Jin, Jing-Jie; He, Qing-Yu; Zhang, Gong

    2014-01-01

    Correct and bias-free interpretation of the deep sequencing data is inevitably dependent on the complete mapping of all mappable reads to the reference sequence, especially for quantitative RNA-seq applications. Seed-based algorithms are generally slow but robust, while Burrows-Wheeler Transform (BWT) based algorithms are fast but less robust. To have both advantages, we developed an algorithm FANSe2 with iterative mapping strategy based on the statistics of real-world sequencing error distribution to substantially accelerate the mapping without compromising the accuracy. Its sensitivity and accuracy are higher than the BWT-based algorithms in the tests using both prokaryotic and eukaryotic sequencing datasets. The gene identification results of FANSe2 is experimentally validated, while the previous algorithms have false positives and false negatives. FANSe2 showed remarkably better consistency to the microarray than most other algorithms in terms of gene expression quantifications. We implemented a scalable and almost maintenance-free parallelization method that can utilize the computational power of multiple office computers, a novel feature not present in any other mainstream algorithm. With three normal office computers, we demonstrated that FANSe2 mapped an RNA-seq dataset generated from an entire Illunima HiSeq 2000 flowcell (8 lanes, 608 M reads) to masked human genome within 4.1 hours with higher sensitivity than Bowtie/Bowtie2. FANSe2 thus provides robust accuracy, full indel sensitivity, fast speed, versatile compatibility and economical computational utilization, making it a useful and practical tool for deep sequencing applications. FANSe2 is freely available at http://bioinformatics.jnu.edu.cn/software/fanse2/.

  8. deepTools2: a next generation web server for deep-sequencing data analysis.

    PubMed

    Ramírez, Fidel; Ryan, Devon P; Grüning, Björn; Bhardwaj, Vivek; Kilpert, Fabian; Richter, Andreas S; Heyne, Steffen; Dündar, Friederike; Manke, Thomas

    2016-07-08

    We present an update to our Galaxy-based web server for processing and visualizing deeply sequenced data. Its core tool set, deepTools, allows users to perform complete bioinformatic workflows ranging from quality controls and normalizations of aligned reads to integrative analyses, including clustering and visualization approaches. Since we first described our deepTools Galaxy server in 2014, we have implemented new solutions for many requests from the community and our users. Here, we introduce significant enhancements and new tools to further improve data visualization and interpretation. deepTools continue to be open to all users and freely available as a web service at deeptools.ie-freiburg.mpg.de The new deepTools2 suite can be easily deployed within any Galaxy framework via the toolshed repository, and we also provide source code for command line usage under Linux and Mac OS X. A public and documented API for access to deepTools functionality is also available. © The Author(s) 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

  9. Deep Whole-Genome Sequencing of 100 Southeast Asian Malays

    PubMed Central

    Wong, Lai-Ping; Ong, Rick Twee-Hee; Poh, Wan-Ting; Liu, Xuanyao; Chen, Peng; Li, Ruoying; Lam, Kevin Koi-Yau; Pillai, Nisha Esakimuthu; Sim, Kar-Seng; Xu, Haiyan; Sim, Ngak-Leng; Teo, Shu-Mei; Foo, Jia-Nee; Tan, Linda Wei-Lin; Lim, Yenly; Koo, Seok-Hwee; Gan, Linda Seo-Hwee; Cheng, Ching-Yu; Wee, Sharon; Yap, Eric Peng-Huat; Ng, Pauline Crystal; Lim, Wei-Yen; Soong, Richie; Wenk, Markus Rene; Aung, Tin; Wong, Tien-Yin; Khor, Chiea-Chuen; Little, Peter; Chia, Kee-Seng; Teo, Yik-Ying

    2013-01-01

    Whole-genome sequencing across multiple samples in a population provides an unprecedented opportunity for comprehensively characterizing the polymorphic variants in the population. Although the 1000 Genomes Project (1KGP) has offered brief insights into the value of population-level sequencing, the low coverage has compromised the ability to confidently detect rare and low-frequency variants. In addition, the composition of populations in the 1KGP is not complete, despite the fact that the study design has been extended to more than 2,500 samples from more than 20 population groups. The Malays are one of the Austronesian groups predominantly present in Southeast Asia and Oceania, and the Singapore Sequencing Malay Project (SSMP) aims to perform deep whole-genome sequencing of 100 healthy Malays. By sequencing at a minimum of 30× coverage, we have illustrated the higher sensitivity at detecting low-frequency and rare variants and the ability to investigate the presence of hotspots of functional mutations. Compared to the low-pass sequencing in the 1KGP, the deeper coverage allows more functional variants to be identified for each person. A comparison of the fidelity of genotype imputation of Malays indicated that a population-specific reference panel, such as the SSMP, outperforms a cosmopolitan panel with larger number of individuals for common SNPs. For lower-frequency (<5%) markers, a larger number of individuals might have to be whole-genome sequenced so that the accuracy currently afforded by the 1KGP can be achieved. The SSMP data are expected to be the benchmark for evaluating the value of deep population-level sequencing versus low-pass sequencing, especially in populations that are poorly represented in population-genetics studies. PMID:23290073

  10. Accurate identification of RNA editing sites from primitive sequence with deep neural networks.

    PubMed

    Ouyang, Zhangyi; Liu, Feng; Zhao, Chenghui; Ren, Chao; An, Gaole; Mei, Chuan; Bo, Xiaochen; Shu, Wenjie

    2018-04-16

    RNA editing is a post-transcriptional RNA sequence alteration. Current methods have identified editing sites and facilitated research but require sufficient genomic annotations and prior-knowledge-based filtering steps, resulting in a cumbersome, time-consuming identification process. Moreover, these methods have limited generalizability and applicability in species with insufficient genomic annotations or in conditions of limited prior knowledge. We developed DeepRed, a deep learning-based method that identifies RNA editing from primitive RNA sequences without prior-knowledge-based filtering steps or genomic annotations. DeepRed achieved 98.1% and 97.9% area under the curve (AUC) in training and test sets, respectively. We further validated DeepRed using experimentally verified U87 cell RNA-seq data, achieving 97.9% positive predictive value (PPV). We demonstrated that DeepRed offers better prediction accuracy and computational efficiency than current methods with large-scale, mass RNA-seq data. We used DeepRed to assess the impact of multiple factors on editing identification with RNA-seq data from the Association of Biomolecular Resource Facilities and Sequencing Quality Control projects. We explored developmental RNA editing pattern changes during human early embryogenesis and evolutionary patterns in Drosophila species and the primate lineage using DeepRed. Our work illustrates DeepRed's state-of-the-art performance; it may decipher the hidden principles behind RNA editing, making editing detection convenient and effective.

  11. Deep Sequencing Analysis of Apple Infecting Viruses in Korea

    PubMed Central

    Cho, In-Sook; Igori, Davaajargal; Lim, Seungmo; Choi, Gug-Seoun; Hammond, John; Lim, Hyoun-Sub; Moon, Jae Sun

    2016-01-01

    Deep sequencing has generated 52 contigs derived from five viruses; Apple chlorotic leaf spot virus (ACLSV), Apple stem grooving virus (ASGV), Apple stem pitting virus (ASPV), Apple green crinkle associated virus (AGCaV), and Apricot latent virus (ApLV) were identified from eight apple samples showing small leaves and/or growth retardation. Nucleotide (nt) sequence identity of the assembled contigs was from 68% to 99% compared to the reference sequences of the five respective viral genomes. Sequences of ASPV and ASGV were the most abundantly represented by the 52 contigs assembled. The presence of the five viruses in the samples was confirmed by RT-PCR using specific primers based on the sequences of each assembled contig. All five viruses were detected in three of the samples, whereas all samples had mixed infections with at least two viruses. The most frequently detected virus was ASPV, followed by ASGV, ApLV, ACLSV, and AGCaV which were withal found in mixed infections in the tested samples. AGCaV was identified in assembled contigs ID 1012480 and 93549, which showed 82% and 78% nt sequence identity with ORF1 of AGCaV isolate Aurora-1. ApLV was identified in three assembled contigs, ID 65587, 1802365, and 116777, which showed 77%, 78%, and 76% nt sequence identity respectively with ORF1 of ApLV isolate LA2. Deep sequencing assay was shown to be a valuable and powerful tool for detection and identification of known and unknown virome in infected apple trees, here identifying ApLV and AGCaV in commercial orchards in Korea for the first time. PMID:27721694

  12. DSAP: deep-sequencing small RNA analysis pipeline.

    PubMed

    Huang, Po-Jung; Liu, Yi-Chung; Lee, Chi-Ching; Lin, Wei-Chen; Gan, Richie Ruei-Chi; Lyu, Ping-Chiang; Tang, Petrus

    2010-07-01

    DSAP is an automated multiple-task web service designed to provide a total solution to analyzing deep-sequencing small RNA datasets generated by next-generation sequencing technology. DSAP uses a tab-delimited file as an input format, which holds the unique sequence reads (tags) and their corresponding number of copies generated by the Solexa sequencing platform. The input data will go through four analysis steps in DSAP: (i) cleanup: removal of adaptors and poly-A/T/C/G/N nucleotides; (ii) clustering: grouping of cleaned sequence tags into unique sequence clusters; (iii) non-coding RNA (ncRNA) matching: sequence homology mapping against a transcribed sequence library from the ncRNA database Rfam (http://rfam.sanger.ac.uk/); and (iv) known miRNA matching: detection of known miRNAs in miRBase (http://www.mirbase.org/) based on sequence homology. The expression levels corresponding to matched ncRNAs and miRNAs are summarized in multi-color clickable bar charts linked to external databases. DSAP is also capable of displaying miRNA expression levels from different jobs using a log(2)-scaled color matrix. Furthermore, a cross-species comparative function is also provided to show the distribution of identified miRNAs in different species as deposited in miRBase. DSAP is available at http://dsap.cgu.edu.tw.

  13. Deep whole-genome sequencing of 100 southeast Asian Malays.

    PubMed

    Wong, Lai-Ping; Ong, Rick Twee-Hee; Poh, Wan-Ting; Liu, Xuanyao; Chen, Peng; Li, Ruoying; Lam, Kevin Koi-Yau; Pillai, Nisha Esakimuthu; Sim, Kar-Seng; Xu, Haiyan; Sim, Ngak-Leng; Teo, Shu-Mei; Foo, Jia-Nee; Tan, Linda Wei-Lin; Lim, Yenly; Koo, Seok-Hwee; Gan, Linda Seo-Hwee; Cheng, Ching-Yu; Wee, Sharon; Yap, Eric Peng-Huat; Ng, Pauline Crystal; Lim, Wei-Yen; Soong, Richie; Wenk, Markus Rene; Aung, Tin; Wong, Tien-Yin; Khor, Chiea-Chuen; Little, Peter; Chia, Kee-Seng; Teo, Yik-Ying

    2013-01-10

    Whole-genome sequencing across multiple samples in a population provides an unprecedented opportunity for comprehensively characterizing the polymorphic variants in the population. Although the 1000 Genomes Project (1KGP) has offered brief insights into the value of population-level sequencing, the low coverage has compromised the ability to confidently detect rare and low-frequency variants. In addition, the composition of populations in the 1KGP is not complete, despite the fact that the study design has been extended to more than 2,500 samples from more than 20 population groups. The Malays are one of the Austronesian groups predominantly present in Southeast Asia and Oceania, and the Singapore Sequencing Malay Project (SSMP) aims to perform deep whole-genome sequencing of 100 healthy Malays. By sequencing at a minimum of 30× coverage, we have illustrated the higher sensitivity at detecting low-frequency and rare variants and the ability to investigate the presence of hotspots of functional mutations. Compared to the low-pass sequencing in the 1KGP, the deeper coverage allows more functional variants to be identified for each person. A comparison of the fidelity of genotype imputation of Malays indicated that a population-specific reference panel, such as the SSMP, outperforms a cosmopolitan panel with larger number of individuals for common SNPs. For lower-frequency (<5%) markers, a larger number of individuals might have to be whole-genome sequenced so that the accuracy currently afforded by the 1KGP can be achieved. The SSMP data are expected to be the benchmark for evaluating the value of deep population-level sequencing versus low-pass sequencing, especially in populations that are poorly represented in population-genetics studies. Copyright © 2013 The American Society of Human Genetics. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  14. Characterization of microRNAs from goat (Capra hircus) by Solexa deep-sequencing technology.

    PubMed

    Ling, Y H; Ding, J P; Zhang, X D; Wang, L J; Zhang, Y H; Li, Y S; Zhang, Z J; Zhang, X R

    2013-06-13

    MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are an important class of small noncoding RNAs that are highly conserved in plants and animals. Many miRNAs are known to mediate a myriad of cell processes, including proliferation and differentiation, via the regulation of some transcription and signaling factors, which are closely related to muscle development and disease. In this study, small RNA cDNA libraries of Boer goats were constructed. In addition, we obtained the goat muscle miRNAs by using Solexa deep-sequencing technology and analyzed these miRNA characteristics by combining it with the bioinformatics technology. Based on Solexa sequencing and bioinformatics analysis, 562 species-conserved and 5 goat genome-specific miRNAs were identified, 322 of which exceeded 100 in the expression levels. The results of real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction from 8 randomly selected miRNAs showed that the 8 miRNAs were expressed in goat muscle, and the expression patterns were consistent with the Solexa sequencing results. The identification and characterization of miRNAs in goat muscle provide important information on the role of miRNA regulation in muscle growth and development. These data will help to facilitate studies on the regulatory roles played by miRNAs during goat growth and development.

  15. Deep sequencing of cardiac microRNA-mRNA interactomes in clinical and experimental cardiomyopathy

    PubMed Central

    Matkovich, Scot J.; Dorn, Gerald W.

    2018-01-01

    Summary MicroRNAs are a family of short (~21 nucleotide) noncoding RNAs that serve key roles in cellular growth and differentiation and the response of the heart to stress stimuli. As the sequence-specific recognition element of RNA-induced silencing complexes (RISCs), microRNAs bind mRNAs and prevent their translation via mechanisms that may include transcript degradation and/or prevention of ribosome binding. Short microRNA sequences and the ability of microRNAs to bind to mRNA sites having only partial/imperfect sequence complementarity complicates purely computational analyses of microRNA-mRNA interactomes. Furthermore, computational microRNA target prediction programs typically ignore biological context, and therefore the principal determinants of microRNA-mRNA binding: the presence and quantity of each. To address these deficiencies we describe an empirical method, developed via studies of stressed and failing hearts, to determine disease-induced changes in microRNAs, mRNAs, and the mRNAs targeted to the RISC, without cross-linking mRNAs to RISC proteins. Deep sequencing methods are used to determine RNA abundances, delivering unbiased, quantitative RNA data limited only by their annotation in the genome of interest. We describe the laboratory bench steps required to perform these experiments, experimental design strategies to achieve an appropriate number of sequencing reads per biological replicate, and computer-based processing tools and procedures to convert large raw sequencing data files into gene expression measures useful for differential expression analyses. PMID:25836573

  16. Deep sequencing of cardiac microRNA-mRNA interactomes in clinical and experimental cardiomyopathy.

    PubMed

    Matkovich, Scot J; Dorn, Gerald W

    2015-01-01

    MicroRNAs are a family of short (~21 nucleotide) noncoding RNAs that serve key roles in cellular growth and differentiation and the response of the heart to stress stimuli. As the sequence-specific recognition element of RNA-induced silencing complexes (RISCs), microRNAs bind mRNAs and prevent their translation via mechanisms that may include transcript degradation and/or prevention of ribosome binding. Short microRNA sequences and the ability of microRNAs to bind to mRNA sites having only partial/imperfect sequence complementarity complicate purely computational analyses of microRNA-mRNA interactomes. Furthermore, computational microRNA target prediction programs typically ignore biological context, and therefore the principal determinants of microRNA-mRNA binding: the presence and quantity of each. To address these deficiencies we describe an empirical method, developed via studies of stressed and failing hearts, to determine disease-induced changes in microRNAs, mRNAs, and the mRNAs targeted to the RISC, without cross-linking mRNAs to RISC proteins. Deep sequencing methods are used to determine RNA abundances, delivering unbiased, quantitative RNA data limited only by their annotation in the genome of interest. We describe the laboratory bench steps required to perform these experiments, experimental design strategies to achieve an appropriate number of sequencing reads per biological replicate, and computer-based processing tools and procedures to convert large raw sequencing data files into gene expression measures useful for differential expression analyses.

  17. Unified Deep Learning Architecture for Modeling Biology Sequence.

    PubMed

    Wu, Hongjie; Cao, Chengyuan; Xia, Xiaoyan; Lu, Qiang

    2017-10-09

    Prediction of the spatial structure or function of biological macromolecules based on their sequence remains an important challenge in bioinformatics. When modeling biological sequences using traditional sequencing models, characteristics, such as long-range interactions between basic units, the complicated and variable output of labeled structures, and the variable length of biological sequences, usually lead to different solutions on a case-by-case basis. This study proposed the use of bidirectional recurrent neural networks based on long short-term memory or a gated recurrent unit to capture long-range interactions by designing the optional reshape operator to adapt to the diversity of the output labels and implementing a training algorithm to support the training of sequence models capable of processing variable-length sequences. Additionally, the merge and pooling operators enhanced the ability to capture short-range interactions between basic units of biological sequences. The proposed deep-learning model and its training algorithm might be capable of solving currently known biological sequence-modeling problems through the use of a unified framework. We validated our model on one of the most difficult biological sequence-modeling problems currently known, with our results indicating the ability of the model to obtain predictions of protein residue interactions that exceeded the accuracy of current popular approaches by 10% based on multiple benchmarks.

  18. DeepGO: predicting protein functions from sequence and interactions using a deep ontology-aware classifier.

    PubMed

    Kulmanov, Maxat; Khan, Mohammed Asif; Hoehndorf, Robert; Wren, Jonathan

    2018-02-15

    A large number of protein sequences are becoming available through the application of novel high-throughput sequencing technologies. Experimental functional characterization of these proteins is time-consuming and expensive, and is often only done rigorously for few selected model organisms. Computational function prediction approaches have been suggested to fill this gap. The functions of proteins are classified using the Gene Ontology (GO), which contains over 40 000 classes. Additionally, proteins have multiple functions, making function prediction a large-scale, multi-class, multi-label problem. We have developed a novel method to predict protein function from sequence. We use deep learning to learn features from protein sequences as well as a cross-species protein-protein interaction network. Our approach specifically outputs information in the structure of the GO and utilizes the dependencies between GO classes as background information to construct a deep learning model. We evaluate our method using the standards established by the Computational Assessment of Function Annotation (CAFA) and demonstrate a significant improvement over baseline methods such as BLAST, in particular for predicting cellular locations. Web server: http://deepgo.bio2vec.net, Source code: https://github.com/bio-ontology-research-group/deepgo. robert.hoehndorf@kaust.edu.sa. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press.

  19. Low-Latency Telerobotic Sample Return and Biomolecular Sequencing for Deep Space Gateway

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lupisella, M.; Bleacher, J.; Lewis, R.; Dworkin, J.; Wright, M.; Burton, A.; Rubins, K.; Wallace, S.; Stahl, S.; John, K.; Archer, D.; Niles, P.; Regberg, A.; Smith, D.; Race, M.; Chiu, C.; Russell, J.; Rampe, E.; Bywaters, K.

    2018-02-01

    Low-latency telerobotics, crew-assisted sample return, and biomolecular sequencing can be used to acquire and analyze lunar farside and/or Apollo landing site samples. Sequencing can also be used to monitor and study Deep Space Gateway environment and crew health.

  20. GenomeGems: evaluation of genetic variability from deep sequencing data

    PubMed Central

    2012-01-01

    Background Detection of disease-causing mutations using Deep Sequencing technologies possesses great challenges. In particular, organizing the great amount of sequences generated so that mutations, which might possibly be biologically relevant, are easily identified is a difficult task. Yet, for this assignment only limited automatic accessible tools exist. Findings We developed GenomeGems to gap this need by enabling the user to view and compare Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) from multiple datasets and to load the data onto the UCSC Genome Browser for an expanded and familiar visualization. As such, via automatic, clear and accessible presentation of processed Deep Sequencing data, our tool aims to facilitate ranking of genomic SNP calling. GenomeGems runs on a local Personal Computer (PC) and is freely available at http://www.tau.ac.il/~nshomron/GenomeGems. Conclusions GenomeGems enables researchers to identify potential disease-causing SNPs in an efficient manner. This enables rapid turnover of information and leads to further experimental SNP validation. The tool allows the user to compare and visualize SNPs from multiple experiments and to easily load SNP data onto the UCSC Genome browser for further detailed information. PMID:22748151

  1. Error Analysis of Deep Sequencing of Phage Libraries: Peptides Censored in Sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Matochko, Wadim L.; Derda, Ratmir

    2013-01-01

    Next-generation sequencing techniques empower selection of ligands from phage-display libraries because they can detect low abundant clones and quantify changes in the copy numbers of clones without excessive selection rounds. Identification of errors in deep sequencing data is the most critical step in this process because these techniques have error rates >1%. Mechanisms that yield errors in Illumina and other techniques have been proposed, but no reports to date describe error analysis in phage libraries. Our paper focuses on error analysis of 7-mer peptide libraries sequenced by Illumina method. Low theoretical complexity of this phage library, as compared to complexity of long genetic reads and genomes, allowed us to describe this library using convenient linear vector and operator framework. We describe a phage library as N × 1 frequency vector n = ||ni||, where ni is the copy number of the ith sequence and N is the theoretical diversity, that is, the total number of all possible sequences. Any manipulation to the library is an operator acting on n. Selection, amplification, or sequencing could be described as a product of a N × N matrix and a stochastic sampling operator (S a). The latter is a random diagonal matrix that describes sampling of a library. In this paper, we focus on the properties of S a and use them to define the sequencing operator (S e q). Sequencing without any bias and errors is S e q = S a IN, where IN is a N × N unity matrix. Any bias in sequencing changes IN to a nonunity matrix. We identified a diagonal censorship matrix (C E N), which describes elimination or statistically significant downsampling, of specific reads during the sequencing process. PMID:24416071

  2. Deep Sequencing in Infectious Diseases: Immune and Pathogen Repertoires for the Improvement of Patient Outcomes

    PubMed Central

    Burkholder, William F.; Newell, Evan W.; Poidinger, Michael; Chen, Swaine; Fink, Katja

    2017-01-01

    The inaugural workshop “Deep Sequencing in Infectious Diseases: Immune and Pathogen Repertoires for the Improvement of Patient Outcomes” was held in Singapore on 13–14 October 2016. The aim of the workshop was to discuss the latest trends in using high-throughput sequencing, bioinformatics, and allied technologies to analyze immune and pathogen repertoires and their interplay within the host, bringing together key international players in the field and Singapore-based researchers and clinician-scientists. The focus was in particular on the application of these technologies for the improvement of patient diagnosis, prognosis and treatment, and for other broad public health outcomes. The presentations by scientists and clinicians showed the potential of deep sequencing technology to capture the coevolution of adaptive immunity and pathogens. For clinical applications, some key challenges remain, such as the long turnaround time and relatively high cost of deep sequencing for pathogen identification and characterization and the lack of international standardization in immune repertoire analysis. PMID:28620372

  3. Deep Sequencing in Infectious Diseases: Immune and Pathogen Repertoires for the Improvement of Patient Outcomes.

    PubMed

    Burkholder, William F; Newell, Evan W; Poidinger, Michael; Chen, Swaine; Fink, Katja

    2017-01-01

    The inaugural workshop "Deep Sequencing in Infectious Diseases: Immune and Pathogen Repertoires for the Improvement of Patient Outcomes" was held in Singapore on 13-14 October 2016. The aim of the workshop was to discuss the latest trends in using high-throughput sequencing, bioinformatics, and allied technologies to analyze immune and pathogen repertoires and their interplay within the host, bringing together key international players in the field and Singapore-based researchers and clinician-scientists. The focus was in particular on the application of these technologies for the improvement of patient diagnosis, prognosis and treatment, and for other broad public health outcomes. The presentations by scientists and clinicians showed the potential of deep sequencing technology to capture the coevolution of adaptive immunity and pathogens. For clinical applications, some key challenges remain, such as the long turnaround time and relatively high cost of deep sequencing for pathogen identification and characterization and the lack of international standardization in immune repertoire analysis.

  4. Deep sequencing methods for protein engineering and design.

    PubMed

    Wrenbeck, Emily E; Faber, Matthew S; Whitehead, Timothy A

    2017-08-01

    The advent of next-generation sequencing (NGS) has revolutionized protein science, and the development of complementary methods enabling NGS-driven protein engineering have followed. In general, these experiments address the functional consequences of thousands of protein variants in a massively parallel manner using genotype-phenotype linked high-throughput functional screens followed by DNA counting via deep sequencing. We highlight the use of information rich datasets to engineer protein molecular recognition. Examples include the creation of multiple dual-affinity Fabs targeting structurally dissimilar epitopes and engineering of a broad germline-targeted anti-HIV-1 immunogen. Additionally, we highlight the generation of enzyme fitness landscapes for conducting fundamental studies of protein behavior and evolution. We conclude with discussion of technological advances. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  5. Studies of a biochemical factory: tomato trichome deep expressed sequence tag sequencing and proteomics.

    PubMed

    Schilmiller, Anthony L; Miner, Dennis P; Larson, Matthew; McDowell, Eric; Gang, David R; Wilkerson, Curtis; Last, Robert L

    2010-07-01

    Shotgun proteomics analysis allows hundreds of proteins to be identified and quantified from a single sample at relatively low cost. Extensive DNA sequence information is a prerequisite for shotgun proteomics, and it is ideal to have sequence for the organism being studied rather than from related species or accessions. While this requirement has limited the set of organisms that are candidates for this approach, next generation sequencing technologies make it feasible to obtain deep DNA sequence coverage from any organism. As part of our studies of specialized (secondary) metabolism in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) trichomes, 454 sequencing of cDNA was combined with shotgun proteomics analyses to obtain in-depth profiles of genes and proteins expressed in leaf and stem glandular trichomes of 3-week-old plants. The expressed sequence tag and proteomics data sets combined with metabolite analysis led to the discovery and characterization of a sesquiterpene synthase that produces beta-caryophyllene and alpha-humulene from E,E-farnesyl diphosphate in trichomes of leaf but not of stem. This analysis demonstrates the utility of combining high-throughput cDNA sequencing with proteomics experiments in a target tissue. These data can be used for dissection of other biochemical processes in these specialized epidermal cells.

  6. LookSeq: a browser-based viewer for deep sequencing data.

    PubMed

    Manske, Heinrich Magnus; Kwiatkowski, Dominic P

    2009-11-01

    Sequencing a genome to great depth can be highly informative about heterogeneity within an individual or a population. Here we address the problem of how to visualize the multiple layers of information contained in deep sequencing data. We propose an interactive AJAX-based web viewer for browsing large data sets of aligned sequence reads. By enabling seamless browsing and fast zooming, the LookSeq program assists the user to assimilate information at different levels of resolution, from an overview of a genomic region to fine details such as heterogeneity within the sample. A specific problem, particularly if the sample is heterogeneous, is how to depict information about structural variation. LookSeq provides a simple graphical representation of paired sequence reads that is more revealing about potential insertions and deletions than are conventional methods.

  7. AUC-Maximized Deep Convolutional Neural Fields for Protein Sequence Labeling.

    PubMed

    Wang, Sheng; Sun, Siqi; Xu, Jinbo

    2016-09-01

    Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN) has shown excellent performance in a variety of machine learning tasks. This paper presents Deep Convolutional Neural Fields (DeepCNF), an integration of DCNN with Conditional Random Field (CRF), for sequence labeling with an imbalanced label distribution. The widely-used training methods, such as maximum-likelihood and maximum labelwise accuracy, do not work well on imbalanced data. To handle this, we present a new training algorithm called maximum-AUC for DeepCNF. That is, we train DeepCNF by directly maximizing the empirical Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC), which is an unbiased measurement for imbalanced data. To fulfill this, we formulate AUC in a pairwise ranking framework, approximate it by a polynomial function and then apply a gradient-based procedure to optimize it. Our experimental results confirm that maximum-AUC greatly outperforms the other two training methods on 8-state secondary structure prediction and disorder prediction since their label distributions are highly imbalanced and also has similar performance as the other two training methods on solvent accessibility prediction, which has three equally-distributed labels. Furthermore, our experimental results show that our AUC-trained DeepCNF models greatly outperform existing popular predictors of these three tasks. The data and software related to this paper are available at https://github.com/realbigws/DeepCNF_AUC.

  8. AUC-Maximized Deep Convolutional Neural Fields for Protein Sequence Labeling

    PubMed Central

    Wang, Sheng; Sun, Siqi

    2017-01-01

    Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN) has shown excellent performance in a variety of machine learning tasks. This paper presents Deep Convolutional Neural Fields (DeepCNF), an integration of DCNN with Conditional Random Field (CRF), for sequence labeling with an imbalanced label distribution. The widely-used training methods, such as maximum-likelihood and maximum labelwise accuracy, do not work well on imbalanced data. To handle this, we present a new training algorithm called maximum-AUC for DeepCNF. That is, we train DeepCNF by directly maximizing the empirical Area Under the ROC Curve (AUC), which is an unbiased measurement for imbalanced data. To fulfill this, we formulate AUC in a pairwise ranking framework, approximate it by a polynomial function and then apply a gradient-based procedure to optimize it. Our experimental results confirm that maximum-AUC greatly outperforms the other two training methods on 8-state secondary structure prediction and disorder prediction since their label distributions are highly imbalanced and also has similar performance as the other two training methods on solvent accessibility prediction, which has three equally-distributed labels. Furthermore, our experimental results show that our AUC-trained DeepCNF models greatly outperform existing popular predictors of these three tasks. The data and software related to this paper are available at https://github.com/realbigws/DeepCNF_AUC. PMID:28884168

  9. Learning Quantitative Sequence-Function Relationships from Massively Parallel Experiments

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Atwal, Gurinder S.; Kinney, Justin B.

    2016-03-01

    A fundamental aspect of biological information processing is the ubiquity of sequence-function relationships—functions that map the sequence of DNA, RNA, or protein to a biochemically relevant activity. Most sequence-function relationships in biology are quantitative, but only recently have experimental techniques for effectively measuring these relationships been developed. The advent of such "massively parallel" experiments presents an exciting opportunity for the concepts and methods of statistical physics to inform the study of biological systems. After reviewing these recent experimental advances, we focus on the problem of how to infer parametric models of sequence-function relationships from the data produced by these experiments. Specifically, we retrace and extend recent theoretical work showing that inference based on mutual information, not the standard likelihood-based approach, is often necessary for accurately learning the parameters of these models. Closely connected with this result is the emergence of "diffeomorphic modes"—directions in parameter space that are far less constrained by data than likelihood-based inference would suggest. Analogous to Goldstone modes in physics, diffeomorphic modes arise from an arbitrarily broken symmetry of the inference problem. An analytically tractable model of a massively parallel experiment is then described, providing an explicit demonstration of these fundamental aspects of statistical inference. This paper concludes with an outlook on the theoretical and computational challenges currently facing studies of quantitative sequence-function relationships.

  10. Deep sequencing and in silico analysis of small RNA library reveals novel miRNA from leaf Persicaria minor transcriptome.

    PubMed

    Samad, Abdul Fatah A; Nazaruddin, Nazaruddin; Murad, Abdul Munir Abdul; Jani, Jaeyres; Zainal, Zamri; Ismail, Ismanizan

    2018-03-01

    In current era, majority of microRNA (miRNA) are being discovered through computational approaches which are more confined towards model plants. Here, for the first time, we have described the identification and characterization of novel miRNA in a non-model plant, Persicaria minor ( P . minor ) using computational approach. Unannotated sequences from deep sequencing were analyzed based on previous well-established parameters. Around 24 putative novel miRNAs were identified from 6,417,780 reads of the unannotated sequence which represented 11 unique putative miRNA sequences. PsRobot target prediction tool was deployed to identify the target transcripts of putative novel miRNAs. Most of the predicted target transcripts (mRNAs) were known to be involved in plant development and stress responses. Gene ontology showed that majority of the putative novel miRNA targets involved in cellular component (69.07%), followed by molecular function (30.08%) and biological process (0.85%). Out of 11 unique putative miRNAs, 7 miRNAs were validated through semi-quantitative PCR. These novel miRNAs discoveries in P . minor may develop and update the current public miRNA database.

  11. Exploring the Gastrointestinal "Nemabiome": Deep Amplicon Sequencing to Quantify the Species Composition of Parasitic Nematode Communities.

    PubMed

    Avramenko, Russell W; Redman, Elizabeth M; Lewis, Roy; Yazwinski, Thomas A; Wasmuth, James D; Gilleard, John S

    2015-01-01

    Parasitic helminth infections have a considerable impact on global human health as well as animal welfare and production. Although co-infection with multiple parasite species within a host is common, there is a dearth of tools with which to study the composition of these complex parasite communities. Helminth species vary in their pathogenicity, epidemiology and drug sensitivity and the interactions that occur between co-infecting species and their hosts are poorly understood. We describe the first application of deep amplicon sequencing to study parasitic nematode communities as well as introduce the concept of the gastro-intestinal "nemabiome". The approach is analogous to 16S rDNA deep sequencing used to explore microbial communities, but utilizes the nematode ITS-2 rDNA locus instead. Gastro-intestinal parasites of cattle were used to develop the concept, as this host has many well-defined gastro-intestinal nematode species that commonly occur as complex co-infections. Further, the availability of pure mono-parasite populations from experimentally infected cattle allowed us to prepare mock parasite communities to determine, and correct for, species representation biases in the sequence data. We demonstrate that, once these biases have been corrected, accurate relative quantitation of gastro-intestinal parasitic nematode communities in cattle fecal samples can be achieved. We have validated the accuracy of the method applied to field-samples by comparing the results of detailed morphological examination of L3 larvae populations with those of the sequencing assay. The results illustrate the insights that can be gained into the species composition of parasite communities, using grazing cattle in the mid-west USA as an example. However, both the technical approach and the concept of the 'nemabiome' have a wide range of potential applications in human and veterinary medicine. These include investigations of host-parasite and parasite-parasite interactions during co

  12. Deep sequencing reveals double mutations in cis of MPL exon 10 in myeloproliferative neoplasms.

    PubMed

    Pietra, Daniela; Brisci, Angela; Rumi, Elisa; Boggi, Sabrina; Elena, Chiara; Pietrelli, Alessandro; Bordoni, Roberta; Ferrari, Maurizio; Passamonti, Francesco; De Bellis, Gianluca; Cremonesi, Laura; Cazzola, Mario

    2011-04-01

    Somatic mutations of MPL exon 10, mainly involving a W515 substitution, have been described in JAK2 (V617F)-negative patients with essential thrombocythemia and primary myelofibrosis. We used direct sequencing and high-resolution melt analysis to identify mutations of MPL exon 10 in 570 patients with myeloproliferative neoplasms, and allele specific PCR and deep sequencing to further characterize a subset of mutated patients. Somatic mutations were detected in 33 of 221 patients (15%) with JAK2 (V617F)-negative essential thrombocythemia or primary myelofibrosis. Only one patient with essential thrombocythemia carried both JAK2 (V617F) and MPL (W515L). High-resolution melt analysis identified abnormal patterns in all the MPL mutated cases, while direct sequencing did not detect the mutant MPL in one fifth of them. In 3 cases carrying double MPL mutations, deep sequencing analysis showed identical load and location in cis of the paired lesions, indicating their simultaneous occurrence on the same chromosome.

  13. Fungal communities from the calcareous deep-sea sediments in the Southwest India Ridge revealed by Illumina sequencing technology.

    PubMed

    Zhang, Likui; Kang, Manyu; Huang, Yangchao; Yang, Lixiang

    2016-05-01

    The diversity and ecological significance of bacteria and archaea in deep-sea environments have been thoroughly investigated, but eukaryotic microorganisms in these areas, such as fungi, are poorly understood. To elucidate fungal diversity in calcareous deep-sea sediments in the Southwest India Ridge (SWIR), the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions of rRNA genes from two sediment metagenomic DNA samples were amplified and sequenced using the Illumina sequencing platform. The results revealed that 58-63 % and 36-42 % of the ITS sequences (97 % similarity) belonged to Basidiomycota and Ascomycota, respectively. These findings suggest that Basidiomycota and Ascomycota are the predominant fungal phyla in the two samples. We also found that Agaricomycetes, Leotiomycetes, and Pezizomycetes were the major fungal classes in the two samples. At the species level, Thelephoraceae sp. and Phialocephala fortinii were major fungal species in the two samples. Despite the low relative abundance, unidentified fungal sequences were also observed in the two samples. Furthermore, we found that there were slight differences in fungal diversity between the two sediment samples, although both were collected from the SWIR. Thus, our results demonstrate that calcareous deep-sea sediments in the SWIR harbor diverse fungi, which augment the fungal groups in deep-sea sediments. This is the first report of fungal communities in calcareous deep-sea sediments in the SWIR revealed by Illumina sequencing.

  14. Deep Impact Sequence Planning Using Multi-Mission Adaptable Planning Tools With Integrated Spacecraft Models

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Wissler, Steven S.; Maldague, Pierre; Rocca, Jennifer; Seybold, Calina

    2006-01-01

    The Deep Impact mission was ambitious and challenging. JPL's well proven, easily adaptable multi-mission sequence planning tools combined with integrated spacecraft subsystem models enabled a small operations team to develop, validate, and execute extremely complex sequence-based activities within very short development times. This paper focuses on the core planning tool used in the mission, APGEN. It shows how the multi-mission design and adaptability of APGEN made it possible to model spacecraft subsystems as well as ground assets throughout the lifecycle of the Deep Impact project, starting with models of initial, high-level mission objectives, and culminating in detailed predictions of spacecraft behavior during mission-critical activities.

  15. Understanding the complex evolution of rapidly mutating viruses with deep sequencing: Beyond the analysis of viral diversity.

    PubMed

    Leung, Preston; Eltahla, Auda A; Lloyd, Andrew R; Bull, Rowena A; Luciani, Fabio

    2017-07-15

    With the advent of affordable deep sequencing technologies, detection of low frequency variants within genetically diverse viral populations can now be achieved with unprecedented depth and efficiency. The high-resolution data provided by next generation sequencing technologies is currently recognised as the gold standard in estimation of viral diversity. In the analysis of rapidly mutating viruses, longitudinal deep sequencing datasets from viral genomes during individual infection episodes, as well as at the epidemiological level during outbreaks, now allow for more sophisticated analyses such as statistical estimates of the impact of complex mutation patterns on the evolution of the viral populations both within and between hosts. These analyses are revealing more accurate descriptions of the evolutionary dynamics that underpin the rapid adaptation of these viruses to the host response, and to drug therapies. This review assesses recent developments in methods and provide informative research examples using deep sequencing data generated from rapidly mutating viruses infecting humans, particularly hepatitis C virus (HCV), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), Ebola virus and influenza virus, to understand the evolution of viral genomes and to explore the relationship between viral mutations and the host adaptive immune response. Finally, we discuss limitations in current technologies, and future directions that take advantage of publically available large deep sequencing datasets. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  16. Identification of microRNA-like RNAs from Curvularia lunata associated with maize leaf spot by bioinformation analysis and deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Liu, Tong; Hu, John; Zuo, Yuhu; Jin, Yazhong; Hou, Jumei

    2016-04-01

    Deep sequencing of small RNAs is a useful tool to identify novel small RNAs that may be involved in fungal growth and pathogenesis. In this study, we used HiSeq deep sequencing to identify 747,487 unique small RNAs from Curvularia lunata. Among these small RNAs were 1012 microRNA-like RNAs (milRNAs), which are similar to other known microRNAs, and 48 potential novel milRNAs without homologs in other organisms have been identified using the miRBase© database. We used quantitative PCR to analyze the expression of four of these milRNAs from C. lunata at different developmental stages. The analysis revealed several changes associated with germinating conidia and mycelial growth, suggesting that these milRNAs may play a role in pathogen infection and mycelial growth. A total of 8334 target mRNAs for the 1012 milRNAs that were identified, and 256 target mRNAs for the 48 novel milRNAs were predicted by computational analysis. These target mRNAs of milRNAs were also performed by gene ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway analysis. To our knowledge, this study is the first report of C. lunata's milRNA profiles. This information will provide a better understanding of pathogen development and infection mechanism.

  17. Insights into Deep-Sea Sediment Fungal Communities from the East Indian Ocean Using Targeted Environmental Sequencing Combined with Traditional Cultivation

    PubMed Central

    Zhang, Xiao-yong; Tang, Gui-ling; Xu, Xin-ya; Nong, Xu-hua; Qi, Shu-Hua

    2014-01-01

    The fungal diversity in deep-sea environments has recently gained an increasing amount attention. Our knowledge and understanding of the true fungal diversity and the role it plays in deep-sea environments, however, is still limited. We investigated the fungal community structure in five sediments from a depth of ∼4000 m in the East India Ocean using a combination of targeted environmental sequencing and traditional cultivation. This approach resulted in the recovery of a total of 45 fungal operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and 20 culturable fungal phylotypes. This finding indicates that there is a great amount of fungal diversity in the deep-sea sediments collected in the East Indian Ocean. Three fungal OTUs and one culturable phylotype demonstrated high divergence (89%–97%) from the existing sequences in the GenBank. Moreover, 44.4% fungal OTUs and 30% culturable fungal phylotypes are new reports for deep-sea sediments. These results suggest that the deep-sea sediments from the East India Ocean can serve as habitats for new fungal communities compared with other deep-sea environments. In addition, different fungal community could be detected when using targeted environmental sequencing compared with traditional cultivation in this study, which suggests that a combination of targeted environmental sequencing and traditional cultivation will generate a more diverse fungal community in deep-sea environments than using either targeted environmental sequencing or traditional cultivation alone. This study is the first to report new insights into the fungal communities in deep-sea sediments from the East Indian Ocean, which increases our knowledge and understanding of the fungal diversity in deep-sea environments. PMID:25272044

  18. Chiron: translating nanopore raw signal directly into nucleotide sequence using deep learning.

    PubMed

    Teng, Haotian; Cao, Minh Duc; Hall, Michael B; Duarte, Tania; Wang, Sheng; Coin, Lachlan J M

    2018-05-01

    Sequencing by translocating DNA fragments through an array of nanopores is a rapidly maturing technology that offers faster and cheaper sequencing than other approaches. However, accurately deciphering the DNA sequence from the noisy and complex electrical signal is challenging. Here, we report Chiron, the first deep learning model to achieve end-to-end basecalling and directly translate the raw signal to DNA sequence without the error-prone segmentation step. Trained with only a small set of 4,000 reads, we show that our model provides state-of-the-art basecalling accuracy, even on previously unseen species. Chiron achieves basecalling speeds of more than 2,000 bases per second using desktop computer graphics processing units.

  19. Draft Genome Sequence of Pseudomonas oceani DSM 100277T, a Deep-Sea Bacterium

    PubMed Central

    2018-01-01

    ABSTRACT Pseudomonas oceani DSM 100277T was isolated from deep seawater in the Okinawa Trough at 1390 m. P. oceani belongs to the Pseudomonas pertucinogena group. Here, we report the draft genome sequence of P. oceani, which has an estimated size of 4.1 Mb and exhibits 3,790 coding sequences, with a G+C content of 59.94 mol%. PMID:29650573

  20. Simultaneous identification of DNA and RNA viruses present in pig faeces using process-controlled deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Sachsenröder, Jana; Twardziok, Sven; Hammerl, Jens A; Janczyk, Pawel; Wrede, Paul; Hertwig, Stefan; Johne, Reimar

    2012-01-01

    Animal faeces comprise a community of many different microorganisms including bacteria and viruses. Only scarce information is available about the diversity of viruses present in the faeces of pigs. Here we describe a protocol, which was optimized for the purification of the total fraction of viral particles from pig faeces. The genomes of the purified DNA and RNA viruses were simultaneously amplified by PCR and subjected to deep sequencing followed by bioinformatic analyses. The efficiency of the method was monitored using a process control consisting of three bacteriophages (T4, M13 and MS2) with different morphology and genome types. Defined amounts of the bacteriophages were added to the sample and their abundance was assessed by quantitative PCR during the preparation procedure. The procedure was applied to a pooled faecal sample of five pigs. From this sample, 69,613 sequence reads were generated. All of the added bacteriophages were identified by sequence analysis of the reads. In total, 7.7% of the reads showed significant sequence identities with published viral sequences. They mainly originated from bacteriophages (73.9%) and mammalian viruses (23.9%); 0.8% of the sequences showed identities to plant viruses. The most abundant detected porcine viruses were kobuvirus, rotavirus C, astrovirus, enterovirus B, sapovirus and picobirnavirus. In addition, sequences with identities to the chimpanzee stool-associated circular ssDNA virus were identified. Whole genome analysis indicates that this virus, tentatively designated as pig stool-associated circular ssDNA virus (PigSCV), represents a novel pig virus. The established protocol enables the simultaneous detection of DNA and RNA viruses in pig faeces including the identification of so far unknown viruses. It may be applied in studies investigating aetiology, epidemiology and ecology of diseases. The implemented process control serves as quality control, ensures comparability of the method and may be used for

  1. The dynamics of genome replication using deep sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Müller, Carolin A.; Hawkins, Michelle; Retkute, Renata; Malla, Sunir; Wilson, Ray; Blythe, Martin J.; Nakato, Ryuichiro; Komata, Makiko; Shirahige, Katsuhiko; de Moura, Alessandro P.S.; Nieduszynski, Conrad A.

    2014-01-01

    Eukaryotic genomes are replicated from multiple DNA replication origins. We present complementary deep sequencing approaches to measure origin location and activity in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Measuring the increase in DNA copy number during a synchronous S-phase allowed the precise determination of genome replication. To map origin locations, replication forks were stalled close to their initiation sites; therefore, copy number enrichment was limited to origins. Replication timing profiles were generated from asynchronous cultures using fluorescence-activated cell sorting. Applying this technique we show that the replication profiles of haploid and diploid cells are indistinguishable, indicating that both cell types use the same cohort of origins with the same activities. Finally, increasing sequencing depth allowed the direct measure of replication dynamics from an exponentially growing culture. This is the first time this approach, called marker frequency analysis, has been successfully applied to a eukaryote. These data provide a high-resolution resource and methodological framework for studying genome biology. PMID:24089142

  2. Deep sequencing approaches for the analysis of prokaryotic transcriptional boundaries and dynamics.

    PubMed

    James, Katherine; Cockell, Simon J; Zenkin, Nikolay

    2017-05-01

    The identification of the protein-coding regions of a genome is straightforward due to the universality of start and stop codons. However, the boundaries of the transcribed regions, conditional operon structures, non-coding RNAs and the dynamics of transcription, such as pausing of elongation, are non-trivial to identify, even in the comparatively simple genomes of prokaryotes. Traditional methods for the study of these areas, such as tiling arrays, are noisy, labour-intensive and lack the resolution required for densely-packed bacterial genomes. Recently, deep sequencing has become increasingly popular for the study of the transcriptome due to its lower costs, higher accuracy and single nucleotide resolution. These methods have revolutionised our understanding of prokaryotic transcriptional dynamics. Here, we review the deep sequencing and data analysis techniques that are available for the study of transcription in prokaryotes, and discuss the bioinformatic considerations of these analyses. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  3. Ultra-deep mutant spectrum profiling: improving sequencing accuracy using overlapping read pairs.

    PubMed

    Chen-Harris, Haiyin; Borucki, Monica K; Torres, Clinton; Slezak, Tom R; Allen, Jonathan E

    2013-02-12

    High throughput sequencing is beginning to make a transformative impact in the area of viral evolution. Deep sequencing has the potential to reveal the mutant spectrum within a viral sample at high resolution, thus enabling the close examination of viral mutational dynamics both within- and between-hosts. The challenge however, is to accurately model the errors in the sequencing data and differentiate real viral mutations, particularly those that exist at low frequencies, from sequencing errors. We demonstrate that overlapping read pairs (ORP) -- generated by combining short fragment sequencing libraries and longer sequencing reads -- significantly reduce sequencing error rates and improve rare variant detection accuracy. Using this sequencing protocol and an error model optimized for variant detection, we are able to capture a large number of genetic mutations present within a viral population at ultra-low frequency levels (<0.05%). Our rare variant detection strategies have important implications beyond viral evolution and can be applied to any basic and clinical research area that requires the identification of rare mutations.

  4. microRNA expression profiling in fetal single ventricle malformation identified by deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Yu, Zhang-Bin; Han, Shu-Ping; Bai, Yun-Fei; Zhu, Chun; Pan, Ya; Guo, Xi-Rong

    2012-01-01

    microRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as key regulators in many biological processes, particularly cardiac growth and development, although the specific miRNA expression profile associated with this process remains to be elucidated. This study aimed to characterize the cellular microRNA profile involved in the development of congenital heart malformation, through the investigation of single ventricle (SV) defects. Comprehensive miRNA profiling in human fetal SV cardiac tissue was performed by deep sequencing. Differential expression of 48 miRNAs was revealed by sequencing by oligonucleotide ligation and detection (SOLiD) analysis. Of these, 38 were down-regulated and 10 were up-regulated in differentiated SV cardiac tissue, compared to control cardiac tissue. This was confirmed by real-time quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis. Predicted target genes of the 48 differentially expressed miRNAs were analyzed by gene ontology and categorized according to cellular process, regulation of biological process and metabolic process. Pathway-Express analysis identified the WNT and mTOR signaling pathways as the most significant processes putatively affected by the differential expression of these miRNAs. The candidate genes involved in cardiac development were identified as potential targets for these differentially expressed microRNAs and the collaborative network of microRNAs and cardiac development related-mRNAs was constructed. These data provide the basis for future investigation of the mechanism of the occurrence and development of fetal SV malformations.

  5. Shallow Investigations of the Deep Seafloor: Quantitative Morphology in the Levant Basin, Eastern Mediterranean

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kanari, M.; Ketter, T.; Tibor, G.; Schattner, U.

    2017-12-01

    We aim to characterize the seafloor morphology and its shallow sub-surface structures and deformations in the deep part of the Levant basin (eastern Mediterranean) using recently acquired high-resolution shallow seismic reflection data and multibeam bathymetry, which allow quantitative analysis of morphology and structure. The Levant basin at the eastern Mediterranean is considered a passive continental margin, where most of the recent geological processes were related in literature to salt tectonics rooted at the Messinian deposits from 6Ma. We analyzed two sets of recently acquired high-resolution data from multibeam bathymetry and 3.5 kHz Chirp sub-bottom seismic reflection in the deep basin of the continental shelf offshore Israel (water depths up to 2100 m). Semi-automatic mapping of seafloor features and seismic data interpretation resulted in quantitative morphological analysis of the seafloor and its underlying sediment with penetration depth up to 60 m. The quantitative analysis and its interpretation are still in progress. Preliminary results reveal distinct morphologies of four major elements: channels, faults, folds and sediment waves, validated by seismic data. From the spatial distribution and orientation analyses of these phenomena, we identify two primary process types which dominate the formation of the seafloor in the Levant basin: structural and sedimentary. Characterization of the geological and geomorphological processes forming the seafloor helps to better understand the transport mechanisms and the relations between sediment transport and deposition in deep water and the shallower parts of the shelf and slope.

  6. Draft Genome Sequence of Pseudomonas oceani DSM 100277T, a Deep-Sea Bacterium.

    PubMed

    García-Valdés, Elena; Gomila, Margarita; Mulet, Magdalena; Lalucat, Jorge

    2018-04-12

    Pseudomonas oceani DSM 100277 T was isolated from deep seawater in the Okinawa Trough at 1390 m. P. oceani belongs to the Pseudomonas pertucinogena group. Here, we report the draft genome sequence of P. oceani , which has an estimated size of 4.1 Mb and exhibits 3,790 coding sequences, with a G+C content of 59.94 mol%. Copyright © 2018 García-Valdés et al.

  7. Microbial Diversity in Deep-sea Methane Seep Sediments Presented by SSU rRNA Gene Tag Sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Nunoura, Takuro; Takaki, Yoshihiro; Kazama, Hiromi; Hirai, Miho; Ashi, Juichiro; Imachi, Hiroyuki; Takai, Ken

    2012-01-01

    Microbial community structures in methane seep sediments in the Nankai Trough were analyzed by tag-sequencing analysis for the small subunit (SSU) rRNA gene using a newly developed primer set. The dominant members of Archaea were Deep-sea Hydrothermal Vent Euryarchaeotic Group 6 (DHVEG 6), Marine Group I (MGI) and Deep Sea Archaeal Group (DSAG), and those in Bacteria were Alpha-, Gamma-, Delta- and Epsilonproteobacteria, Chloroflexi, Bacteroidetes, Planctomycetes and Acidobacteria. Diversity and richness were examined by 8,709 and 7,690 tag-sequences from sediments at 5 and 25 cm below the seafloor (cmbsf), respectively. The estimated diversity and richness in the methane seep sediment are as high as those in soil and deep-sea hydrothermal environments, although the tag-sequences obtained in this study were not sufficient to show whole microbial diversity in this analysis. We also compared the diversity and richness of each taxon/division between the sediments from the two depths, and found that the diversity and richness of some taxa/divisions varied significantly along with the depth. PMID:22510646

  8. A Bioinformatic Pipeline for Monitoring of the Mutational Stability of Viral Drug Targets with Deep-Sequencing Technology.

    PubMed

    Kravatsky, Yuri; Chechetkin, Vladimir; Fedoseeva, Daria; Gorbacheva, Maria; Kravatskaya, Galina; Kretova, Olga; Tchurikov, Nickolai

    2017-11-23

    The efficient development of antiviral drugs, including efficient antiviral small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), requires continuous monitoring of the strict correspondence between a drug and the related highly variable viral DNA/RNA target(s). Deep sequencing is able to provide an assessment of both the general target conservation and the frequency of particular mutations in the different target sites. The aim of this study was to develop a reliable bioinformatic pipeline for the analysis of millions of short, deep sequencing reads corresponding to selected highly variable viral sequences that are drug target(s). The suggested bioinformatic pipeline combines the available programs and the ad hoc scripts based on an original algorithm of the search for the conserved targets in the deep sequencing data. We also present the statistical criteria for the threshold of reliable mutation detection and for the assessment of variations between corresponding data sets. These criteria are robust against the possible sequencing errors in the reads. As an example, the bioinformatic pipeline is applied to the study of the conservation of RNA interference (RNAi) targets in human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV-1) subtype A. The developed pipeline is freely available to download at the website http://virmut.eimb.ru/. Brief comments and comparisons between VirMut and other pipelines are also presented.

  9. HomozygosityMapper2012--bridging the gap between homozygosity mapping and deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Seelow, Dominik; Schuelke, Markus

    2012-07-01

    Homozygosity mapping is a common method to map recessive traits in consanguineous families. To facilitate these analyses, we have developed HomozygosityMapper, a web-based approach to homozygosity mapping. HomozygosityMapper allows researchers to directly upload the genotype files produced by the major genotyping platforms as well as deep sequencing data. It detects stretches of homozygosity shared by the affected individuals and displays them graphically. Users can interactively inspect the underlying genotypes, manually refine these regions and eventually submit them to our candidate gene search engine GeneDistiller to identify the most promising candidate genes. Here, we present the new version of HomozygosityMapper. The most striking new feature is the support of Next Generation Sequencing *.vcf files as input. Upon users' requests, we have implemented the analysis of common experimental rodents as well as of important farm animals. Furthermore, we have extended the options for single families and loss of heterozygosity studies. Another new feature is the export of *.bed files for targeted enrichment of the potential disease regions for deep sequencing strategies. HomozygosityMapper also generates files for conventional linkage analyses which are already restricted to the possible disease regions, hence superseding CPU-intensive genome-wide analyses. HomozygosityMapper is freely available at http://www.homozygositymapper.org/.

  10. Studies of a Biochemical Factory: Tomato Trichome Deep Expressed Sequence Tag Sequencing and Proteomics1[W][OA

    PubMed Central

    Schilmiller, Anthony L.; Miner, Dennis P.; Larson, Matthew; McDowell, Eric; Gang, David R.; Wilkerson, Curtis; Last, Robert L.

    2010-01-01

    Shotgun proteomics analysis allows hundreds of proteins to be identified and quantified from a single sample at relatively low cost. Extensive DNA sequence information is a prerequisite for shotgun proteomics, and it is ideal to have sequence for the organism being studied rather than from related species or accessions. While this requirement has limited the set of organisms that are candidates for this approach, next generation sequencing technologies make it feasible to obtain deep DNA sequence coverage from any organism. As part of our studies of specialized (secondary) metabolism in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) trichomes, 454 sequencing of cDNA was combined with shotgun proteomics analyses to obtain in-depth profiles of genes and proteins expressed in leaf and stem glandular trichomes of 3-week-old plants. The expressed sequence tag and proteomics data sets combined with metabolite analysis led to the discovery and characterization of a sesquiterpene synthase that produces β-caryophyllene and α-humulene from E,E-farnesyl diphosphate in trichomes of leaf but not of stem. This analysis demonstrates the utility of combining high-throughput cDNA sequencing with proteomics experiments in a target tissue. These data can be used for dissection of other biochemical processes in these specialized epidermal cells. PMID:20431087

  11. Quaternary paleoceanography of the deep Arctic Ocean based on quantitative analysis of Ostracoda

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Cronin, T. M.; Holtz, T.R.; Whatley, R.C.

    1994-01-01

    Ostracodes were studied from deep Arctic Ocean cores obtained during the Arctic 91 expedition of the Polarstern to the Nansen, Amundsen and Makarov Basins, the Lomonosov Ridge, Morris Jesup Rise and Yermak Plateau, in order to investigate their distribution in Arctic Ocean deep water (AODW) and apply these data to paleoceanographic reconstruction of bottom water masses during the Quaternary. Analyses of coretop assemblages from Arctic 91 boxcores indicate the following: ostracodes are common at all depths between 1000 and 4500 m, and species distribution is strongly influenced by water mass characteristics and bathymetry; quantitative analyses comparing Eurasian and Canada Basin assemblages indicate that distinct assemblages inhabit regions east and west of the Lomonosov Ridge, a barrier especially important to species living in lower AODW; deep Eurasian Basin assemblages are more similar to those living in Greenland Sea deep water (GSDW) than those in Canada Basin deep water; two upper AODW assemblages were recognized throughout the Arctic Ocean, one living between 1000 and 1500 m, and the other, having high species diversity, at 1500-3000 m. Downcore quantitative analyses of species' abundances and the squared chord distance coefficient of similarity reveals a distinct series of abundance peaks in key indicator taxa interpreted to signify the following late Quaternary deep water history of the Eurasian Basin. During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), a GSDW/AODW assemblage, characteristic of cold, well oxygenated deep water > 3000 m today, inhabited the Lomonosov Ridge to depths as shallow as 1000 m, perhaps indicating the influence of GSDW at mid-depths in the central Arctic Ocean. During Termination 1, a period of high organic productivity associated with a strong inflowing warm North Atlantic layer occurred. During the mid-Holocene, several key faunal events indicate a period of warming and/or enhanced flow between the Canada and Eurasian Basins. A long

  12. Modeling positional effects of regulatory sequences with spline transformations increases prediction accuracy of deep neural networks

    PubMed Central

    Avsec, Žiga; Cheng, Jun; Gagneur, Julien

    2018-01-01

    Abstract Motivation Regulatory sequences are not solely defined by their nucleic acid sequence but also by their relative distances to genomic landmarks such as transcription start site, exon boundaries or polyadenylation site. Deep learning has become the approach of choice for modeling regulatory sequences because of its strength to learn complex sequence features. However, modeling relative distances to genomic landmarks in deep neural networks has not been addressed. Results Here we developed spline transformation, a neural network module based on splines to flexibly and robustly model distances. Modeling distances to various genomic landmarks with spline transformations significantly increased state-of-the-art prediction accuracy of in vivo RNA-binding protein binding sites for 120 out of 123 proteins. We also developed a deep neural network for human splice branchpoint based on spline transformations that outperformed the current best, already distance-based, machine learning model. Compared to piecewise linear transformation, as obtained by composition of rectified linear units, spline transformation yields higher prediction accuracy as well as faster and more robust training. As spline transformation can be applied to further quantities beyond distances, such as methylation or conservation, we foresee it as a versatile component in the genomics deep learning toolbox. Availability and implementation Spline transformation is implemented as a Keras layer in the CONCISE python package: https://github.com/gagneurlab/concise. Analysis code is available at https://github.com/gagneurlab/Manuscript_Avsec_Bioinformatics_2017. Contact avsec@in.tum.de or gagneur@in.tum.de Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. PMID:29155928

  13. Genome-wide analyses of long noncoding RNA expression profiles correlated with radioresistance in nasopharyngeal carcinoma via next-generation deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Li, Guo; Liu, Yong; Liu, Chao; Su, Zhongwu; Ren, Shuling; Wang, Yunyun; Deng, Tengbo; Huang, Donghai; Tian, Yongquan; Qiu, Yuanzheng

    2016-09-06

    Radioresistance is one of the major factors limiting the therapeutic efficacy and prognosis of patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Accumulating evidence has suggested that aberrant expression of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) contributes to cancer progression. Therefore, here we identified lncRNAs associated with radioresistance in NPC. The differential expression profiles of lncRNAs associated with NPC radioresistance were constructed by next-generation deep sequencing by comparing radioresistant NPC cells with their parental cells. LncRNA-related mRNAs were predicted and analyzed using bioinformatics algorithms compared with the mRNA profiles related to radioresistance obtained in our previous study. Several lncRNAs and associated mRNAs were validated in established NPC radioresistant cell models and NPC tissues. By comparison between radioresistant CNE-2-Rs and parental CNE-2 cells by next-generation deep sequencing, a total of 781 known lncRNAs and 2054 novel lncRNAs were annotated. The top five upregulated and downregulated known/novel lncRNAs were detected using quantitative real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, and 7/10 known lncRNAs and 3/10 novel lncRNAs were demonstrated to have significant differential expression trends that were the same as those predicted by deep sequencing. From the prediction process, 13 pairs of lncRNAs and their associated genes were acquired, and the prediction trends of three pairs were validated in both radioresistant CNE-2-Rs and 6-10B-Rs cell lines, including lncRNA n373932 and SLITRK5, n409627 and PRSS12, and n386034 and RIMKLB. LncRNA n373932 and its related SLITRK5 showed dramatic expression changes in post-irradiation radioresistant cells and a negative expression correlation in NPC tissues (R = -0.595, p < 0.05). Our study provides an overview of the expression profiles of radioresistant lncRNAs and potentially related mRNAs, which will facilitate future investigations into the

  14. Prognostic value of deep sequencing method for minimal residual disease detection in multiple myeloma

    PubMed Central

    Lahuerta, Juan J.; Pepin, François; González, Marcos; Barrio, Santiago; Ayala, Rosa; Puig, Noemí; Montalban, María A.; Paiva, Bruno; Weng, Li; Jiménez, Cristina; Sopena, María; Moorhead, Martin; Cedena, Teresa; Rapado, Immaculada; Mateos, María Victoria; Rosiñol, Laura; Oriol, Albert; Blanchard, María J.; Martínez, Rafael; Bladé, Joan; San Miguel, Jesús; Faham, Malek; García-Sanz, Ramón

    2014-01-01

    We assessed the prognostic value of minimal residual disease (MRD) detection in multiple myeloma (MM) patients using a sequencing-based platform in bone marrow samples from 133 MM patients in at least very good partial response (VGPR) after front-line therapy. Deep sequencing was carried out in patients in whom a high-frequency myeloma clone was identified and MRD was assessed using the IGH-VDJH, IGH-DJH, and IGK assays. The results were contrasted with those of multiparametric flow cytometry (MFC) and allele-specific oligonucleotide polymerase chain reaction (ASO-PCR). The applicability of deep sequencing was 91%. Concordance between sequencing and MFC and ASO-PCR was 83% and 85%, respectively. Patients who were MRD– by sequencing had a significantly longer time to tumor progression (TTP) (median 80 vs 31 months; P < .0001) and overall survival (median not reached vs 81 months; P = .02), compared with patients who were MRD+. When stratifying patients by different levels of MRD, the respective TTP medians were: MRD ≥10−3 27 months, MRD 10−3 to 10−5 48 months, and MRD <10−5 80 months (P = .003 to .0001). Ninety-two percent of VGPR patients were MRD+. In complete response patients, the TTP remained significantly longer for MRD– compared with MRD+ patients (131 vs 35 months; P = .0009). PMID:24646471

  15. Next-generation sequencing facilitates quantitative analysis of wild-type and Nrl−/− retinal transcriptomes

    PubMed Central

    Brooks, Matthew J.; Rajasimha, Harsha K.; Roger, Jerome E.

    2011-01-01

    Purpose Next-generation sequencing (NGS) has revolutionized systems-based analysis of cellular pathways. The goals of this study are to compare NGS-derived retinal transcriptome profiling (RNA-seq) to microarray and quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT–PCR) methods and to evaluate protocols for optimal high-throughput data analysis. Methods Retinal mRNA profiles of 21-day-old wild-type (WT) and neural retina leucine zipper knockout (Nrl−/−) mice were generated by deep sequencing, in triplicate, using Illumina GAIIx. The sequence reads that passed quality filters were analyzed at the transcript isoform level with two methods: Burrows–Wheeler Aligner (BWA) followed by ANOVA (ANOVA) and TopHat followed by Cufflinks. qRT–PCR validation was performed using TaqMan and SYBR Green assays. Results Using an optimized data analysis workflow, we mapped about 30 million sequence reads per sample to the mouse genome (build mm9) and identified 16,014 transcripts in the retinas of WT and Nrl−/− mice with BWA workflow and 34,115 transcripts with TopHat workflow. RNA-seq data confirmed stable expression of 25 known housekeeping genes, and 12 of these were validated with qRT–PCR. RNA-seq data had a linear relationship with qRT–PCR for more than four orders of magnitude and a goodness of fit (R2) of 0.8798. Approximately 10% of the transcripts showed differential expression between the WT and Nrl−/− retina, with a fold change ≥1.5 and p value <0.05. Altered expression of 25 genes was confirmed with qRT–PCR, demonstrating the high degree of sensitivity of the RNA-seq method. Hierarchical clustering of differentially expressed genes uncovered several as yet uncharacterized genes that may contribute to retinal function. Data analysis with BWA and TopHat workflows revealed a significant overlap yet provided complementary insights in transcriptome profiling. Conclusions Our study represents the first detailed analysis of retinal

  16. Modeling genome coverage in single-cell sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Daley, Timothy; Smith, Andrew D.

    2014-01-01

    Motivation: Single-cell DNA sequencing is necessary for examining genetic variation at the cellular level, which remains hidden in bulk sequencing experiments. But because they begin with such small amounts of starting material, the amount of information that is obtained from single-cell sequencing experiment is highly sensitive to the choice of protocol employed and variability in library preparation. In particular, the fraction of the genome represented in single-cell sequencing libraries exhibits extreme variability due to quantitative biases in amplification and loss of genetic material. Results: We propose a method to predict the genome coverage of a deep sequencing experiment using information from an initial shallow sequencing experiment mapped to a reference genome. The observed coverage statistics are used in a non-parametric empirical Bayes Poisson model to estimate the gain in coverage from deeper sequencing. This approach allows researchers to know statistical features of deep sequencing experiments without actually sequencing deeply, providing a basis for optimizing and comparing single-cell sequencing protocols or screening libraries. Availability and implementation: The method is available as part of the preseq software package. Source code is available at http://smithlabresearch.org/preseq. Contact: andrewds@usc.edu Supplementary information: Supplementary material is available at Bioinformatics online. PMID:25107873

  17. Deep sequencing analysis of viral infection and evolution allows rapid and detailed characterization of viral mutant spectrum.

    PubMed

    Isakov, Ofer; Bordería, Antonio V; Golan, David; Hamenahem, Amir; Celniker, Gershon; Yoffe, Liron; Blanc, Hervé; Vignuzzi, Marco; Shomron, Noam

    2015-07-01

    The study of RNA virus populations is a challenging task. Each population of RNA virus is composed of a collection of different, yet related genomes often referred to as mutant spectra or quasispecies. Virologists using deep sequencing technologies face major obstacles when studying virus population dynamics, both experimentally and in natural settings due to the relatively high error rates of these technologies and the lack of high performance pipelines. In order to overcome these hurdles we developed a computational pipeline, termed ViVan (Viral Variance Analysis). ViVan is a complete pipeline facilitating the identification, characterization and comparison of sequence variance in deep sequenced virus populations. Applying ViVan on deep sequenced data obtained from samples that were previously characterized by more classical approaches, we uncovered novel and potentially crucial aspects of virus populations. With our experimental work, we illustrate how ViVan can be used for studies ranging from the more practical, detection of resistant mutations and effects of antiviral treatments, to the more theoretical temporal characterization of the population in evolutionary studies. Freely available on the web at http://www.vivanbioinfo.org : nshomron@post.tau.ac.il Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press.

  18. Population-genomic variation within RNA viruses of the Western honey bee, Apis mellifera, inferred from deep sequencing

    USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

    Deep sequencing of viruses isolated from infected hosts is an efficient way to measure population-genetic variation and can reveal patterns of dispersal and natural selection. In this study, we mined existing Illumina sequence reads to investigate single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within two RN...

  19. A novel wavelet sequence based on deep bidirectional LSTM network model for ECG signal classification.

    PubMed

    Yildirim, Özal

    2018-05-01

    Long-short term memory networks (LSTMs), which have recently emerged in sequential data analysis, are the most widely used type of recurrent neural networks (RNNs) architecture. Progress on the topic of deep learning includes successful adaptations of deep versions of these architectures. In this study, a new model for deep bidirectional LSTM network-based wavelet sequences called DBLSTM-WS was proposed for classifying electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. For this purpose, a new wavelet-based layer is implemented to generate ECG signal sequences. The ECG signals were decomposed into frequency sub-bands at different scales in this layer. These sub-bands are used as sequences for the input of LSTM networks. New network models that include unidirectional (ULSTM) and bidirectional (BLSTM) structures are designed for performance comparisons. Experimental studies have been performed for five different types of heartbeats obtained from the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database. These five types are Normal Sinus Rhythm (NSR), Ventricular Premature Contraction (VPC), Paced Beat (PB), Left Bundle Branch Block (LBBB), and Right Bundle Branch Block (RBBB). The results show that the DBLSTM-WS model gives a high recognition performance of 99.39%. It has been observed that the wavelet-based layer proposed in the study significantly improves the recognition performance of conventional networks. This proposed network structure is an important approach that can be applied to similar signal processing problems. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  20. Enhanced sensitivity for detection of low-level germline mosaic RB1 mutations in sporadic retinoblastoma cases using deep semiconductor sequencing.

    PubMed

    Chen, Zhao; Moran, Kimberly; Richards-Yutz, Jennifer; Toorens, Erik; Gerhart, Daniel; Ganguly, Tapan; Shields, Carol L; Ganguly, Arupa

    2014-03-01

    Sporadic retinoblastoma (RB) is caused by de novo mutations in the RB1 gene. Often, these mutations are present as mosaic mutations that cannot be detected by Sanger sequencing. Next-generation deep sequencing allows unambiguous detection of the mosaic mutations in lymphocyte DNA. Deep sequencing of the RB1 gene on lymphocyte DNA from 20 bilateral and 70 unilateral RB cases was performed, where Sanger sequencing excluded the presence of mutations. The individual exons of the RB1 gene from each sample were amplified, pooled, ligated to barcoded adapters, and sequenced using semiconductor sequencing on an Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine. Six low-level mosaic mutations were identified in bilateral RB and four in unilateral RB cases. The incidence of low-level mosaic mutation was estimated to be 30% and 6%, respectively, in sporadic bilateral and unilateral RB cases, previously classified as mutation negative. The frequency of point mutations detectable in lymphocyte DNA increased from 96% to 97% for bilateral RB and from 13% to 18% for unilateral RB. The use of deep sequencing technology increased the sensitivity of the detection of low-level germline mosaic mutations in the RB1 gene. This finding has significant implications for improved clinical diagnosis, genetic counseling, surveillance, and management of RB. © 2013 WILEY PERIODICALS, INC.

  1. Protein contact prediction by integrating deep multiple sequence alignments, coevolution and machine learning.

    PubMed

    Adhikari, Badri; Hou, Jie; Cheng, Jianlin

    2018-03-01

    In this study, we report the evaluation of the residue-residue contacts predicted by our three different methods in the CASP12 experiment, focusing on studying the impact of multiple sequence alignment, residue coevolution, and machine learning on contact prediction. The first method (MULTICOM-NOVEL) uses only traditional features (sequence profile, secondary structure, and solvent accessibility) with deep learning to predict contacts and serves as a baseline. The second method (MULTICOM-CONSTRUCT) uses our new alignment algorithm to generate deep multiple sequence alignment to derive coevolution-based features, which are integrated by a neural network method to predict contacts. The third method (MULTICOM-CLUSTER) is a consensus combination of the predictions of the first two methods. We evaluated our methods on 94 CASP12 domains. On a subset of 38 free-modeling domains, our methods achieved an average precision of up to 41.7% for top L/5 long-range contact predictions. The comparison of the three methods shows that the quality and effective depth of multiple sequence alignments, coevolution-based features, and machine learning integration of coevolution-based features and traditional features drive the quality of predicted protein contacts. On the full CASP12 dataset, the coevolution-based features alone can improve the average precision from 28.4% to 41.6%, and the machine learning integration of all the features further raises the precision to 56.3%, when top L/5 predicted long-range contacts are evaluated. And the correlation between the precision of contact prediction and the logarithm of the number of effective sequences in alignments is 0.66. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  2. Quantitative analysis of the anti-noise performance of an m-sequence in an electromagnetic method

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Yuan, Zhe; Zhang, Yiming; Zheng, Qijia

    2018-02-01

    An electromagnetic method with a transmitted waveform coded by an m-sequence achieved better anti-noise performance compared to the conventional manner with a square-wave. The anti-noise performance of the m-sequence varied with multiple coding parameters; hence, a quantitative analysis of the anti-noise performance for m-sequences with different coding parameters was required to optimize them. This paper proposes the concept of an identification system, with the identified Earth impulse response obtained by measuring the system output with the input of the voltage response. A quantitative analysis of the anti-noise performance of the m-sequence was achieved by analyzing the amplitude-frequency response of the corresponding identification system. The effects of the coding parameters on the anti-noise performance are summarized by numerical simulation, and their optimization is further discussed in our conclusions; the validity of the conclusions is further verified by field experiment. The quantitative analysis method proposed in this paper provides a new insight into the anti-noise mechanism of the m-sequence, and could be used to evaluate the anti-noise performance of artificial sources in other time-domain exploration methods, such as the seismic method.

  3. Deep sequencing in library selection projects: what insight does it bring?

    PubMed Central

    Glanville, J; D’Angelo, S; Khan, T.A.; Reddy, S. T.; Naranjo, L.; Ferrara, F.; Bradbury, A.R.M.

    2015-01-01

    High throughput sequencing is poised to change all aspects of the way antibodies and other binders are discovered and engineered. Millions of available sequence reads provide an unprecedented sampling depth able to guide the design and construction of effective, high quality naïve libraries containing tens of billions of unique molecules. Furthermore, during selections, high throughput sequencing enables quantitative tracing of enriched clones and position-specific guidance to amino acid variation under positive selection during antibody engineering. Successful application of the technologies relies on specific PCR reagent design, correct sequencing platform selection, and effective use of computational tools and statistical measures to remove error, identify antibodies, estimate diversity, and extract signatures of selection from the clone down to individual structural positions. Here we review these considerations and discuss some of the remaining challenges to the widespread adoption of the technology. PMID:26451649

  4. End-to-end deep neural network for optical inversion in quantitative photoacoustic imaging.

    PubMed

    Cai, Chuangjian; Deng, Kexin; Ma, Cheng; Luo, Jianwen

    2018-06-15

    An end-to-end deep neural network, ResU-net, is developed for quantitative photoacoustic imaging. A residual learning framework is used to facilitate optimization and to gain better accuracy from considerably increased network depth. The contracting and expanding paths enable ResU-net to extract comprehensive context information from multispectral initial pressure images and, subsequently, to infer a quantitative image of chromophore concentration or oxygen saturation (sO 2 ). According to our numerical experiments, the estimations of sO 2 and indocyanine green concentration are accurate and robust against variations in both optical property and object geometry. An extremely short reconstruction time of 22 ms is achieved.

  5. RNAi-mediated endogene silencing in strawberry fruit: detection of primary and secondary siRNAs by deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Härtl, Katja; Kalinowski, Gregor; Hoffmann, Thomas; Preuss, Anja; Schwab, Wilfried

    2017-05-01

    RNA interference (RNAi) has been exploited as a reverse genetic tool for functional genomics in the nonmodel species strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa) since 2006. Here, we analysed for the first time different but overlapping nucleotide sections (>200 nt) of two endogenous genes, FaCHS (chalcone synthase) and FaOMT (O-methyltransferase), as inducer sequences and a transitive vector system to compare their gene silencing efficiencies. In total, ten vectors were assembled each containing the nucleotide sequence of one fragment in sense and corresponding antisense orientation separated by an intron (inverted hairpin construct, ihp). All sequence fragments along the full lengths of both target genes resulted in a significant down-regulation of the respective gene expression and related metabolite levels. Quantitative PCR data and successful application of a transitive vector system coinciding with a phenotypic change suggested propagation of the silencing signal. The spreading of the signal in strawberry fruit in the 3' direction was shown for the first time by the detection of secondary small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) outside of the primary targets by deep sequencing. Down-regulation of endogenes by the transitive method was less effective than silencing by ihp constructs probably because the numbers of primary siRNAs exceeded the quantity of secondary siRNAs by three orders of magnitude. Besides, we observed consistent hotspots of primary and secondary siRNA formation along the target sequence which fall within a distance of less than 200 nt. Thus, ihp vectors seem to be superior over the transitive vector system for functional genomics in strawberry fruit. © 2016 The Authors. Plant Biotechnology Journal published by Society for Experimental Biology and The Association of Applied Biologists and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  6. Deep Whole-Genome Sequencing to Detect Mixed Infection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

    PubMed Central

    Gan, Mingyu; Liu, Qingyun; Yang, Chongguang; Gao, Qian; Luo, Tao

    2016-01-01

    Mixed infection by multiple Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) strains is associated with poor treatment outcome of tuberculosis (TB). Traditional genotyping methods have been used to detect mixed infections of MTB, however, their sensitivity and resolution are limited. Deep whole-genome sequencing (WGS) has been proved highly sensitive and discriminative for studying population heterogeneity of MTB. Here, we developed a phylogenetic-based method to detect MTB mixed infections using WGS data. We collected published WGS data of 782 global MTB strains from public database. We called homogeneous and heterogeneous single nucleotide variations (SNVs) of individual strains by mapping short reads to the ancestral MTB reference genome. We constructed a phylogenomic database based on 68,639 homogeneous SNVs of 652 MTB strains. Mixed infections were determined if multiple evolutionary paths were identified by mapping the SNVs of individual samples to the phylogenomic database. By simulation, our method could specifically detect mixed infections when the sequencing depth of minor strains was as low as 1× coverage, and when the genomic distance of two mixed strains was as small as 16 SNVs. By applying our methods to all 782 samples, we detected 47 mixed infections and 45 of them were caused by locally endemic strains. The results indicate that our method is highly sensitive and discriminative for identifying mixed infections from deep WGS data of MTB isolates. PMID:27391214

  7. Deep sequencing in library selection projects: what insight does it bring?

    PubMed

    Glanville, J; D'Angelo, S; Khan, T A; Reddy, S T; Naranjo, L; Ferrara, F; Bradbury, A R M

    2015-08-01

    High throughput sequencing is poised to change all aspects of the way antibodies and other binders are discovered and engineered. Millions of available sequence reads provide an unprecedented sampling depth able to guide the design and construction of effective, high quality naïve libraries containing tens of billions of unique molecules. Furthermore, during selections, high throughput sequencing enables quantitative tracing of enriched clones and position-specific guidance to amino acid variation under positive selection during antibody engineering. Successful application of the technologies relies on specific PCR reagent design, correct sequencing platform selection, and effective use of computational tools and statistical measures to remove error, identify antibodies, estimate diversity, and extract signatures of selection from the clone down to individual structural positions. Here we review these considerations and discuss some of the remaining challenges to the widespread adoption of the technology. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  8. Evaluation of Nine Somatic Variant Callers for Detection of Somatic Mutations in Exome and Targeted Deep Sequencing Data.

    PubMed

    Krøigård, Anne Bruun; Thomassen, Mads; Lænkholm, Anne-Vibeke; Kruse, Torben A; Larsen, Martin Jakob

    2016-01-01

    Next generation sequencing is extensively applied to catalogue somatic mutations in cancer, in research settings and increasingly in clinical settings for molecular diagnostics, guiding therapy decisions. Somatic variant callers perform paired comparisons of sequencing data from cancer tissue and matched normal tissue in order to detect somatic mutations. The advent of many new somatic variant callers creates a need for comparison and validation of the tools, as no de facto standard for detection of somatic mutations exists and only limited comparisons have been reported. We have performed a comprehensive evaluation using exome sequencing and targeted deep sequencing data of paired tumor-normal samples from five breast cancer patients to evaluate the performance of nine publicly available somatic variant callers: EBCall, Mutect, Seurat, Shimmer, Indelocator, Somatic Sniper, Strelka, VarScan 2 and Virmid for the detection of single nucleotide mutations and small deletions and insertions. We report a large variation in the number of calls from the nine somatic variant callers on the same sequencing data and highly variable agreement. Sequencing depth had markedly diverse impact on individual callers, as for some callers, increased sequencing depth highly improved sensitivity. For SNV calling, we report EBCall, Mutect, Virmid and Strelka to be the most reliable somatic variant callers for both exome sequencing and targeted deep sequencing. For indel calling, EBCall is superior due to high sensitivity and robustness to changes in sequencing depths.

  9. Graphical classification of DNA sequences of HLA alleles by deep learning.

    PubMed

    Miyake, Jun; Kaneshita, Yuhei; Asatani, Satoshi; Tagawa, Seiichi; Niioka, Hirohiko; Hirano, Takashi

    2018-04-01

    Alleles of human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-A DNAs are classified and expressed graphically by using artificial intelligence "Deep Learning (Stacked autoencoder)". Nucleotide sequence data corresponding to the length of 822 bp, collected from the Immuno Polymorphism Database, were compressed to 2-dimensional representation and were plotted. Profiles of the two-dimensional plots indicate that the alleles can be classified as clusters are formed. The two-dimensional plot of HLA-A DNAs gives a clear outlook for characterizing the various alleles.

  10. PolyA_DB 3 catalogs cleavage and polyadenylation sites identified by deep sequencing in multiple genomes

    PubMed Central

    Wang, Ruijia; Nambiar, Ram; Zheng, Dinghai

    2018-01-01

    Abstract PolyA_DB is a database cataloging cleavage and polyadenylation sites (PASs) in several genomes. Previous versions were based mainly on expressed sequence tags (ESTs), which had a limited amount and could lead to inaccurate PAS identification due to the presence of internal A-rich sequences in transcripts. Here, we present an updated version of the database based solely on deep sequencing data. First, PASs are mapped by the 3′ region extraction and deep sequencing (3′READS) method, ensuring unequivocal PAS identification. Second, a large volume of data based on diverse biological samples increases PAS coverage by 3.5-fold over the EST-based version and provides PAS usage information. Third, strand-specific RNA-seq data are used to extend annotated 3′ ends of genes to obtain more thorough annotations of alternative polyadenylation (APA) sites. Fourth, conservation information of PAS across mammals sheds light on significance of APA sites. The database (URL: http://www.polya-db.org/v3) currently holds PASs in human, mouse, rat and chicken, and has links to the UCSC genome browser for further visualization and for integration with other genomic data. PMID:29069441

  11. Deep RNA sequencing analysis of readthrough gene fusions in human prostate adenocarcinoma and reference samples

    PubMed Central

    2011-01-01

    Background Readthrough fusions across adjacent genes in the genome, or transcription-induced chimeras (TICs), have been estimated using expressed sequence tag (EST) libraries to involve 4-6% of all genes. Deep transcriptional sequencing (RNA-Seq) now makes it possible to study the occurrence and expression levels of TICs in individual samples across the genome. Methods We performed single-end RNA-Seq on three human prostate adenocarcinoma samples and their corresponding normal tissues, as well as brain and universal reference samples. We developed two bioinformatics methods to specifically identify TIC events: a targeted alignment method using artificial exon-exon junctions within 200,000 bp from adjacent genes, and genomic alignment allowing splicing within individual reads. We performed further experimental verification and characterization of selected TIC and fusion events using quantitative RT-PCR and comparative genomic hybridization microarrays. Results Targeted alignment against artificial exon-exon junctions yielded 339 distinct TIC events, including 32 gene pairs with multiple isoforms. The false discovery rate was estimated to be 1.5%. Spliced alignment to the genome was less sensitive, finding only 18% of those found by targeted alignment in 33-nt reads and 59% of those in 50-nt reads. However, spliced alignment revealed 30 cases of TICs with intervening exons, in addition to distant inversions, scrambled genes, and translocations. Our findings increase the catalog of observed TIC gene pairs by 66%. We verified 6 of 6 predicted TICs in all prostate samples, and 2 of 5 predicted novel distant gene fusions, both private events among 54 prostate tumor samples tested. Expression of TICs correlates with that of the upstream gene, which can explain the prostate-specific pattern of some TIC events and the restriction of the SLC45A3-ELK4 e4-e2 TIC to ERG-negative prostate samples, as confirmed in 20 matched prostate tumor and normal samples and 9 lung cancer

  12. ampliMethProfiler: a pipeline for the analysis of CpG methylation profiles of targeted deep bisulfite sequenced amplicons.

    PubMed

    Scala, Giovanni; Affinito, Ornella; Palumbo, Domenico; Florio, Ermanno; Monticelli, Antonella; Miele, Gennaro; Chiariotti, Lorenzo; Cocozza, Sergio

    2016-11-25

    CpG sites in an individual molecule may exist in a binary state (methylated or unmethylated) and each individual DNA molecule, containing a certain number of CpGs, is a combination of these states defining an epihaplotype. Classic quantification based approaches to study DNA methylation are intrinsically unable to fully represent the complexity of the underlying methylation substrate. Epihaplotype based approaches, on the other hand, allow methylation profiles of cell populations to be studied at the single molecule level. For such investigations, next-generation sequencing techniques can be used, both for quantitative and for epihaplotype analysis. Currently available tools for methylation analysis lack output formats that explicitly report CpG methylation profiles at the single molecule level and that have suited statistical tools for their interpretation. Here we present ampliMethProfiler, a python-based pipeline for the extraction and statistical epihaplotype analysis of amplicons from targeted deep bisulfite sequencing of multiple DNA regions. ampliMethProfiler tool provides an easy and user friendly way to extract and analyze the epihaplotype composition of reads from targeted bisulfite sequencing experiments. ampliMethProfiler is written in python language and requires a local installation of BLAST and (optionally) QIIME tools. It can be run on Linux and OS X platforms. The software is open source and freely available at http://amplimethprofiler.sourceforge.net .

  13. Development of genic-SSR markers by deep transcriptome sequencing in pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millspaugh].

    PubMed

    Dutta, Sutapa; Kumawat, Giriraj; Singh, Bikram P; Gupta, Deepak K; Singh, Sangeeta; Dogra, Vivek; Gaikwad, Kishor; Sharma, Tilak R; Raje, Ranjeet S; Bandhopadhya, Tapas K; Datta, Subhojit; Singh, Mahendra N; Bashasab, Fakrudin; Kulwal, Pawan; Wanjari, K B; K Varshney, Rajeev; Cook, Douglas R; Singh, Nagendra K

    2011-01-20

    Pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millspaugh], one of the most important food legumes of semi-arid tropical and subtropical regions, has limited genomic resources, particularly expressed sequence based (genic) markers. We report a comprehensive set of validated genic simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers using deep transcriptome sequencing, and its application in genetic diversity analysis and mapping. In this study, 43,324 transcriptome shotgun assembly unigene contigs were assembled from 1.696 million 454 GS-FLX sequence reads of separate pooled cDNA libraries prepared from leaf, root, stem and immature seed of two pigeonpea varieties, Asha and UPAS 120. A total of 3,771 genic-SSR loci, excluding homopolymeric and compound repeats, were identified; of which 2,877 PCR primer pairs were designed for marker development. Dinucleotide was the most common repeat motif with a frequency of 60.41%, followed by tri- (34.52%), hexa- (2.62%), tetra- (1.67%) and pentanucleotide (0.76%) repeat motifs. Primers were synthesized and tested for 772 of these loci with repeat lengths of ≥ 18 bp. Of these, 550 markers were validated for consistent amplification in eight diverse pigeonpea varieties; 71 were found to be polymorphic on agarose gel electrophoresis. Genetic diversity analysis was done on 22 pigeonpea varieties and eight wild species using 20 highly polymorphic genic-SSR markers. The number of alleles at these loci ranged from 4-10 and the polymorphism information content values ranged from 0.46 to 0.72. Neighbor-joining dendrogram showed distinct separation of the different groups of pigeonpea cultivars and wild species. Deep transcriptome sequencing of the two parental lines helped in silico identification of polymorphic genic-SSR loci to facilitate the rapid development of an intra-species reference genetic map, a subset of which was validated for expected allelic segregation in the reference mapping population. We developed 550 validated genic-SSR markers in pigeonpea

  14. Development of genic-SSR markers by deep transcriptome sequencing in pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millspaugh

    PubMed Central

    2011-01-01

    Background Pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millspaugh], one of the most important food legumes of semi-arid tropical and subtropical regions, has limited genomic resources, particularly expressed sequence based (genic) markers. We report a comprehensive set of validated genic simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers using deep transcriptome sequencing, and its application in genetic diversity analysis and mapping. Results In this study, 43,324 transcriptome shotgun assembly unigene contigs were assembled from 1.696 million 454 GS-FLX sequence reads of separate pooled cDNA libraries prepared from leaf, root, stem and immature seed of two pigeonpea varieties, Asha and UPAS 120. A total of 3,771 genic-SSR loci, excluding homopolymeric and compound repeats, were identified; of which 2,877 PCR primer pairs were designed for marker development. Dinucleotide was the most common repeat motif with a frequency of 60.41%, followed by tri- (34.52%), hexa- (2.62%), tetra- (1.67%) and pentanucleotide (0.76%) repeat motifs. Primers were synthesized and tested for 772 of these loci with repeat lengths of ≥18 bp. Of these, 550 markers were validated for consistent amplification in eight diverse pigeonpea varieties; 71 were found to be polymorphic on agarose gel electrophoresis. Genetic diversity analysis was done on 22 pigeonpea varieties and eight wild species using 20 highly polymorphic genic-SSR markers. The number of alleles at these loci ranged from 4-10 and the polymorphism information content values ranged from 0.46 to 0.72. Neighbor-joining dendrogram showed distinct separation of the different groups of pigeonpea cultivars and wild species. Deep transcriptome sequencing of the two parental lines helped in silico identification of polymorphic genic-SSR loci to facilitate the rapid development of an intra-species reference genetic map, a subset of which was validated for expected allelic segregation in the reference mapping population. Conclusion We developed 550 validated genic

  15. Microbes in deep marine sediments viewed through amplicon sequencing and metagenomics

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Biddle, J.; Leon, Z. R.; Russell, J. A., III; Martino, A. J.

    2016-12-01

    Nearly twenty percent of microbial biomass on Earth can be found in the marine subsurface. The majority of this is concentrated on continental margins, which have been investigated by scientific drilling. On the Costa Rica Margin, Iberian Margin and Peru Margins, sediment samples have been investigated through DNA extraction followed by amplicon and metagenomic sequencing. Overall samples show a high degree of microbial diversity, including many lineages of newly defined groups. In this talk, metagenome assembled genomes of unusual lineages will be presented, including their relationships to shallower relatives. From Costa Rica, in particular, we have retrieved deep relatives of Lokiarchaeota and Thorarchaeota, as well as other deeply branching archaeal relatives. We discuss their genome similarities to both other archaea and eukaryotes. From the Iberian Margin, relatives of Atribacteria and Aerophobetes will be discussed. Finally, we will detail the knowledge lost or gained depending on whether samples are studied via amplicon sequencing or total metagenomics, as studies in other environments have shown that up to 15% of microbial diversity is ignored when samples are studied via amplicon sequencing alone.

  16. Deep Ion Torrent sequencing identifies soil fungal community shifts after frequent prescribed fires in a southeastern US forest ecosystem.

    PubMed

    Brown, Shawn P; Callaham, Mac A; Oliver, Alena K; Jumpponen, Ari

    2013-12-01

    Prescribed burning is a common management tool to control fuel loads, ground vegetation, and facilitate desirable game species. We evaluated soil fungal community responses to long-term prescribed fire treatments in a loblolly pine forest on the Piedmont of Georgia and utilized deep Internal Transcribed Spacer Region 1 (ITS1) amplicon sequencing afforded by the recent Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine (PGM). These deep sequence data (19,000 + reads per sample after subsampling) indicate that frequent fires (3-year fire interval) shift soil fungus communities, whereas infrequent fires (6-year fire interval) permit system resetting to a state similar to that without prescribed fire. Furthermore, in nonmetric multidimensional scaling analyses, primarily ectomycorrhizal taxa were correlated with axes associated with long fire intervals, whereas soil saprobes tended to be correlated with the frequent fire recurrence. We conclude that (1) multiplexed Ion Torrent PGM analyses allow deep cost effective sequencing of fungal communities but may suffer from short read lengths and inconsistent sequence quality adjacent to the sequencing adaptor; (2) frequent prescribed fires elicit a shift in soil fungal communities; and (3) such shifts do not occur when fire intervals are longer. Our results emphasize the general responsiveness of these forests to management, and the importance of fire return intervals in meeting management objectives. © 2013 Federation of European Microbiological Societies. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. All rights reserved.

  17. Evaluation of Nine Somatic Variant Callers for Detection of Somatic Mutations in Exome and Targeted Deep Sequencing Data

    PubMed Central

    Krøigård, Anne Bruun; Thomassen, Mads; Lænkholm, Anne-Vibeke; Kruse, Torben A.; Larsen, Martin Jakob

    2016-01-01

    Next generation sequencing is extensively applied to catalogue somatic mutations in cancer, in research settings and increasingly in clinical settings for molecular diagnostics, guiding therapy decisions. Somatic variant callers perform paired comparisons of sequencing data from cancer tissue and matched normal tissue in order to detect somatic mutations. The advent of many new somatic variant callers creates a need for comparison and validation of the tools, as no de facto standard for detection of somatic mutations exists and only limited comparisons have been reported. We have performed a comprehensive evaluation using exome sequencing and targeted deep sequencing data of paired tumor-normal samples from five breast cancer patients to evaluate the performance of nine publicly available somatic variant callers: EBCall, Mutect, Seurat, Shimmer, Indelocator, Somatic Sniper, Strelka, VarScan 2 and Virmid for the detection of single nucleotide mutations and small deletions and insertions. We report a large variation in the number of calls from the nine somatic variant callers on the same sequencing data and highly variable agreement. Sequencing depth had markedly diverse impact on individual callers, as for some callers, increased sequencing depth highly improved sensitivity. For SNV calling, we report EBCall, Mutect, Virmid and Strelka to be the most reliable somatic variant callers for both exome sequencing and targeted deep sequencing. For indel calling, EBCall is superior due to high sensitivity and robustness to changes in sequencing depths. PMID:27002637

  18. An Efficient Strategy of Screening for Pathogens in Wild-Caught Ticks and Mosquitoes by Reusing Small RNA Deep Sequencing Data

    PubMed Central

    An, Xiaoping; Fan, Hang; Ma, Maijuan; Anderson, Benjamin D.; Jiang, Jiafu; Liu, Wei; Cao, Wuchun; Tong, Yigang

    2014-01-01

    This paper explored our hypothesis that sRNA (18∼30 bp) deep sequencing technique can be used as an efficient strategy to identify microorganisms other than viruses, such as prokaryotic and eukaryotic pathogens. In the study, the clean reads derived from the sRNA deep sequencing data of wild-caught ticks and mosquitoes were compared against the NCBI nucleotide collection (non-redundant nt database) using Blastn. The blast results were then analyzed with in-house Python scripts. An empirical formula was proposed to identify the putative pathogens. Results showed that not only viruses but also prokaryotic and eukaryotic species of interest can be screened out and were subsequently confirmed with experiments. Specially, a novel Rickettsia spp. was indicated to exist in Haemaphysalis longicornis ticks collected in Beijing. Our study demonstrated the reuse of sRNA deep sequencing data would have the potential to trace the origin of pathogens or discover novel agents of emerging/re-emerging infectious diseases. PMID:24618575

  19. An introduction to deep learning on biological sequence data: examples and solutions.

    PubMed

    Jurtz, Vanessa Isabell; Johansen, Alexander Rosenberg; Nielsen, Morten; Almagro Armenteros, Jose Juan; Nielsen, Henrik; Sønderby, Casper Kaae; Winther, Ole; Sønderby, Søren Kaae

    2017-11-15

    Deep neural network architectures such as convolutional and long short-term memory networks have become increasingly popular as machine learning tools during the recent years. The availability of greater computational resources, more data, new algorithms for training deep models and easy to use libraries for implementation and training of neural networks are the drivers of this development. The use of deep learning has been especially successful in image recognition; and the development of tools, applications and code examples are in most cases centered within this field rather than within biology. Here, we aim to further the development of deep learning methods within biology by providing application examples and ready to apply and adapt code templates. Given such examples, we illustrate how architectures consisting of convolutional and long short-term memory neural networks can relatively easily be designed and trained to state-of-the-art performance on three biological sequence problems: prediction of subcellular localization, protein secondary structure and the binding of peptides to MHC Class II molecules. All implementations and datasets are available online to the scientific community at https://github.com/vanessajurtz/lasagne4bio. skaaesonderby@gmail.com. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

  20. An Anatomy of a Seismic Sequence in a Deep Gold Mine

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Gibowicz, S. J.

    1997-12-01

    An unusual swarm-like seismic sequence occurred in April 1993 at the Western Deep Levels gold mine, South Africa. Altogether 199 events with moment magnitude from -0.5 to 3.1 were recorded and located by the mine seismic network. The sequence lasted 12 days and was composed in fact of four main shock-aftershocks sequences, closely following each other in space and time. The events were confined to a volume of rock extending to 670 m in the N-S, 630 m in the E-W, and 390 m in the vertical directions. The first sequence lasted 179 hours and the second only 13 hours, being interrupted by the third sequence which lasted 31 hours, being in turn interrupted by the fourth sequence. The parameter p, describing the rate of occurrence of aftershocks, ranged from 0.7 to 1. The first sequence is characterized by the lowest value of the fractal correlation dimension D = 1.75 and the second by the highest value of D = 2.4, whereas the third and fourth sequences are characterized by the middle value of D = 1.9.¶The corner frequencies of P and S waves are in close proximity and range from 14 to 220 Hz. A display of source parameters as a function of time shows that the four main shocks are most distinctly marked by their source radius. For 46 events a moment tensor inversion was performed. In most cases the double-couple component is dominant, ranging from 60 to 90 percent of the solution. The double-couple solutions correspond to the same number of normal and reverse faults and oblique-slip focal mechanisms. An analysis of space distribution of P, T and B axes reveals that the distribution of B axes is the most regular.

  1. Hybrid DNA virus in Chinese patients with seronegative hepatitis discovered by deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Xu, Baoyan; Zhi, Ning; Hu, Gangqing; Wan, Zhihong; Zheng, Xiaobin; Liu, Xiaohong; Wong, Susan; Kajigaya, Sachiko; Zhao, Keji; Mao, Qing; Young, Neal S

    2013-06-18

    Seronegative hepatitis--non-A, non-B, non-C, non-D, non-E hepatitis--is poorly characterized but strongly associated with serious complications. We collected 92 sera specimens from patients with non-A-E hepatitis in Chongqing, China between 1999 and 2007. Ten sera pools were screened by Solexa deep sequencing. We discovered a 3,780-bp contig present in all 10 pools that yielded BLASTx E scores of 7e-05-0.008 against parvoviruses. The complete sequence of the in silico-assembled 3,780-bp contig was confirmed by gene amplification of overlapping regions over almost the entire genome, and the virus was provisionally designated NIH-CQV. Further analysis revealed that the contig was composed of two major ORFs. By protein BLAST, ORF1 and ORF2 were most homologous to the replication-associated protein of bat circovirus and the capsid protein of porcine parvovirus, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that NIH-CQV is located at the interface of Parvoviridae and Circoviridae. Prevalence of NIH-CQV in patients was determined by quantitative PCR. Sixty-three of 90 patient samples (70%) were positive, but all those from 45 healthy controls were negative. Average virus titer in the patient specimens was 1.05 e4 copies/µL. Specific antibodies against NIH-CQV were sought by immunoblotting. Eighty-four percent of patients were positive for IgG, and 31% were positive for IgM; in contrast, 78% of healthy controls were positive for IgG, but all were negative for IgM. Although more work is needed to determine the etiologic role of NIH-CQV in human disease, our data indicate that a parvovirus-like virus is highly prevalent in a cohort of patients with non-A-E hepatitis.

  2. Draft Genome Sequence of Deep-Sea Alteromonas sp. Strain V450 Isolated from the Marine Sponge Leiodermatium sp.

    PubMed Central

    Barrett, Nolan H.; McCarthy, Peter J.

    2017-01-01

    ABSTRACT The proteobacterium Alteromonas sp. strain V450 was isolated from the Atlantic deep-sea sponge Leiodermatium sp. Here, we report the draft genome sequence of this strain, with a genome size of approx. 4.39 Mb and a G+C content of 44.01%. The results will aid deep-sea microbial ecology, evolution, and sponge-microbe association studies. PMID:28153886

  3. VirusDetect: An automated pipeline for efficient virus discovery using deep sequencing of small RNAs

    USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

    Accurate detection of viruses in plants and animals is critical for agriculture production and human health. Deep sequencing and assembly of virus-derived siRNAs has proven to be a highly efficient approach for virus discovery. However, to date no computational tools specifically designed for both k...

  4. Poly(A)-tag deep sequencing data processing to extract poly(A) sites.

    PubMed

    Wu, Xiaohui; Ji, Guoli; Li, Qingshun Quinn

    2015-01-01

    Polyadenylation [poly(A)] is an essential posttranscriptional processing step in the maturation of eukaryotic mRNA. The advent of next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology has offered feasible means to generate large-scale data and new opportunities for intensive study of polyadenylation, particularly deep sequencing of the transcriptome targeting the junction of 3'-UTR and the poly(A) tail of the transcript. To take advantage of this unprecedented amount of data, we present an automated workflow to identify polyadenylation sites by integrating NGS data cleaning, processing, mapping, normalizing, and clustering. In this pipeline, a series of Perl scripts are seamlessly integrated to iteratively map the single- or paired-end sequences to the reference genome. After mapping, the poly(A) tags (PATs) at the same genome coordinate are grouped into one cleavage site, and the internal priming artifacts removed. Then the ambiguous region is introduced to parse the genome annotation for cleavage site clustering. Finally, cleavage sites within a close range of 24 nucleotides and from different samples can be clustered into poly(A) clusters. This procedure could be used to identify thousands of reliable poly(A) clusters from millions of NGS sequences in different tissues or treatments.

  5. Identification and Removal of Contaminant Sequences From Ribosomal Gene Databases: Lessons From the Census of Deep Life.

    PubMed

    Sheik, Cody S; Reese, Brandi Kiel; Twing, Katrina I; Sylvan, Jason B; Grim, Sharon L; Schrenk, Matthew O; Sogin, Mitchell L; Colwell, Frederick S

    2018-01-01

    Earth's subsurface environment is one of the largest, yet least studied, biomes on Earth, and many questions remain regarding what microorganisms are indigenous to the subsurface. Through the activity of the Census of Deep Life (CoDL) and the Deep Carbon Observatory, an open access 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequence database from diverse subsurface environments has been compiled. However, due to low quantities of biomass in the deep subsurface, the potential for incorporation of contaminants from reagents used during sample collection, processing, and/or sequencing is high. Thus, to understand the ecology of subsurface microorganisms (i.e., the distribution, richness, or survival), it is necessary to minimize, identify, and remove contaminant sequences that will skew the relative abundances of all taxa in the sample. In this meta-analysis, we identify putative contaminants associated with the CoDL dataset, recommend best practices for removing contaminants from samples, and propose a series of best practices for subsurface microbiology sampling. The most abundant putative contaminant genera observed, independent of evenness across samples, were Propionibacterium , Aquabacterium , Ralstonia , and Acinetobacter . While the top five most frequently observed genera were Pseudomonas , Propionibacterium , Acinetobacter , Ralstonia , and Sphingomonas . The majority of the most frequently observed genera (high evenness) were associated with reagent or potential human contamination. Additionally, in DNA extraction blanks, we observed potential archaeal contaminants, including methanogens, which have not been discussed in previous contamination studies. Such contaminants would directly affect the interpretation of subsurface molecular studies, as methanogenesis is an important subsurface biogeochemical process. Utilizing previously identified contaminant genera, we found that ∼27% of the total dataset were identified as contaminant sequences that likely originate from DNA

  6. Identification and Removal of Contaminant Sequences From Ribosomal Gene Databases: Lessons From the Census of Deep Life

    PubMed Central

    Sheik, Cody S.; Reese, Brandi Kiel; Twing, Katrina I.; Sylvan, Jason B.; Grim, Sharon L.; Schrenk, Matthew O.; Sogin, Mitchell L.; Colwell, Frederick S.

    2018-01-01

    Earth’s subsurface environment is one of the largest, yet least studied, biomes on Earth, and many questions remain regarding what microorganisms are indigenous to the subsurface. Through the activity of the Census of Deep Life (CoDL) and the Deep Carbon Observatory, an open access 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequence database from diverse subsurface environments has been compiled. However, due to low quantities of biomass in the deep subsurface, the potential for incorporation of contaminants from reagents used during sample collection, processing, and/or sequencing is high. Thus, to understand the ecology of subsurface microorganisms (i.e., the distribution, richness, or survival), it is necessary to minimize, identify, and remove contaminant sequences that will skew the relative abundances of all taxa in the sample. In this meta-analysis, we identify putative contaminants associated with the CoDL dataset, recommend best practices for removing contaminants from samples, and propose a series of best practices for subsurface microbiology sampling. The most abundant putative contaminant genera observed, independent of evenness across samples, were Propionibacterium, Aquabacterium, Ralstonia, and Acinetobacter. While the top five most frequently observed genera were Pseudomonas, Propionibacterium, Acinetobacter, Ralstonia, and Sphingomonas. The majority of the most frequently observed genera (high evenness) were associated with reagent or potential human contamination. Additionally, in DNA extraction blanks, we observed potential archaeal contaminants, including methanogens, which have not been discussed in previous contamination studies. Such contaminants would directly affect the interpretation of subsurface molecular studies, as methanogenesis is an important subsurface biogeochemical process. Utilizing previously identified contaminant genera, we found that ∼27% of the total dataset were identified as contaminant sequences that likely originate from DNA extraction

  7. Protein model discrimination using mutational sensitivity derived from deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Adkar, Bharat V; Tripathi, Arti; Sahoo, Anusmita; Bajaj, Kanika; Goswami, Devrishi; Chakrabarti, Purbani; Swarnkar, Mohit K; Gokhale, Rajesh S; Varadarajan, Raghavan

    2012-02-08

    A major bottleneck in protein structure prediction is the selection of correct models from a pool of decoys. Relative activities of ∼1,200 individual single-site mutants in a saturation library of the bacterial toxin CcdB were estimated by determining their relative populations using deep sequencing. This phenotypic information was used to define an empirical score for each residue (RankScore), which correlated with the residue depth, and identify active-site residues. Using these correlations, ∼98% of correct models of CcdB (RMSD ≤ 4Å) were identified from a large set of decoys. The model-discrimination methodology was further validated on eleven different monomeric proteins using simulated RankScore values. The methodology is also a rapid, accurate way to obtain relative activities of each mutant in a large pool and derive sequence-structure-function relationships without protein isolation or characterization. It can be applied to any system in which mutational effects can be monitored by a phenotypic readout. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  8. Draft Genome Sequence of Deep-Sea Alteromonas sp. Strain V450 Isolated from the Marine Sponge Leiodermatium sp.

    PubMed

    Wang, Guojun; Barrett, Nolan H; McCarthy, Peter J

    2017-02-02

    The proteobacterium Alteromonas sp. strain V450 was isolated from the Atlantic deep-sea sponge Leiodermatium sp. Here, we report the draft genome sequence of this strain, with a genome size of approx. 4.39 Mb and a G+C content of 44.01%. The results will aid deep-sea microbial ecology, evolution, and sponge-microbe association studies. Copyright © 2017 Wang et al.

  9. Proteome-wide Identification of Novel Ceramide-binding Proteins by Yeast Surface cDNA Display and Deep Sequencing.

    PubMed

    Bidlingmaier, Scott; Ha, Kevin; Lee, Nam-Kyung; Su, Yang; Liu, Bin

    2016-04-01

    Although the bioactive sphingolipid ceramide is an important cell signaling molecule, relatively few direct ceramide-interacting proteins are known. We used an approach combining yeast surface cDNA display and deep sequencing technology to identify novel proteins binding directly to ceramide. We identified 234 candidate ceramide-binding protein fragments and validated binding for 20. Most (17) bound selectively to ceramide, although a few (3) bound to other lipids as well. Several novel ceramide-binding domains were discovered, including the EF-hand calcium-binding motif, the heat shock chaperonin-binding motif STI1, the SCP2 sterol-binding domain, and the tetratricopeptide repeat region motif. Interestingly, four of the verified ceramide-binding proteins (HPCA, HPCAL1, NCS1, and VSNL1) and an additional three candidate ceramide-binding proteins (NCALD, HPCAL4, and KCNIP3) belong to the neuronal calcium sensor family of EF hand-containing proteins. We used mutagenesis to map the ceramide-binding site in HPCA and to create a mutant HPCA that does not bind to ceramide. We demonstrated selective binding to ceramide by mammalian cell-produced wild type but not mutant HPCA. Intriguingly, we also identified a fragment from prostaglandin D2synthase that binds preferentially to ceramide 1-phosphate. The wide variety of proteins and domains capable of binding to ceramide suggests that many of the signaling functions of ceramide may be regulated by direct binding to these proteins. Based on the deep sequencing data, we estimate that our yeast surface cDNA display library covers ∼60% of the human proteome and our selection/deep sequencing protocol can identify target-interacting protein fragments that are present at extremely low frequency in the starting library. Thus, the yeast surface cDNA display/deep sequencing approach is a rapid, comprehensive, and flexible method for the analysis of protein-ligand interactions, particularly for the study of non-protein ligands.

  10. Identification and profiling of novel microRNAs in the Brassica rapa genome based on small RNA deep sequencing

    PubMed Central

    2012-01-01

    Background MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are one of the functional non-coding small RNAs involved in the epigenetic control of the plant genome. Although plants contain both evolutionary conserved miRNAs and species-specific miRNAs within their genomes, computational methods often only identify evolutionary conserved miRNAs. The recent sequencing of the Brassica rapa genome enables us to identify miRNAs and their putative target genes. In this study, we sought to provide a more comprehensive prediction of B. rapa miRNAs based on high throughput small RNA deep sequencing. Results We sequenced small RNAs from five types of tissue: seedlings, roots, petioles, leaves, and flowers. By analyzing 2.75 million unique reads that mapped to the B. rapa genome, we identified 216 novel and 196 conserved miRNAs that were predicted to target approximately 20% of the genome’s protein coding genes. Quantitative analysis of miRNAs from the five types of tissue revealed that novel miRNAs were expressed in diverse tissues but their expression levels were lower than those of the conserved miRNAs. Comparative analysis of the miRNAs between the B. rapa and Arabidopsis thaliana genomes demonstrated that redundant copies of conserved miRNAs in the B. rapa genome may have been deleted after whole genome triplication. Novel miRNA members seemed to have spontaneously arisen from the B. rapa and A. thaliana genomes, suggesting the species-specific expansion of miRNAs. We have made this data publicly available in a miRNA database of B. rapa called BraMRs. The database allows the user to retrieve miRNA sequences, their expression profiles, and a description of their target genes from the five tissue types investigated here. Conclusions This is the first report to identify novel miRNAs from Brassica crops using genome-wide high throughput techniques. The combination of computational methods and small RNA deep sequencing provides robust predictions of miRNAs in the genome. The finding of numerous novel mi

  11. Rapid Fine Conformational Epitope Mapping Using Comprehensive Mutagenesis and Deep Sequencing*

    PubMed Central

    Kowalsky, Caitlin A.; Faber, Matthew S.; Nath, Aritro; Dann, Hailey E.; Kelly, Vince W.; Liu, Li; Shanker, Purva; Wagner, Ellen K.; Maynard, Jennifer A.; Chan, Christina; Whitehead, Timothy A.

    2015-01-01

    Knowledge of the fine location of neutralizing and non-neutralizing epitopes on human pathogens affords a better understanding of the structural basis of antibody efficacy, which will expedite rational design of vaccines, prophylactics, and therapeutics. However, full utilization of the wealth of information from single cell techniques and antibody repertoire sequencing awaits the development of a high throughput, inexpensive method to map the conformational epitopes for antibody-antigen interactions. Here we show such an approach that combines comprehensive mutagenesis, cell surface display, and DNA deep sequencing. We develop analytical equations to identify epitope positions and show the method effectiveness by mapping the fine epitope for different antibodies targeting TNF, pertussis toxin, and the cancer target TROP2. In all three cases, the experimentally determined conformational epitope was consistent with previous experimental datasets, confirming the reliability of the experimental pipeline. Once the comprehensive library is generated, fine conformational epitope maps can be prepared at a rate of four per day. PMID:26296891

  12. Quantitative assessment of RNA-protein interactions with high-throughput sequencing-RNA affinity profiling.

    PubMed

    Ozer, Abdullah; Tome, Jacob M; Friedman, Robin C; Gheba, Dan; Schroth, Gary P; Lis, John T

    2015-08-01

    Because RNA-protein interactions have a central role in a wide array of biological processes, methods that enable a quantitative assessment of these interactions in a high-throughput manner are in great demand. Recently, we developed the high-throughput sequencing-RNA affinity profiling (HiTS-RAP) assay that couples sequencing on an Illumina GAIIx genome analyzer with the quantitative assessment of protein-RNA interactions. This assay is able to analyze interactions between one or possibly several proteins with millions of different RNAs in a single experiment. We have successfully used HiTS-RAP to analyze interactions of the EGFP and negative elongation factor subunit E (NELF-E) proteins with their corresponding canonical and mutant RNA aptamers. Here we provide a detailed protocol for HiTS-RAP that can be completed in about a month (8 d hands-on time). This includes the preparation and testing of recombinant proteins and DNA templates, clustering DNA templates on a flowcell, HiTS and protein binding with a GAIIx instrument, and finally data analysis. We also highlight aspects of HiTS-RAP that can be further improved and points of comparison between HiTS-RAP and two other recently developed methods, quantitative analysis of RNA on a massively parallel array (RNA-MaP) and RNA Bind-n-Seq (RBNS), for quantitative analysis of RNA-protein interactions.

  13. Enhanced arbovirus surveillance with deep sequencing: Identification of novel rhabdoviruses and bunyaviruses in Australian mosquitoes.

    PubMed

    Coffey, Lark L; Page, Brady L; Greninger, Alexander L; Herring, Belinda L; Russell, Richard C; Doggett, Stephen L; Haniotis, John; Wang, Chunlin; Deng, Xutao; Delwart, Eric L

    2014-01-05

    Viral metagenomics characterizes known and identifies unknown viruses based on sequence similarities to any previously sequenced viral genomes. A metagenomics approach was used to identify virus sequences in Australian mosquitoes causing cytopathic effects in inoculated mammalian cell cultures. Sequence comparisons revealed strains of Liao Ning virus (Reovirus, Seadornavirus), previously detected only in China, livestock-infecting Stretch Lagoon virus (Reovirus, Orbivirus), two novel dimarhabdoviruses, named Beaumont and North Creek viruses, and two novel orthobunyaviruses, named Murrumbidgee and Salt Ash viruses. The novel virus proteomes diverged by ≥ 50% relative to their closest previously genetically characterized viral relatives. Deep sequencing also generated genomes of Warrego and Wallal viruses, orbiviruses linked to kangaroo blindness, whose genomes had not been fully characterized. This study highlights viral metagenomics in concert with traditional arbovirus surveillance to characterize known and new arboviruses in field-collected mosquitoes. Follow-up epidemiological studies are required to determine whether the novel viruses infect humans. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  14. 3' terminal diversity of MRP RNA and other human noncoding RNAs revealed by deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Goldfarb, Katherine C; Cech, Thomas R

    2013-09-21

    Post-transcriptional 3' end processing is a key component of RNA regulation. The abundant and essential RNA subunit of RNase MRP has been proposed to function in three distinct cellular compartments and therefore may utilize this mode of regulation. Here we employ 3' RACE coupled with high-throughput sequencing to characterize the 3' terminal sequences of human MRP RNA and other noncoding RNAs that form RNP complexes. The 3' terminal sequence of MRP RNA from HEK293T cells has a distinctive distribution of genomically encoded termini (including an assortment of U residues) with a portion of these selectively tagged by oligo(A) tails. This profile contrasts with the relatively homogenous 3' terminus of an in vitro transcribed MRP RNA control and the differing 3' terminal profiles of U3 snoRNA, RNase P RNA, and telomerase RNA (hTR). 3' RACE coupled with deep sequencing provides a valuable framework for the functional characterization of 3' terminal sequences of noncoding RNAs.

  15. Optimization of affinity, specificity and function of designed influenza inhibitors using deep sequencing

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Whitehead, Timothy A.; Chevalier, Aaron; Song, Yifan

    2012-06-19

    We show that comprehensive sequence-function maps obtained by deep sequencing can be used to reprogram interaction specificity and to leapfrog over bottlenecks in affinity maturation by combining many individually small contributions not detectable in conventional approaches. We use this approach to optimize two computationally designed inhibitors against H1N1 influenza hemagglutinin and, in both cases, obtain variants with subnanomolar binding affinity. The most potent of these, a 51-residue protein, is broadly cross-reactive against all influenza group 1 hemagglutinins, including human H2, and neutralizes H1N1 viruses with a potency that rivals that of several human monoclonal antibodies, demonstrating that computational design followedmore » by comprehensive energy landscape mapping can generate proteins with potential therapeutic utility.« less

  16. Unveiling the Biodiversity of Deep-Sea Nematodes through Metabarcoding: Are We Ready to Bypass the Classical Taxonomy?

    PubMed Central

    2015-01-01

    Nematodes inhabiting benthic deep-sea ecosystems account for >90% of the total metazoan abundances and they have been hypothesised to be hyper-diverse, but their biodiversity is still largely unknown. Metabarcoding could facilitate the census of biodiversity, especially for those tiny metazoans for which morphological identification is difficult. We compared, for the first time, different DNA extraction procedures based on the use of two commercial kits and a previously published laboratory protocol and tested their suitability for sequencing analyses of 18S rDNA of marine nematodes. We also investigated the reliability of Roche 454 sequencing analyses for assessing the biodiversity of deep-sea nematode assemblages previously morphologically identified. Finally, intra-genomic variation in 18S rRNA gene repeats was investigated by Illumina MiSeq in different deep-sea nematode morphospecies to assess the influence of polymorphisms on nematode biodiversity estimates. Our results indicate that the two commercial kits should be preferred for the molecular analysis of biodiversity of deep-sea nematodes since they consistently provide amplifiable DNA suitable for sequencing. We report that the morphological identification of deep-sea nematodes matches the results obtained by metabarcoding analysis only at the order-family level and that a large portion of Operational Clustered Taxonomic Units (OCTUs) was not assigned. We also show that independently from the cut-off criteria and bioinformatic pipelines used, the number of OCTUs largely exceeds the number of individuals and that 18S rRNA gene of different morpho-species of nematodes displayed intra-genomic polymorphisms. Our results indicate that metabarcoding is an important tool to explore the diversity of deep-sea nematodes, but still fails in identifying most of the species due to limited number of sequences deposited in the public databases, and in providing quantitative data on the species encountered. These aspects

  17. Unveiling the Biodiversity of Deep-Sea Nematodes through Metabarcoding: Are We Ready to Bypass the Classical Taxonomy?

    PubMed

    Dell'Anno, Antonio; Carugati, Laura; Corinaldesi, Cinzia; Riccioni, Giulia; Danovaro, Roberto

    2015-01-01

    Nematodes inhabiting benthic deep-sea ecosystems account for >90% of the total metazoan abundances and they have been hypothesised to be hyper-diverse, but their biodiversity is still largely unknown. Metabarcoding could facilitate the census of biodiversity, especially for those tiny metazoans for which morphological identification is difficult. We compared, for the first time, different DNA extraction procedures based on the use of two commercial kits and a previously published laboratory protocol and tested their suitability for sequencing analyses of 18S rDNA of marine nematodes. We also investigated the reliability of Roche 454 sequencing analyses for assessing the biodiversity of deep-sea nematode assemblages previously morphologically identified. Finally, intra-genomic variation in 18S rRNA gene repeats was investigated by Illumina MiSeq in different deep-sea nematode morphospecies to assess the influence of polymorphisms on nematode biodiversity estimates. Our results indicate that the two commercial kits should be preferred for the molecular analysis of biodiversity of deep-sea nematodes since they consistently provide amplifiable DNA suitable for sequencing. We report that the morphological identification of deep-sea nematodes matches the results obtained by metabarcoding analysis only at the order-family level and that a large portion of Operational Clustered Taxonomic Units (OCTUs) was not assigned. We also show that independently from the cut-off criteria and bioinformatic pipelines used, the number of OCTUs largely exceeds the number of individuals and that 18S rRNA gene of different morpho-species of nematodes displayed intra-genomic polymorphisms. Our results indicate that metabarcoding is an important tool to explore the diversity of deep-sea nematodes, but still fails in identifying most of the species due to limited number of sequences deposited in the public databases, and in providing quantitative data on the species encountered. These aspects

  18. Large-Scale and Deep Quantitative Proteome Profiling Using Isobaric Labeling Coupled with Two-Dimensional LC-MS/MS

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Gritsenko, Marina A.; Xu, Zhe; Liu, Tao

    Comprehensive, quantitative information on abundances of proteins and their post-translational modifications (PTMs) can potentially provide novel biological insights into diseases pathogenesis and therapeutic intervention. Herein, we introduce a quantitative strategy utilizing isobaric stable isotope-labelling techniques combined with two-dimensional liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (2D-LC-MS/MS) for large-scale, deep quantitative proteome profiling of biological samples or clinical specimens such as tumor tissues. The workflow includes isobaric labeling of tryptic peptides for multiplexed and accurate quantitative analysis, basic reversed-phase LC fractionation and concatenation for reduced sample complexity, and nano-LC coupled to high resolution and high mass accuracy MS analysis for high confidence identification andmore » quantification of proteins. This proteomic analysis strategy has been successfully applied for in-depth quantitative proteomic analysis of tumor samples, and can also be used for integrated proteome and PTM characterization, as well as comprehensive quantitative proteomic analysis across samples from large clinical cohorts.« less

  19. Large-Scale and Deep Quantitative Proteome Profiling Using Isobaric Labeling Coupled with Two-Dimensional LC-MS/MS.

    PubMed

    Gritsenko, Marina A; Xu, Zhe; Liu, Tao; Smith, Richard D

    2016-01-01

    Comprehensive, quantitative information on abundances of proteins and their posttranslational modifications (PTMs) can potentially provide novel biological insights into diseases pathogenesis and therapeutic intervention. Herein, we introduce a quantitative strategy utilizing isobaric stable isotope-labeling techniques combined with two-dimensional liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (2D-LC-MS/MS) for large-scale, deep quantitative proteome profiling of biological samples or clinical specimens such as tumor tissues. The workflow includes isobaric labeling of tryptic peptides for multiplexed and accurate quantitative analysis, basic reversed-phase LC fractionation and concatenation for reduced sample complexity, and nano-LC coupled to high resolution and high mass accuracy MS analysis for high confidence identification and quantification of proteins. This proteomic analysis strategy has been successfully applied for in-depth quantitative proteomic analysis of tumor samples and can also be used for integrated proteome and PTM characterization, as well as comprehensive quantitative proteomic analysis across samples from large clinical cohorts.

  20. Quantitative comparison between a multiecho sequence and a single-echo sequence for susceptibility-weighted phase imaging.

    PubMed

    Gilbert, Guillaume; Savard, Geneviève; Bard, Céline; Beaudoin, Gilles

    2012-06-01

    The aim of this study was to investigate the benefits arising from the use of a multiecho sequence for susceptibility-weighted phase imaging using a quantitative comparison with a standard single-echo acquisition. Four healthy adult volunteers were imaged on a clinical 3-T system using a protocol comprising two different three-dimensional susceptibility-weighted gradient-echo sequences: a standard single-echo sequence and a multiecho sequence. Both sequences were repeated twice in order to evaluate the local noise contribution by a subtraction of the two acquisitions. For the multiecho sequence, the phase information from each echo was independently unwrapped, and the background field contribution was removed using either homodyne filtering or the projection onto dipole fields method. The phase information from all echoes was then combined using a weighted linear regression. R2 maps were also calculated from the multiecho acquisitions. The noise standard deviation in the reconstructed phase images was evaluated for six manually segmented regions of interest (frontal white matter, posterior white matter, globus pallidus, putamen, caudate nucleus and lateral ventricle). The use of the multiecho sequence for susceptibility-weighted phase imaging led to a reduction of the noise standard deviation for all subjects and all regions of interest investigated in comparison to the reference single-echo acquisition. On average, the noise reduction ranged from 18.4% for the globus pallidus to 47.9% for the lateral ventricle. In addition, the amount of noise reduction was found to be strongly inversely correlated to the estimated R2 value (R=-0.92). In conclusion, the use of a multiecho sequence is an effective way to decrease the noise contribution in susceptibility-weighted phase images, while preserving both contrast and acquisition time. The proposed approach additionally permits the calculation of R2 maps. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. Conformation-dependent epitopes recognized by prion protein antibodies probed using mutational scanning and deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Doolan, Kyle M; Colby, David W

    2015-01-30

    Prion diseases are caused by a structural rearrangement of the cellular prion protein, PrP(C), into a disease-associated conformation, PrP(Sc), which may be distinguished from one another using conformation-specific antibodies. We used mutational scanning by cell-surface display to screen 1341 PrP single point mutants for attenuated interaction with four anti-PrP antibodies, including several with conformational specificity. Single-molecule real-time gene sequencing was used to quantify enrichment of mutants, returning 26,000 high-quality full-length reads for each screened population on average. Relative enrichment of mutants correlated to the magnitude of the change in binding affinity. Mutations that diminished binding of the antibody ICSM18 represented the core of contact residues in the published crystal structure of its complex. A similarly located binding site was identified for D18, comprising discontinuous residues in helix 1 of PrP, brought into close proximity to one another only when the alpha helix is intact. The specificity of these antibodies for the normal form of PrP likely arises from loss of this conformational feature after conversion to the disease-associated form. Intriguingly, 6H4 binding was found to depend on interaction with the same residues, among others, suggesting that its ability to recognize both forms of PrP depends on a structural rearrangement of the antigen. The application of mutational scanning and deep sequencing provides residue-level resolution of positions in the protein-protein interaction interface that are critical for binding, as well as a quantitative measure of the impact of mutations on binding affinity. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  2. Deep Learning for Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting: A New Approach for Predicting Quantitative Parameter Values from Time Series.

    PubMed

    Hoppe, Elisabeth; Körzdörfer, Gregor; Würfl, Tobias; Wetzl, Jens; Lugauer, Felix; Pfeuffer, Josef; Maier, Andreas

    2017-01-01

    The purpose of this work is to evaluate methods from deep learning for application to Magnetic Resonance Fingerprinting (MRF). MRF is a recently proposed measurement technique for generating quantitative parameter maps. In MRF a non-steady state signal is generated by a pseudo-random excitation pattern. A comparison of the measured signal in each voxel with the physical model yields quantitative parameter maps. Currently, the comparison is done by matching a dictionary of simulated signals to the acquired signals. To accelerate the computation of quantitative maps we train a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) on simulated dictionary data. As a proof of principle we show that the neural network implicitly encodes the dictionary and can replace the matching process.

  3. Quantitative Trait Locus Analysis for Deep-Sowing Germination Ability in the Maize IBM Syn10 DH Population

    PubMed Central

    Liu, Hongjun; Zhang, Lin; Wang, Jiechen; Li, Changsheng; Zeng, Xing; Xie, Shupeng; Zhang, Yongzhong; Liu, Sisi; Hu, Songlin; Wang, Jianhua; Lee, Michael; Lübberstedt, Thomas; Zhao, Guangwu

    2017-01-01

    Deep-sowing is an effective measure to ensure seeds absorbing water from deep soil layer and emerging normally in arid and semiarid regions. However, existing varieties demonstrate poor germination ability in deep soil layer and some key quantitative trait loci (QTL) or genes related to deep-sowing germination ability remain to be identified and analyzed. In this study, a high-resolution genetic map based on 280 lines of the intermated B73 × Mo17 (IBM) Syn10 doubled haploid (DH) population which comprised 6618 bin markers was used for the QTL analysis of deep-sowing germination related traits. The results showed significant differences in germination related traits under deep-sowing condition (12.5 cm) and standard-germination condition (2 cm) between two parental lines. In total, 8, 11, 13, 15, and 18 QTL for germination rate, seedling length, mesocotyl length, plumule length, and coleoptile length were detected for the two sowing conditions, respectively. These QTL explained 2.51–7.8% of the phenotypic variance with LOD scores ranging from 2.52 to 7.13. Additionally, 32 overlapping QTL formed 11 QTL clusters on all chromosomes except for chromosome 8, indicating the minor effect genes have a pleiotropic role in regulating various traits. Furthermore, we identified six candidate genes related to deep-sowing germination ability, which were co-located in the cluster regions. The results provide a basis for molecular marker assisted breeding and functional study in deep-sowing germination ability of maize. PMID:28588594

  4. Quantitative Trait Locus Analysis for Deep-Sowing Germination Ability in the Maize IBM Syn10 DH Population.

    PubMed

    Liu, Hongjun; Zhang, Lin; Wang, Jiechen; Li, Changsheng; Zeng, Xing; Xie, Shupeng; Zhang, Yongzhong; Liu, Sisi; Hu, Songlin; Wang, Jianhua; Lee, Michael; Lübberstedt, Thomas; Zhao, Guangwu

    2017-01-01

    Deep-sowing is an effective measure to ensure seeds absorbing water from deep soil layer and emerging normally in arid and semiarid regions. However, existing varieties demonstrate poor germination ability in deep soil layer and some key quantitative trait loci (QTL) or genes related to deep-sowing germination ability remain to be identified and analyzed. In this study, a high-resolution genetic map based on 280 lines of the intermated B73 × Mo17 (IBM) Syn10 doubled haploid (DH) population which comprised 6618 bin markers was used for the QTL analysis of deep-sowing germination related traits. The results showed significant differences in germination related traits under deep-sowing condition (12.5 cm) and standard-germination condition (2 cm) between two parental lines. In total, 8, 11, 13, 15, and 18 QTL for germination rate, seedling length, mesocotyl length, plumule length, and coleoptile length were detected for the two sowing conditions, respectively. These QTL explained 2.51-7.8% of the phenotypic variance with LOD scores ranging from 2.52 to 7.13. Additionally, 32 overlapping QTL formed 11 QTL clusters on all chromosomes except for chromosome 8, indicating the minor effect genes have a pleiotropic role in regulating various traits. Furthermore, we identified six candidate genes related to deep-sowing germination ability, which were co-located in the cluster regions. The results provide a basis for molecular marker assisted breeding and functional study in deep-sowing germination ability of maize.

  5. Quantitative trait locus mapping of deep rooting by linkage and association analysis in rice

    PubMed Central

    Lou, Qiaojun; Chen, Liang; Mei, Hanwei; Wei, Haibin; Feng, Fangjun; Wang, Pei; Xia, Hui; Li, Tiemei; Luo, Lijun

    2015-01-01

    Deep rooting is a very important trait for plants’ drought avoidance, and it is usually represented by the ratio of deep rooting (RDR). Three sets of rice populations were used to determine the genetic base for RDR. A linkage mapping population with 180 recombinant inbred lines and an association mapping population containing 237 rice varieties were used to identify genes linked to RDR. Six quantitative trait loci (QTLs) of RDR were identified as being located on chromosomes 1, 2, 4, 7, and 10. Using 1 019 883 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), a genome-wide association study of the RDR was performed. Forty-eight significant SNPs of the RDR were identified and formed a clear peak on the short arm of chromosome 1 in a Manhattan plot. Compared with the shallow-rooting group and the whole collection, the deep-rooting group had selective sweep regions on chromosomes 1 and 2, especially in the major QTL region on chromosome 2. Seven of the nine candidate SNPs identified by association mapping were verified in two RDR extreme groups. The findings from this study will be beneficial to rice drought-resistance research and breeding. PMID:26022253

  6. Improved detection of CXCR4-using HIV by V3 genotyping: application of population-based and "deep" sequencing to plasma RNA and proviral DNA.

    PubMed

    Swenson, Luke C; Moores, Andrew; Low, Andrew J; Thielen, Alexander; Dong, Winnie; Woods, Conan; Jensen, Mark A; Wynhoven, Brian; Chan, Dennison; Glascock, Christopher; Harrigan, P Richard

    2010-08-01

    Tropism testing should rule out CXCR4-using HIV before treatment with CCR5 antagonists. Currently, the recombinant phenotypic Trofile assay (Monogram) is most widely utilized; however, genotypic tests may represent alternative methods. Independent triplicate amplifications of the HIV gp120 V3 region were made from either plasma HIV RNA or proviral DNA. These underwent standard, population-based sequencing with an ABI3730 (RNA n = 63; DNA n = 40), or "deep" sequencing with a Roche/454 Genome Sequencer-FLX (RNA n = 12; DNA n = 12). Position-specific scoring matrices (PSSMX4/R5) (-6.96 cutoff) and geno2pheno[coreceptor] (5% false-positive rate) inferred tropism from V3 sequence. These methods were then independently validated with a separate, blinded dataset (n = 278) of screening samples from the maraviroc MOTIVATE trials. Standard sequencing of HIV RNA with PSSM yielded 69% sensitivity and 91% specificity, relative to Trofile. The validation dataset gave 75% sensitivity and 83% specificity. Proviral DNA plus PSSM gave 77% sensitivity and 71% specificity. "Deep" sequencing of HIV RNA detected >2% inferred-CXCR4-using virus in 8/8 samples called non-R5 by Trofile, and <2% in 4/4 samples called R5. Triplicate analyses of V3 standard sequence data detect greater proportions of CXCR4-using samples than previously achieved. Sequencing proviral DNA and "deep" V3 sequencing may also be useful tools for assessing tropism.

  7. Deep sequencing detects very-low-grade somatic mosaicism in the unaffected mother of siblings with nemaline myopathy.

    PubMed

    Miyatake, Satoko; Koshimizu, Eriko; Hayashi, Yukiko K; Miya, Kazushi; Shiina, Masaaki; Nakashima, Mitsuko; Tsurusaki, Yoshinori; Miyake, Noriko; Saitsu, Hirotomo; Ogata, Kazuhiro; Nishino, Ichizo; Matsumoto, Naomichi

    2014-07-01

    When an expected mutation in a particular disease-causing gene is not identified in a suspected carrier, it is usually assumed to be due to germline mosaicism. We report here very-low-grade somatic mosaicism in ACTA1 in an unaffected mother of two siblings affected with a neonatal form of nemaline myopathy. The mosaicism was detected by deep resequencing using a next-generation sequencer. We identified a novel heterozygous mutation in ACTA1, c.448A>G (p.Thr150Ala), in the affected siblings. Three-dimensional structural modeling suggested that this mutation may affect polymerization and/or actin's interactions with other proteins. In this family, we expected autosomal dominant inheritance with either parent demonstrating germline or somatic mosaicism. Sanger sequencing identified no mutation. However, further deep resequencing of this mutation on a next-generation sequencer identified very-low-grade somatic mosaicism in the mother: 0.4%, 1.1%, and 8.3% in the saliva, blood leukocytes, and nails, respectively. Our study demonstrates the possibility of very-low-grade somatic mosaicism in suspected carriers, rather than germline mosaicism. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  8. Comparison of magnetic resonance imaging sequences for depicting the subthalamic nucleus for deep brain stimulation.

    PubMed

    Nagahama, Hiroshi; Suzuki, Kengo; Shonai, Takaharu; Aratani, Kazuki; Sakurai, Yuuki; Nakamura, Manami; Sakata, Motomichi

    2015-01-01

    Electrodes are surgically implanted into the subthalamic nucleus (STN) of Parkinson's disease patients to provide deep brain stimulation. For ensuring correct positioning, the anatomic location of the STN must be determined preoperatively. Magnetic resonance imaging has been used for pinpointing the location of the STN. To identify the optimal imaging sequence for identifying the STN, we compared images produced with T2 star-weighted angiography (SWAN), gradient echo T2*-weighted imaging, and fast spin echo T2-weighted imaging in 6 healthy volunteers. Our comparison involved measurement of the contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) for the STN and substantia nigra and a radiologist's interpretations of the images. Of the sequences examined, the CNR and qualitative scores were significantly higher on SWAN images than on other images (p < 0.01) for STN visualization. Kappa value (0.74) on SWAN images was the highest in three sequences for visualizing the STN. SWAN is the sequence best suited for identifying the STN at the present time.

  9. Evaluation of MRI sequences for quantitative T1 brain mapping

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tsialios, P.; Thrippleton, M.; Glatz, A.; Pernet, C.

    2017-11-01

    T1 mapping constitutes a quantitative MRI technique finding significant application in brain imaging. It allows evaluation of contrast uptake, blood perfusion, volume, providing a more specific biomarker of disease progression compared to conventional T1-weighted images. While there are many techniques for T1-mapping there is a wide range of reported T1-values in tissues, raising the issue of protocols reproducibility and standardization. The gold standard for obtaining T1-maps is based on acquiring IR-SE sequence. Widely used alternative sequences are IR-SE-EPI, VFA (DESPOT), DESPOT-HIFI and MP2RAGE that speed up scanning and fitting procedures. A custom MRI phantom was used to assess the reproducibility and accuracy of the different methods. All scans were performed using a 3T Siemens Prisma scanner. The acquired data processed using two different codes. The main difference was observed for VFA (DESPOT) which grossly overestimated T1 relaxation time by 214 ms [126 270] compared to the IR-SE sequence. MP2RAGE and DESPOT-HIFI sequences gave slightly shorter time than IR-SE (~20 to 30ms) and can be considered as alternative and time-efficient methods for acquiring accurate T1 maps of the human brain, while IR-SE-EPI gave identical result, at a cost of a lower image quality.

  10. Deep sequencing reveals persistence of cell-associated mumps vaccine virus in chronic encephalitis.

    PubMed

    Morfopoulou, Sofia; Mee, Edward T; Connaughton, Sarah M; Brown, Julianne R; Gilmour, Kimberly; Chong, W K 'Kling'; Duprex, W Paul; Ferguson, Deborah; Hubank, Mike; Hutchinson, Ciaran; Kaliakatsos, Marios; McQuaid, Stephen; Paine, Simon; Plagnol, Vincent; Ruis, Christopher; Virasami, Alex; Zhan, Hong; Jacques, Thomas S; Schepelmann, Silke; Qasim, Waseem; Breuer, Judith

    2017-01-01

    Routine childhood vaccination against measles, mumps and rubella has virtually abolished virus-related morbidity and mortality. Notwithstanding this, we describe here devastating neurological complications associated with the detection of live-attenuated mumps virus Jeryl Lynn (MuV JL5 ) in the brain of a child who had undergone successful allogeneic transplantation for severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID). This is the first confirmed report of MuV JL5 associated with chronic encephalitis and highlights the need to exclude immunodeficient individuals from immunisation with live-attenuated vaccines. The diagnosis was only possible by deep sequencing of the brain biopsy. Sequence comparison of the vaccine batch to the MuV JL5 isolated from brain identified biased hypermutation, particularly in the matrix gene, similar to those found in measles from cases of SSPE. The findings provide unique insights into the pathogenesis of paramyxovirus brain infections.

  11. Quantitative trait locus mapping of deep rooting by linkage and association analysis in rice.

    PubMed

    Lou, Qiaojun; Chen, Liang; Mei, Hanwei; Wei, Haibin; Feng, Fangjun; Wang, Pei; Xia, Hui; Li, Tiemei; Luo, Lijun

    2015-08-01

    Deep rooting is a very important trait for plants' drought avoidance, and it is usually represented by the ratio of deep rooting (RDR). Three sets of rice populations were used to determine the genetic base for RDR. A linkage mapping population with 180 recombinant inbred lines and an association mapping population containing 237 rice varieties were used to identify genes linked to RDR. Six quantitative trait loci (QTLs) of RDR were identified as being located on chromosomes 1, 2, 4, 7, and 10. Using 1 019 883 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), a genome-wide association study of the RDR was performed. Forty-eight significant SNPs of the RDR were identified and formed a clear peak on the short arm of chromosome 1 in a Manhattan plot. Compared with the shallow-rooting group and the whole collection, the deep-rooting group had selective sweep regions on chromosomes 1 and 2, especially in the major QTL region on chromosome 2. Seven of the nine candidate SNPs identified by association mapping were verified in two RDR extreme groups. The findings from this study will be beneficial to rice drought-resistance research and breeding. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Experimental Biology.

  12. Quantitative analysis and prediction of G-quadruplex forming sequences in double-stranded DNA

    PubMed Central

    Kim, Minji; Kreig, Alex; Lee, Chun-Ying; Rube, H. Tomas; Calvert, Jacob; Song, Jun S.; Myong, Sua

    2016-01-01

    Abstract G-quadruplex (GQ) is a four-stranded DNA structure that can be formed in guanine-rich sequences. GQ structures have been proposed to regulate diverse biological processes including transcription, replication, translation and telomere maintenance. Recent studies have demonstrated the existence of GQ DNA in live mammalian cells and a significant number of potential GQ forming sequences in the human genome. We present a systematic and quantitative analysis of GQ folding propensity on a large set of 438 GQ forming sequences in double-stranded DNA by integrating fluorescence measurement, single-molecule imaging and computational modeling. We find that short minimum loop length and the thymine base are two main factors that lead to high GQ folding propensity. Linear and Gaussian process regression models further validate that the GQ folding potential can be predicted with high accuracy based on the loop length distribution and the nucleotide content of the loop sequences. Our study provides important new parameters that can inform the evaluation and classification of putative GQ sequences in the human genome. PMID:27095201

  13. DeepText2GO: Improving large-scale protein function prediction with deep semantic text representation.

    PubMed

    You, Ronghui; Huang, Xiaodi; Zhu, Shanfeng

    2018-06-06

    As of April 2018, UniProtKB has collected more than 115 million protein sequences. Less than 0.15% of these proteins, however, have been associated with experimental GO annotations. As such, the use of automatic protein function prediction (AFP) to reduce this huge gap becomes increasingly important. The previous studies conclude that sequence homology based methods are highly effective in AFP. In addition, mining motif, domain, and functional information from protein sequences has been found very helpful for AFP. Other than sequences, alternative information sources such as text, however, may be useful for AFP as well. Instead of using BOW (bag of words) representation in traditional text-based AFP, we propose a new method called DeepText2GO that relies on deep semantic text representation, together with different kinds of available protein information such as sequence homology, families, domains, and motifs, to improve large-scale AFP. Furthermore, DeepText2GO integrates text-based methods with sequence-based ones by means of a consensus approach. Extensive experiments on the benchmark dataset extracted from UniProt/SwissProt have demonstrated that DeepText2GO significantly outperformed both text-based and sequence-based methods, validating its superiority. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  14. BiRen: predicting enhancers with a deep-learning-based model using the DNA sequence alone.

    PubMed

    Yang, Bite; Liu, Feng; Ren, Chao; Ouyang, Zhangyi; Xie, Ziwei; Bo, Xiaochen; Shu, Wenjie

    2017-07-01

    Enhancer elements are noncoding stretches of DNA that play key roles in controlling gene expression programmes. Despite major efforts to develop accurate enhancer prediction methods, identifying enhancer sequences continues to be a challenge in the annotation of mammalian genomes. One of the major issues is the lack of large, sufficiently comprehensive and experimentally validated enhancers for humans or other species. Thus, the development of computational methods based on limited experimentally validated enhancers and deciphering the transcriptional regulatory code encoded in the enhancer sequences is urgent. We present a deep-learning-based hybrid architecture, BiRen, which predicts enhancers using the DNA sequence alone. Our results demonstrate that BiRen can learn common enhancer patterns directly from the DNA sequence and exhibits superior accuracy, robustness and generalizability in enhancer prediction relative to other state-of-the-art enhancer predictors based on sequence characteristics. Our BiRen will enable researchers to acquire a deeper understanding of the regulatory code of enhancer sequences. Our BiRen method can be freely accessed at https://github.com/wenjiegroup/BiRen . shuwj@bmi.ac.cn or boxc@bmi.ac.cn. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

  15. Deep Sequencing Reveals the Complete Genome and Evidence for Transcriptional Activity of the First Virus-Like Sequences Identified in Aristotelia chilensis (Maqui Berry)

    PubMed Central

    Villacreses, Javier; Rojas-Herrera, Marcelo; Sánchez, Carolina; Hewstone, Nicole; Undurraga, Soledad F.; Alzate, Juan F.; Manque, Patricio; Maracaja-Coutinho, Vinicius; Polanco, Victor

    2015-01-01

    Here, we report the genome sequence and evidence for transcriptional activity of a virus-like element in the native Chilean berry tree Aristotelia chilensis. We propose to name the endogenous sequence as Aristotelia chilensis Virus 1 (AcV1). High-throughput sequencing of the genome of this tree uncovered an endogenous viral element, with a size of 7122 bp, corresponding to the complete genome of AcV1. Its sequence contains three open reading frames (ORFs): ORFs 1 and 2 shares 66%–73% amino acid similarity with members of the Caulimoviridae virus family, especially the Petunia vein clearing virus (PVCV), Petuvirus genus. ORF1 encodes a movement protein (MP); ORF2 a Reverse Transcriptase (RT) and a Ribonuclease H (RNase H) domain; and ORF3 showed no amino acid sequence similarity with any other known virus proteins. Analogous to other known endogenous pararetrovirus sequences (EPRVs), AcV1 is integrated in the genome of Maqui Berry and showed low viral transcriptional activity, which was detected by deep sequencing technology (DNA and RNA-seq). Phylogenetic analysis of AcV1 and other pararetroviruses revealed a closer resemblance with Petuvirus. Overall, our data suggests that AcV1 could be a new member of Caulimoviridae family, genus Petuvirus, and the first evidence of this kind of virus in a fruit plant. PMID:25855242

  16. Genomic variation in macrophage-cultured European porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus Olot/91 revealed using ultra-deep next generation sequencing.

    PubMed

    Lu, Zen H; Brown, Alexander; Wilson, Alison D; Calvert, Jay G; Balasch, Monica; Fuentes-Utrilla, Pablo; Loecherbach, Julia; Turner, Frances; Talbot, Richard; Archibald, Alan L; Ait-Ali, Tahar

    2014-03-04

    Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) is a disease of major economic impact worldwide. The etiologic agent of this disease is the PRRS virus (PRRSV). Increasing evidence suggest that microevolution within a coexisting quasispecies population can give rise to high sequence heterogeneity in PRRSV. We developed a pipeline based on the ultra-deep next generation sequencing approach to first construct the complete genome of a European PRRSV, strain Olot/9, cultured on macrophages and then capture the rare variants representative of the mixed quasispecies population. Olot/91 differs from the reference Lelystad strain by about 5% and a total of 88 variants, with frequencies as low as 1%, were detected in the mixed population. These variants included 16 non-synonymous variants concentrated in the genes encoding structural and nonstructural proteins; including Glycoprotein 2a and 5. Using an ultra-deep sequencing methodology, the complete genome of Olot/91 was constructed without any prior knowledge of the sequence. Rare variants that constitute minor fractions of the heterogeneous PRRSV population could successfully be detected to allow further exploration of microevolutionary events.

  17. 3′ terminal diversity of MRP RNA and other human noncoding RNAs revealed by deep sequencing

    PubMed Central

    2013-01-01

    Background Post-transcriptional 3′ end processing is a key component of RNA regulation. The abundant and essential RNA subunit of RNase MRP has been proposed to function in three distinct cellular compartments and therefore may utilize this mode of regulation. Here we employ 3′ RACE coupled with high-throughput sequencing to characterize the 3′ terminal sequences of human MRP RNA and other noncoding RNAs that form RNP complexes. Results The 3′ terminal sequence of MRP RNA from HEK293T cells has a distinctive distribution of genomically encoded termini (including an assortment of U residues) with a portion of these selectively tagged by oligo(A) tails. This profile contrasts with the relatively homogenous 3′ terminus of an in vitro transcribed MRP RNA control and the differing 3′ terminal profiles of U3 snoRNA, RNase P RNA, and telomerase RNA (hTR). Conclusions 3′ RACE coupled with deep sequencing provides a valuable framework for the functional characterization of 3′ terminal sequences of noncoding RNAs. PMID:24053768

  18. Deep sequencing of the Camellia sinensis transcriptome revealed candidate genes for major metabolic pathways of tea-specific compounds

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Shi, CY; Yang, H; Wei, CL

    quantitative real time PCR (qRT-PCR). An extensive transcriptome dataset has been obtained from the deep sequencing of tea plant. The coverage of the transcriptome is comprehensive enough to discover all known genes of several major metabolic pathways. This transcriptome dataset can serve as an important public information platform for gene expression, genomics, and functional genomic studies in C. sinensis.« less

  19. Deep sequencing of the Camellia sinensis transcriptome revealed candidate genes for major metabolic pathways of tea-specific compounds

    PubMed Central

    2011-01-01

    quantitative real time PCR (qRT-PCR). Conclusions An extensive transcriptome dataset has been obtained from the deep sequencing of tea plant. The coverage of the transcriptome is comprehensive enough to discover all known genes of several major metabolic pathways. This transcriptome dataset can serve as an important public information platform for gene expression, genomics, and functional genomic studies in C. sinensis. PMID:21356090

  20. Reduced deep regional cerebral venous oxygen saturation in hemodialysis patients using quantitative susceptibility mapping.

    PubMed

    Chai, Chao; Liu, Saifeng; Fan, Linlin; Liu, Lei; Li, Jinping; Zuo, Chao; Qian, Tianyi; Haacke, E Mark; Shen, Wen; Xia, Shuang

    2018-02-01

    Cerebral venous oxygen saturation (SvO 2 ) is an important indicator of brain function. There was debate about lower cerebral oxygen metabolism in hemodialysis patients and there were no reports about the changes of deep regional cerebral SvO 2 in hemodialysis patients. In this study, we aim to explore the deep regional cerebral SvO 2 from straight sinus using quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) and the correlation with clinical risk factors and neuropsychiatric testing . 52 hemodialysis patients and 54 age-and gender-matched healthy controls were enrolled. QSM reconstructed from original phase data of 3.0 T susceptibility-weighted imaging was used to measure the susceptibility of straight sinus. The susceptibility was used to calculate the deep regional cerebral SvO 2 and compare with healthy individuals. Correlation analysis was performed to investigate the correlation between deep regional cerebral SvO 2 , clinical risk factors and neuropsychiatric testing. The deep regional cerebral SvO 2 of hemodialysis patients (72.5 ± 3.7%) was significantly lower than healthy controls (76.0 ± 2.1%) (P < 0.001). There was no significant difference in the measured volume of interests of straight sinus between hemodialysis patients (250.92 ± 46.65) and healthy controls (249.68 ± 49.68) (P = 0.859). There were no significant correlations between the measured susceptibility and volume of interests in hemodialysis patients (P = 0.204) and healthy controls (P = 0.562), respectively. Hematocrit (r = 0.480, P < 0.001, FDR corrected), hemoglobin (r = 0.440, P < 0.001, FDR corrected), red blood cell (r = 0.446, P = 0.003, FDR corrected), dialysis duration (r = 0.505, P = 0.002, FDR corrected) and parathyroid hormone (r = -0.451, P = 0.007, FDR corrected) were risk factors for decreased deep regional cerebral SvO 2 in patients. The Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) scores of hemodialysis patients were

  1. Quantitative phase microscopy using deep neural networks

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Li, Shuai; Sinha, Ayan; Lee, Justin; Barbastathis, George

    2018-02-01

    Deep learning has been proven to achieve ground-breaking accuracy in various tasks. In this paper, we implemented a deep neural network (DNN) to achieve phase retrieval in a wide-field microscope. Our DNN utilized the residual neural network (ResNet) architecture and was trained using the data generated by a phase SLM. The results showed that our DNN was able to reconstruct the profile of the phase target qualitatively. In the meantime, large error still existed, which indicated that our approach still need to be improved.

  2. Development of a candidate reference material for adventitious virus detection in vaccine and biologicals manufacturing by deep sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Mee, Edward T.; Preston, Mark D.; Minor, Philip D.; Schepelmann, Silke; Huang, Xuening; Nguyen, Jenny; Wall, David; Hargrove, Stacey; Fu, Thomas; Xu, George; Li, Li; Cote, Colette; Delwart, Eric; Li, Linlin; Hewlett, Indira; Simonyan, Vahan; Ragupathy, Viswanath; Alin, Voskanian-Kordi; Mermod, Nicolas; Hill, Christiane; Ottenwälder, Birgit; Richter, Daniel C.; Tehrani, Arman; Jacqueline, Weber-Lehmann; Cassart, Jean-Pol; Letellier, Carine; Vandeputte, Olivier; Ruelle, Jean-Louis; Deyati, Avisek; La Neve, Fabio; Modena, Chiara; Mee, Edward; Schepelmann, Silke; Preston, Mark; Minor, Philip; Eloit, Marc; Muth, Erika; Lamamy, Arnaud; Jagorel, Florence; Cheval, Justine; Anscombe, Catherine; Misra, Raju; Wooldridge, David; Gharbia, Saheer; Rose, Graham; Ng, Siemon H.S.; Charlebois, Robert L.; Gisonni-Lex, Lucy; Mallet, Laurent; Dorange, Fabien; Chiu, Charles; Naccache, Samia; Kellam, Paul; van der Hoek, Lia; Cotten, Matt; Mitchell, Christine; Baier, Brian S.; Sun, Wenping; Malicki, Heather D.

    2016-01-01

    Background Unbiased deep sequencing offers the potential for improved adventitious virus screening in vaccines and biotherapeutics. Successful implementation of such assays will require appropriate control materials to confirm assay performance and sensitivity. Methods A common reference material containing 25 target viruses was produced and 16 laboratories were invited to process it using their preferred adventitious virus detection assay. Results Fifteen laboratories returned results, obtained using a wide range of wet-lab and informatics methods. Six of 25 target viruses were detected by all laboratories, with the remaining viruses detected by 4–14 laboratories. Six non-target viruses were detected by three or more laboratories. Conclusion The study demonstrated that a wide range of methods are currently used for adventitious virus detection screening in biological products by deep sequencing and that they can yield significantly different results. This underscores the need for common reference materials to ensure satisfactory assay performance and enable comparisons between laboratories. PMID:26709640

  3. DeepARG: a deep learning approach for predicting antibiotic resistance genes from metagenomic data.

    PubMed

    Arango-Argoty, Gustavo; Garner, Emily; Pruden, Amy; Heath, Lenwood S; Vikesland, Peter; Zhang, Liqing

    2018-02-01

    Growing concerns about increasing rates of antibiotic resistance call for expanded and comprehensive global monitoring. Advancing methods for monitoring of environmental media (e.g., wastewater, agricultural waste, food, and water) is especially needed for identifying potential resources of novel antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs), hot spots for gene exchange, and as pathways for the spread of ARGs and human exposure. Next-generation sequencing now enables direct access and profiling of the total metagenomic DNA pool, where ARGs are typically identified or predicted based on the "best hits" of sequence searches against existing databases. Unfortunately, this approach produces a high rate of false negatives. To address such limitations, we propose here a deep learning approach, taking into account a dissimilarity matrix created using all known categories of ARGs. Two deep learning models, DeepARG-SS and DeepARG-LS, were constructed for short read sequences and full gene length sequences, respectively. Evaluation of the deep learning models over 30 antibiotic resistance categories demonstrates that the DeepARG models can predict ARGs with both high precision (> 0.97) and recall (> 0.90). The models displayed an advantage over the typical best hit approach, yielding consistently lower false negative rates and thus higher overall recall (> 0.9). As more data become available for under-represented ARG categories, the DeepARG models' performance can be expected to be further enhanced due to the nature of the underlying neural networks. Our newly developed ARG database, DeepARG-DB, encompasses ARGs predicted with a high degree of confidence and extensive manual inspection, greatly expanding current ARG repositories. The deep learning models developed here offer more accurate antimicrobial resistance annotation relative to current bioinformatics practice. DeepARG does not require strict cutoffs, which enables identification of a much broader diversity of ARGs. The

  4. Analysis of alterative cleavage and polyadenylation by 3′ region extraction and deep sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Hoque, Mainul; Ji, Zhe; Zheng, Dinghai; Luo, Wenting; Li, Wencheng; You, Bei; Park, Ji Yeon; Yehia, Ghassan; Tian, Bin

    2012-01-01

    Alternative cleavage and polyadenylation (APA) leads to mRNA isoforms with different coding sequences (CDS) and/or 3′ untranslated regions (3′UTRs). Using 3′ Region Extraction And Deep Sequencing (3′READS), a method which addresses the internal priming and oligo(A) tail issues that commonly plague polyA site (pA) identification, we comprehensively mapped pAs in the mouse genome, thoroughly annotating 3′ ends of genes and revealing over five thousand pAs (~8% of total) flanked by A-rich sequences, which have hitherto been overlooked. About 79% of mRNA genes and 66% of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) genes have APA; but these two gene types have distinct usage patterns for pAs in introns and upstream exons. Promoter-distal pAs become relatively more abundant during embryonic development and cell differentiation, a trend affecting pAs in both 3′-most exons and upstream regions. Upregulated isoforms generally have stronger pAs, suggesting global modulation of the 3′ end processing activity in development and differentiation. PMID:23241633

  5. Quantitative analysis of patients with celiac disease by video capsule endoscopy: A deep learning method.

    PubMed

    Zhou, Teng; Han, Guoqiang; Li, Bing Nan; Lin, Zhizhe; Ciaccio, Edward J; Green, Peter H; Qin, Jing

    2017-06-01

    Celiac disease is one of the most common diseases in the world. Capsule endoscopy is an alternative way to visualize the entire small intestine without invasiveness to the patient. It is useful to characterize celiac disease, but hours are need to manually analyze the retrospective data of a single patient. Computer-aided quantitative analysis by a deep learning method helps in alleviating the workload during analysis of the retrospective videos. Capsule endoscopy clips from 6 celiac disease patients and 5 controls were preprocessed for training. The frames with a large field of opaque extraluminal fluid or air bubbles were removed automatically by using a pre-selection algorithm. Then the frames were cropped and the intensity was corrected prior to frame rotation in the proposed new method. The GoogLeNet is trained with these frames. Then, the clips of capsule endoscopy from 5 additional celiac disease patients and 5 additional control patients are used for testing. The trained GoogLeNet was able to distinguish the frames from capsule endoscopy clips of celiac disease patients vs controls. Quantitative measurement with evaluation of the confidence was developed to assess the severity level of pathology in the subjects. Relying on the evaluation confidence, the GoogLeNet achieved 100% sensitivity and specificity for the testing set. The t-test confirmed the evaluation confidence is significant to distinguish celiac disease patients from controls. Furthermore, it is found that the evaluation confidence may also relate to the severity level of small bowel mucosal lesions. A deep convolutional neural network was established for quantitative measurement of the existence and degree of pathology throughout the small intestine, which may improve computer-aided clinical techniques to assess mucosal atrophy and other etiologies in real-time with videocapsule endoscopy. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  6. Genotypic tropism testing by massively parallel sequencing: qualitative and quantitative analysis.

    PubMed

    Däumer, Martin; Kaiser, Rolf; Klein, Rolf; Lengauer, Thomas; Thiele, Bernhard; Thielen, Alexander

    2011-05-13

    Inferring viral tropism from genotype is a fast and inexpensive alternative to phenotypic testing. While being highly predictive when performed on clonal samples, sensitivity of predicting CXCR4-using (X4) variants drops substantially in clinical isolates. This is mainly attributed to minor variants not detected by standard bulk-sequencing. Massively parallel sequencing (MPS) detects single clones thereby being much more sensitive. Using this technology we wanted to improve genotypic prediction of coreceptor usage. Plasma samples from 55 antiretroviral-treated patients tested for coreceptor usage with the Monogram Trofile Assay were sequenced with standard population-based approaches. Fourteen of these samples were selected for further analysis with MPS. Tropism was predicted from each sequence with geno2pheno[coreceptor]. Prediction based on bulk-sequencing yielded 59.1% sensitivity and 90.9% specificity compared to the trofile assay. With MPS, 7600 reads were generated on average per isolate. Minorities of sequences with high confidence in CXCR4-usage were found in all samples, irrespective of phenotype. When using the default false-positive-rate of geno2pheno[coreceptor] (10%), and defining a minority cutoff of 5%, the results were concordant in all but one isolate. The combination of MPS and coreceptor usage prediction results in a fast and accurate alternative to phenotypic assays. The detection of X4-viruses in all isolates suggests that coreceptor usage as well as fitness of minorities is important for therapy outcome. The high sensitivity of this technology in combination with a quantitative description of the viral population may allow implementing meaningful cutoffs for predicting response to CCR5-antagonists in the presence of X4-minorities.

  7. Use of deep whole-genome sequencing data to identify structure risk variants in breast cancer susceptibility genes.

    PubMed

    Guo, Xingyi; Shi, Jiajun; Cai, Qiuyin; Shu, Xiao-Ou; He, Jing; Wen, Wanqing; Allen, Jamie; Pharoah, Paul; Dunning, Alison; Hunter, David J; Kraft, Peter; Easton, Douglas F; Zheng, Wei; Long, Jirong

    2018-03-01

    Functional disruptions of susceptibility genes by large genomic structure variant (SV) deletions in germlines are known to be associated with cancer risk. However, few studies have been conducted to systematically search for SV deletions in breast cancer susceptibility genes. We analysed deep (> 30x) whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data generated in blood samples from 128 breast cancer patients of Asian and European descent with either a strong family history of breast cancer or early cancer onset disease. To identify SV deletions in known or suspected breast cancer susceptibility genes, we used multiple SV calling tools including Genome STRiP, Delly, Manta, BreakDancer and Pindel. SV deletions were detected by at least three of these bioinformatics tools in five genes. Specifically, we identified heterozygous deletions covering a fraction of the coding regions of BRCA1 (with approximately 80kb in two patients), and TP53 genes (with ∼1.6 kb in two patients), and of intronic regions (∼1 kb) of the PALB2 (one patient), PTEN (three patients) and RAD51C genes (one patient). We confirmed the presence of these deletions using real-time quantitative PCR (qPCR). Our study identified novel SV deletions in breast cancer susceptibility genes and the identification of such SV deletions may improve clinical testing.

  8. Deep sequencing reveals cell-type-specific patterns of single-cell transcriptome variation.

    PubMed

    Dueck, Hannah; Khaladkar, Mugdha; Kim, Tae Kyung; Spaethling, Jennifer M; Francis, Chantal; Suresh, Sangita; Fisher, Stephen A; Seale, Patrick; Beck, Sheryl G; Bartfai, Tamas; Kuhn, Bernhard; Eberwine, James; Kim, Junhyong

    2015-06-09

    Differentiation of metazoan cells requires execution of different gene expression programs but recent single-cell transcriptome profiling has revealed considerable variation within cells of seeming identical phenotype. This brings into question the relationship between transcriptome states and cell phenotypes. Additionally, single-cell transcriptomics presents unique analysis challenges that need to be addressed to answer this question. We present high quality deep read-depth single-cell RNA sequencing for 91 cells from five mouse tissues and 18 cells from two rat tissues, along with 30 control samples of bulk RNA diluted to single-cell levels. We find that transcriptomes differ globally across tissues with regard to the number of genes expressed, the average expression patterns, and within-cell-type variation patterns. We develop methods to filter genes for reliable quantification and to calibrate biological variation. All cell types include genes with high variability in expression, in a tissue-specific manner. We also find evidence that single-cell variability of neuronal genes in mice is correlated with that in rats consistent with the hypothesis that levels of variation may be conserved. Single-cell RNA-sequencing data provide a unique view of transcriptome function; however, careful analysis is required in order to use single-cell RNA-sequencing measurements for this purpose. Technical variation must be considered in single-cell RNA-sequencing studies of expression variation. For a subset of genes, biological variability within each cell type appears to be regulated in order to perform dynamic functions, rather than solely molecular noise.

  9. Identification of ribonucleotide reductase mutation causing temperature-sensitivity of herpes simplex virus isolates from whitlow by deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Daikoku, Tohru; Oyama, Yukari; Yajima, Misako; Sekizuka, Tsuyoshi; Kuroda, Makoto; Shimada, Yuka; Takehara, Kazuhiko; Miwa, Naoko; Okuda, Tomoko; Sata, Tetsutaro; Shiraki, Kimiyasu

    2015-06-01

    Herpes simplex virus 2 caused a genital ulcer, and a secondary herpetic whitlow appeared during acyclovir therapy. The secondary and recurrent whitlow isolates were acyclovir-resistant and temperature-sensitive in contrast to a genital isolate. We identified the ribonucleotide reductase mutation responsible for temperature-sensitivity by deep-sequencing analysis.

  10. High-fidelity target sequencing of individual molecules identified using barcode sequences: de novo detection and absolute quantitation of mutations in plasma cell-free DNA from cancer patients.

    PubMed

    Kukita, Yoji; Matoba, Ryo; Uchida, Junji; Hamakawa, Takuya; Doki, Yuichiro; Imamura, Fumio; Kato, Kikuya

    2015-08-01

    Circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) is an emerging field of cancer research. However, current ctDNA analysis is usually restricted to one or a few mutation sites due to technical limitations. In the case of massively parallel DNA sequencers, the number of false positives caused by a high read error rate is a major problem. In addition, the final sequence reads do not represent the original DNA population due to the global amplification step during the template preparation. We established a high-fidelity target sequencing system of individual molecules identified in plasma cell-free DNA using barcode sequences; this system consists of the following two steps. (i) A novel target sequencing method that adds barcode sequences by adaptor ligation. This method uses linear amplification to eliminate the errors introduced during the early cycles of polymerase chain reaction. (ii) The monitoring and removal of erroneous barcode tags. This process involves the identification of individual molecules that have been sequenced and for which the number of mutations have been absolute quantitated. Using plasma cell-free DNA from patients with gastric or lung cancer, we demonstrated that the system achieved near complete elimination of false positives and enabled de novo detection and absolute quantitation of mutations in plasma cell-free DNA. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Kazusa DNA Research Institute.

  11. Deep sequencing identification of miRNAs in pigeon ovaries illuminated with monochromatic light.

    PubMed

    Wang, Ying; Yang, Hai-Ming; Cao, Wei; Li, Yang-Bai; Wang, Zhi-Yue

    2018-06-08

    The use of light of different wavelengths has grown popular in the poultry industry. An optimum wavelength is believed to improve pigeon egg production, but little is known about the role of microRNAs (miRNAs) in the effects of monochromatic light on ovarian pigeon function. Herein, we harvested ovaries from pigeons reared under monochromatic light of different wavelength and performed deep sequencing on various tissues using an Illumina Solexa high-throughput instrument. We obtained 66,148,548, 67,873,805, and 71,661,771 clean reads from ovaries of pigeons reared under red light (RL), blue light (BL), and white light (WL), respectively. We identified 1917 known miRNAs in nine libraries, of which 524 were novel. Three and five differentially expressed miRNAs were identified in BL vs. WL and RL vs. WL groups, respectively. Quantitative reverse transcription PCR was used to validate differentially expressed miRNAs (miR-200, miR-122, and miR-205b). In addition, 5824 target genes were annotated as differentially expressed miRNAs, most of which are involved in reproductive pathways including oestrogen signalling, cell cycle, and oocyte maturation. Notably, ovarian miR-205b expression was significantly negatively correlated with its target 11β-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase type 1 (HSD11B1). miRNA-mRNA network analysis suggests that miR-205b targeting of HSD11B1 plays a key role in the effects of monochromatic light on pigeon egg production. These findings indicate that monochromatic light shortens the oviposition interval of pigeons, which may be useful for egg production and pigeon breeding.

  12. Quantitative Assessment of RNA-Protein Interactions with High Throughput Sequencing - RNA Affinity Profiling (HiTS-RAP)

    PubMed Central

    Ozer, Abdullah; Tome, Jacob M.; Friedman, Robin C.; Gheba, Dan; Schroth, Gary P.; Lis, John T.

    2016-01-01

    Because RNA-protein interactions play a central role in a wide-array of biological processes, methods that enable a quantitative assessment of these interactions in a high-throughput manner are in great demand. Recently, we developed the High Throughput Sequencing-RNA Affinity Profiling (HiTS-RAP) assay, which couples sequencing on an Illumina GAIIx with the quantitative assessment of one or several proteins’ interactions with millions of different RNAs in a single experiment. We have successfully used HiTS-RAP to analyze interactions of EGFP and NELF-E proteins with their corresponding canonical and mutant RNA aptamers. Here, we provide a detailed protocol for HiTS-RAP, which can be completed in about a month (8 days hands-on time) including the preparation and testing of recombinant proteins and DNA templates, clustering DNA templates on a flowcell, high-throughput sequencing and protein binding with GAIIx, and finally data analysis. We also highlight aspects of HiTS-RAP that can be further improved and points of comparison between HiTS-RAP and two other recently developed methods, RNA-MaP and RBNS. A successful HiTS-RAP experiment provides the sequence and binding curves for approximately 200 million RNAs in a single experiment. PMID:26182240

  13. Deep-sequencing to resolve complex diversity of apicomplexan parasites in platypuses and echidnas: Proof of principle for wildlife disease investigation.

    PubMed

    Šlapeta, Jan; Saverimuttu, Stefan; Vogelnest, Larry; Sangster, Cheryl; Hulst, Frances; Rose, Karrie; Thompson, Paul; Whittington, Richard

    2017-11-01

    The short-beaked echidna (Tachyglossus aculeatus) and the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) are iconic egg-laying monotremes (Mammalia: Monotremata) from Australasia. The aim of this study was to demonstrate the utility of diversity profiles in disease investigations of monotremes. Using small subunit (18S) rDNA amplicon deep-sequencing we demonstrated the presence of apicomplexan parasites and confirmed by direct and cloned amplicon gene sequencing Theileria ornithorhynchi, Theileria tachyglossi, Eimeria echidnae and Cryptosporidium fayeri. Using a combination of samples from healthy and diseased animals, we show a close evolutionary relationship between species of coccidia (Eimeria) and piroplasms (Theileria) from the echidna and platypus. The presence of E. echidnae was demonstrated in faeces and tissues affected by disseminated coccidiosis. Moreover, the presence of E. echidnae DNA in the blood of echidnas was associated with atoxoplasma-like stages in white blood cells, suggesting Hepatozoon tachyglossi blood stages are disseminated E. echidnae stages. These next-generation DNA sequencing technologies are suited to material and organisms that have not been previously characterised and for which the material is scarce. The deep sequencing approach supports traditional diagnostic methods, including microscopy, clinical pathology and histopathology, to better define the status quo. This approach is particularly suitable for wildlife disease investigation. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  14. Incorporation of unique molecular identifiers in TruSeq adapters improves the accuracy of quantitative sequencing.

    PubMed

    Hong, Jungeui; Gresham, David

    2017-11-01

    Quantitative analysis of next-generation sequencing (NGS) data requires discriminating duplicate reads generated by PCR from identical molecules that are of unique origin. Typically, PCR duplicates are identified as sequence reads that align to the same genomic coordinates using reference-based alignment. However, identical molecules can be independently generated during library preparation. Misidentification of these molecules as PCR duplicates can introduce unforeseen biases during analyses. Here, we developed a cost-effective sequencing adapter design by modifying Illumina TruSeq adapters to incorporate a unique molecular identifier (UMI) while maintaining the capacity to undertake multiplexed, single-index sequencing. Incorporation of UMIs into TruSeq adapters (TrUMIseq adapters) enables identification of bona fide PCR duplicates as identically mapped reads with identical UMIs. Using TrUMIseq adapters, we show that accurate removal of PCR duplicates results in improved accuracy of both allele frequency (AF) estimation in heterogeneous populations using DNA sequencing and gene expression quantification using RNA-Seq.

  15. Mapping vaccinia virus DNA replication origins at nucleotide level by deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Senkevich, Tatiana G; Bruno, Daniel; Martens, Craig; Porcella, Stephen F; Wolf, Yuri I; Moss, Bernard

    2015-09-01

    Poxviruses reproduce in the host cytoplasm and encode most or all of the enzymes and factors needed for expression and synthesis of their double-stranded DNA genomes. Nevertheless, the mode of poxvirus DNA replication and the nature and location of the replication origins remain unknown. A current but unsubstantiated model posits only leading strand synthesis starting at a nick near one covalently closed end of the genome and continuing around the other end to generate a concatemer that is subsequently resolved into unit genomes. The existence of specific origins has been questioned because any plasmid can replicate in cells infected by vaccinia virus (VACV), the prototype poxvirus. We applied directional deep sequencing of short single-stranded DNA fragments enriched for RNA-primed nascent strands isolated from the cytoplasm of VACV-infected cells to pinpoint replication origins. The origins were identified as the switching points of the fragment directions, which correspond to the transition from continuous to discontinuous DNA synthesis. Origins containing a prominent initiation point mapped to a sequence within the hairpin loop at one end of the VACV genome and to the same sequence within the concatemeric junction of replication intermediates. These findings support a model for poxvirus genome replication that involves leading and lagging strand synthesis and is consistent with the requirements for primase and ligase activities as well as earlier electron microscopic and biochemical studies implicating a replication origin at the end of the VACV genome.

  16. Uncovering Small RNA-Mediated Responses to Cold Stress in a Wheat Thermosensitive Genic Male-Sterile Line by Deep Sequencing1[W][OA

    PubMed Central

    Tang, Zhonghui; Zhang, Liping; Xu, Chenguang; Yuan, Shaohua; Zhang, Fengting; Zheng, Yonglian; Zhao, Changping

    2012-01-01

    The male sterility of thermosensitive genic male sterile (TGMS) lines of wheat (Triticum aestivum) is strictly controlled by temperature. The early phase of anther development is especially susceptible to cold stress. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play an important role in plant development and in responses to environmental stress. In this study, deep sequencing of small RNA (smRNA) libraries obtained from spike tissues of the TGMS line under cold and control conditions identified a total of 78 unique miRNA sequences from 30 families and trans-acting small interfering RNAs (tasiRNAs) derived from two TAS3 genes. To identify smRNA targets in the wheat TGMS line, we applied the degradome sequencing method, which globally and directly identifies the remnants of smRNA-directed target cleavage. We identified 26 targets of 16 miRNA families and three targets of tasiRNAs. Comparing smRNA sequencing data sets and TaqMan quantitative polymerase chain reaction results, we identified six miRNAs and one tasiRNA (tasiRNA-ARF [for Auxin-Responsive Factor]) as cold stress-responsive smRNAs in spike tissues of the TGMS line. We also determined the expression profiles of target genes that encode transcription factors in response to cold stress. Interestingly, the expression of cold stress-responsive smRNAs integrated in the auxin-signaling pathway and their target genes was largely noncorrelated. We investigated the tissue-specific expression of smRNAs using a tissue microarray approach. Our data indicated that miR167 and tasiRNA-ARF play roles in regulating the auxin-signaling pathway and possibly in the developmental response to cold stress. These data provide evidence that smRNA regulatory pathways are linked with male sterility in the TGMS line during cold stress. PMID:22508932

  17. Describing the diversity of Ag specific receptors in vertebrates: Contribution of repertoire deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Castro, Rosario; Navelsaker, Sofie; Krasnov, Aleksei; Du Pasquier, Louis; Boudinot, Pierre

    2017-10-01

    During the last decades, gene and cDNA cloning identified TCR and Ig genes across vertebrates; genome sequencing of TCR and Ig loci in many species revealed the different organizations selected during evolution under the pressure of generating diverse repertoires of Ag receptors. By detecting clonotypes over a wide range of frequency, deep sequencing of Ig and TCR transcripts provides a new way to compare the structure of expressed repertoires in species of various sizes, at different stages of development, with different physiologies, and displaying multiple adaptations to the environment. In this review, we provide a short overview of the technologies currently used to produce global description of immune repertoires, describe how they have already been used in comparative immunology, and we discuss the future potential of such approaches. The development of these methodologies in new species holds promise for new discoveries concerning particular adaptations. As an example, understanding the development of adaptive immunity across metamorphosis in frogs has been made possible by such approaches. Repertoire sequencing is now widely used, not only in basic research but also in the context of immunotherapy and vaccination. Analysis of fish responses to pathogens and vaccines has already benefited from these methods. Finally, we also discuss potential advances based on repertoire sequencing of multigene families of immune sensors and effectors in invertebrates. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  18. Recurrent chimeric RNAs enriched in human prostate cancer identified by deep sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Kannan, Kalpana; Wang, Liguo; Wang, Jianghua; Ittmann, Michael M.; Li, Wei; Yen, Laising

    2011-01-01

    Transcription-induced chimeric RNAs, possessing sequences from different genes, are expected to increase the proteomic diversity through chimeric proteins or altered regulation. Despite their importance, few studies have focused on chimeric RNAs especially regarding their presence/roles in human cancers. By deep sequencing the transcriptome of 20 human prostate cancer and 10 matched benign prostate tissues, we obtained 1.3 billion sequence reads, which led to the identification of 2,369 chimeric RNA candidates. Chimeric RNAs occurred in significantly higher frequency in cancer than in matched benign samples. Experimental investigation of a selected 46 set led to the confirmation of 32 chimeric RNAs, of which 27 were highly recurrent and previously undescribed in prostate cancer. Importantly, a subset of these chimeras was present in prostate cancer cell lines, but not detectable in primary human prostate epithelium cells, implying their associations with cancer. These chimeras contain discernable 5′ and 3′ splice sites at the RNA junction, indicating that their formation is mediated by splicing. Their presence is also largely independent of the expression of parental genes, suggesting that other factors are involved in their production and regulation. One chimera, TMEM79-SMG5, is highly differentially expressed in human cancer samples and therefore a potential biomarker. The prevalence of chimeric RNAs may allow the limited number of human genes to encode a substantially larger number of RNAs and proteins, forming an additional layer of cellular complexity. Together, our results suggest that chimeric RNAs are widespread, and increased chimeric RNA events could represent a unique class of molecular alteration in cancer. PMID:21571633

  19. Deep Learning Automates the Quantitative Analysis of Individual Cells in Live-Cell Imaging Experiments.

    PubMed

    Van Valen, David A; Kudo, Takamasa; Lane, Keara M; Macklin, Derek N; Quach, Nicolas T; DeFelice, Mialy M; Maayan, Inbal; Tanouchi, Yu; Ashley, Euan A; Covert, Markus W

    2016-11-01

    Live-cell imaging has opened an exciting window into the role cellular heterogeneity plays in dynamic, living systems. A major critical challenge for this class of experiments is the problem of image segmentation, or determining which parts of a microscope image correspond to which individual cells. Current approaches require many hours of manual curation and depend on approaches that are difficult to share between labs. They are also unable to robustly segment the cytoplasms of mammalian cells. Here, we show that deep convolutional neural networks, a supervised machine learning method, can solve this challenge for multiple cell types across the domains of life. We demonstrate that this approach can robustly segment fluorescent images of cell nuclei as well as phase images of the cytoplasms of individual bacterial and mammalian cells from phase contrast images without the need for a fluorescent cytoplasmic marker. These networks also enable the simultaneous segmentation and identification of different mammalian cell types grown in co-culture. A quantitative comparison with prior methods demonstrates that convolutional neural networks have improved accuracy and lead to a significant reduction in curation time. We relay our experience in designing and optimizing deep convolutional neural networks for this task and outline several design rules that we found led to robust performance. We conclude that deep convolutional neural networks are an accurate method that require less curation time, are generalizable to a multiplicity of cell types, from bacteria to mammalian cells, and expand live-cell imaging capabilities to include multi-cell type systems.

  20. Deep Learning Automates the Quantitative Analysis of Individual Cells in Live-Cell Imaging Experiments

    DOE PAGES

    Van Valen, David A.; Kudo, Takamasa; Lane, Keara M.; ...

    2016-11-04

    Live-cell imaging has opened an exciting window into the role cellular heterogeneity plays in dynamic, living systems. A major critical challenge for this class of experiments is the problem of image segmentation, or determining which parts of a microscope image correspond to which individual cells. Current approaches require many hours of manual curation and depend on approaches that are difficult to share between labs. They are also unable to robustly segment the cytoplasms of mammalian cells. Here, we show that deep convolutional neural networks, a supervised machine learning method, can solve this challenge for multiple cell types across the domainsmore » of life. We demonstrate that this approach can robustly segment fluorescent images of cell nuclei as well as phase images of the cytoplasms of individual bacterial and mammalian cells from phase contrast images without the need for a fluorescent cytoplasmic marker. These networks also enable the simultaneous segmentation and identification of different mammalian cell types grown in co-culture. A quantitative comparison with prior methods demonstrates that convolutional neural networks have improved accuracy and lead to a significant reduction in curation time. We relay our experience in designing and optimizing deep convolutional neural networks for this task and outline several design rules that we found led to robust performance. We conclude that deep convolutional neural networks are an accurate method that require less curation time, are generalizable to a multiplicity of cell types, from bacteria to mammalian cells, and expand live-cell imaging capabilities to include multi-cell type systems.« less

  1. Deep Learning Automates the Quantitative Analysis of Individual Cells in Live-Cell Imaging Experiments

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Van Valen, David A.; Kudo, Takamasa; Lane, Keara M.

    Live-cell imaging has opened an exciting window into the role cellular heterogeneity plays in dynamic, living systems. A major critical challenge for this class of experiments is the problem of image segmentation, or determining which parts of a microscope image correspond to which individual cells. Current approaches require many hours of manual curation and depend on approaches that are difficult to share between labs. They are also unable to robustly segment the cytoplasms of mammalian cells. Here, we show that deep convolutional neural networks, a supervised machine learning method, can solve this challenge for multiple cell types across the domainsmore » of life. We demonstrate that this approach can robustly segment fluorescent images of cell nuclei as well as phase images of the cytoplasms of individual bacterial and mammalian cells from phase contrast images without the need for a fluorescent cytoplasmic marker. These networks also enable the simultaneous segmentation and identification of different mammalian cell types grown in co-culture. A quantitative comparison with prior methods demonstrates that convolutional neural networks have improved accuracy and lead to a significant reduction in curation time. We relay our experience in designing and optimizing deep convolutional neural networks for this task and outline several design rules that we found led to robust performance. We conclude that deep convolutional neural networks are an accurate method that require less curation time, are generalizable to a multiplicity of cell types, from bacteria to mammalian cells, and expand live-cell imaging capabilities to include multi-cell type systems.« less

  2. Deep Learning Automates the Quantitative Analysis of Individual Cells in Live-Cell Imaging Experiments

    PubMed Central

    Van Valen, David A.; Lane, Keara M.; Quach, Nicolas T.; Maayan, Inbal

    2016-01-01

    Live-cell imaging has opened an exciting window into the role cellular heterogeneity plays in dynamic, living systems. A major critical challenge for this class of experiments is the problem of image segmentation, or determining which parts of a microscope image correspond to which individual cells. Current approaches require many hours of manual curation and depend on approaches that are difficult to share between labs. They are also unable to robustly segment the cytoplasms of mammalian cells. Here, we show that deep convolutional neural networks, a supervised machine learning method, can solve this challenge for multiple cell types across the domains of life. We demonstrate that this approach can robustly segment fluorescent images of cell nuclei as well as phase images of the cytoplasms of individual bacterial and mammalian cells from phase contrast images without the need for a fluorescent cytoplasmic marker. These networks also enable the simultaneous segmentation and identification of different mammalian cell types grown in co-culture. A quantitative comparison with prior methods demonstrates that convolutional neural networks have improved accuracy and lead to a significant reduction in curation time. We relay our experience in designing and optimizing deep convolutional neural networks for this task and outline several design rules that we found led to robust performance. We conclude that deep convolutional neural networks are an accurate method that require less curation time, are generalizable to a multiplicity of cell types, from bacteria to mammalian cells, and expand live-cell imaging capabilities to include multi-cell type systems. PMID:27814364

  3. Breaking the 1000-gene barrier for Mimivirus using ultra-deep genome and transcriptome sequencing.

    PubMed

    Legendre, Matthieu; Santini, Sébastien; Rico, Alain; Abergel, Chantal; Claverie, Jean-Michel

    2011-03-04

    Mimivirus, a giant dsDNA virus infecting Acanthamoeba, is the prototype of the mimiviridae family, the latest addition to the family of the nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses (NCLDVs). Its 1.2 Mb-genome was initially predicted to encode 917 genes. A subsequent RNA-Seq analysis precisely mapped many transcript boundaries and identified 75 new genes. We now report a much deeper analysis using the SOLiD™ technology combining RNA-Seq of the Mimivirus transcriptome during the infectious cycle (202.4 Million reads), and a complete genome re-sequencing (45.3 Million reads). This study corrected the genome sequence and identified several single nucleotide polymorphisms. Our results also provided clear evidence of previously overlooked transcription units, including an important RNA polymerase subunit distantly related to Euryarchea homologues. The total Mimivirus gene count is now 1018, 11% greater than the original annotation. This study highlights the huge progress brought about by ultra-deep sequencing for the comprehensive annotation of virus genomes, opening the door to a complete one-nucleotide resolution level description of their transcriptional activity, and to the realistic modeling of the viral genome expression at the ultimate molecular level. This work also illustrates the need to go beyond bioinformatics-only approaches for the annotation of short protein and non-coding genes in viral genomes.

  4. Denoising DNA deep sequencing data—high-throughput sequencing errors and their correction

    PubMed Central

    Laehnemann, David; Borkhardt, Arndt

    2016-01-01

    Characterizing the errors generated by common high-throughput sequencing platforms and telling true genetic variation from technical artefacts are two interdependent steps, essential to many analyses such as single nucleotide variant calling, haplotype inference, sequence assembly and evolutionary studies. Both random and systematic errors can show a specific occurrence profile for each of the six prominent sequencing platforms surveyed here: 454 pyrosequencing, Complete Genomics DNA nanoball sequencing, Illumina sequencing by synthesis, Ion Torrent semiconductor sequencing, Pacific Biosciences single-molecule real-time sequencing and Oxford Nanopore sequencing. There is a large variety of programs available for error removal in sequencing read data, which differ in the error models and statistical techniques they use, the features of the data they analyse, the parameters they determine from them and the data structures and algorithms they use. We highlight the assumptions they make and for which data types these hold, providing guidance which tools to consider for benchmarking with regard to the data properties. While no benchmarking results are included here, such specific benchmarks would greatly inform tool choices and future software development. The development of stand-alone error correctors, as well as single nucleotide variant and haplotype callers, could also benefit from using more of the knowledge about error profiles and from (re)combining ideas from the existing approaches presented here. PMID:26026159

  5. Sensitive Deep-Sequencing-Based HIV-1 Genotyping Assay To Simultaneously Determine Susceptibility to Protease, Reverse Transcriptase, Integrase, and Maturation Inhibitors, as Well as HIV-1 Coreceptor Tropism

    PubMed Central

    Gibson, Richard M.; Meyer, Ashley M.; Winner, Dane; Archer, John; Feyertag, Felix; Ruiz-Mateos, Ezequiel; Leal, Manuel; Robertson, David L.; Schmotzer, Christine L.

    2014-01-01

    With 29 individual antiretroviral drugs available from six classes that are approved for the treatment of HIV-1 infection, a combination of different phenotypic and genotypic tests is currently needed to monitor HIV-infected individuals. In this study, we developed a novel HIV-1 genotypic assay based on deep sequencing (DeepGen HIV) to simultaneously assess HIV-1 susceptibilities to all drugs targeting the three viral enzymes and to predict HIV-1 coreceptor tropism. Patient-derived gag-p2/NCp7/p1/p6/pol-PR/RT/IN- and env-C2V3 PCR products were sequenced using the Ion Torrent Personal Genome Machine. Reads spanning the 3′ end of the Gag, protease (PR), reverse transcriptase (RT), integrase (IN), and V3 regions were extracted, truncated, translated, and assembled for genotype and HIV-1 coreceptor tropism determination. DeepGen HIV consistently detected both minority drug-resistant viruses and non-R5 HIV-1 variants from clinical specimens with viral loads of ≥1,000 copies/ml and from B and non-B subtypes. Additional mutations associated with resistance to PR, RT, and IN inhibitors, previously undetected by standard (Sanger) population sequencing, were reliably identified at frequencies as low as 1%. DeepGen HIV results correlated with phenotypic (original Trofile, 92%; enhanced-sensitivity Trofile assay [ESTA], 80%; TROCAI, 81%; and VeriTrop, 80%) and genotypic (population sequencing/Geno2Pheno with a 10% false-positive rate [FPR], 84%) HIV-1 tropism test results. DeepGen HIV (83%) and Trofile (85%) showed similar concordances with the clinical response following an 8-day course of maraviroc monotherapy (MCT). In summary, this novel all-inclusive HIV-1 genotypic and coreceptor tropism assay, based on deep sequencing of the PR, RT, IN, and V3 regions, permits simultaneous multiplex detection of low-level drug-resistant and/or non-R5 viruses in up to 96 clinical samples. This comprehensive test, the first of its class, will be instrumental in the development of new

  6. Extracting features from protein sequences to improve deep extreme learning machine for protein fold recognition.

    PubMed

    Ibrahim, Wisam; Abadeh, Mohammad Saniee

    2017-05-21

    Protein fold recognition is an important problem in bioinformatics to predict three-dimensional structure of a protein. One of the most challenging tasks in protein fold recognition problem is the extraction of efficient features from the amino-acid sequences to obtain better classifiers. In this paper, we have proposed six descriptors to extract features from protein sequences. These descriptors are applied in the first stage of a three-stage framework PCA-DELM-LDA to extract feature vectors from the amino-acid sequences. Principal Component Analysis PCA has been implemented to reduce the number of extracted features. The extracted feature vectors have been used with original features to improve the performance of the Deep Extreme Learning Machine DELM in the second stage. Four new features have been extracted from the second stage and used in the third stage by Linear Discriminant Analysis LDA to classify the instances into 27 folds. The proposed framework is implemented on the independent and combined feature sets in SCOP datasets. The experimental results show that extracted feature vectors in the first stage could improve the performance of DELM in extracting new useful features in second stage. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  7. Deep sequencing of hepatitis C virus hypervariable region 1 reveals no correlation between genetic heterogeneity and antiviral treatment outcome

    PubMed Central

    2014-01-01

    Background Hypervariable region 1 (HVR1) contained within envelope protein 2 (E2) gene is the most variable part of HCV genome and its translation product is a major target for the host immune response. Variability within HVR1 may facilitate evasion of the immune response and could affect treatment outcome. The aim of the study was to analyze the impact of HVR1 heterogeneity employing sensitive ultra-deep sequencing, on the outcome of PEG-IFN-α (pegylated interferon α) and ribavirin treatment. Methods HVR1 sequences were amplified from pretreatment serum samples of 25 patients infected with genotype 1b HCV (12 responders and 13 non-responders) and were subjected to pyrosequencing (GS Junior, 454/Roche). Reads were corrected for sequencing error using ShoRAH software, while population reconstruction was done using three different minimal variant frequency cut-offs of 1%, 2% and 5%. Statistical analysis was done using Mann–Whitney and Fisher’s exact tests. Results Complexity, Shannon entropy, nucleotide diversity per site, genetic distance and the number of genetic substitutions were not significantly different between responders and non-responders, when analyzing viral populations at any of the three frequencies (≥1%, ≥2% and ≥5%). When clonal sample was used to determine pyrosequencing error, 4% of reads were found to be incorrect and the most abundant variant was present at a frequency of 1.48%. Use of ShoRAH reduced the sequencing error to 1%, with the most abundant erroneous variant present at frequency of 0.5%. Conclusions While deep sequencing revealed complex genetic heterogeneity of HVR1 in chronic hepatitis C patients, there was no correlation between treatment outcome and any of the analyzed quasispecies parameters. PMID:25016390

  8. Genomic region operation kit for flexible processing of deep sequencing data.

    PubMed

    Ovaska, Kristian; Lyly, Lauri; Sahu, Biswajyoti; Jänne, Olli A; Hautaniemi, Sampsa

    2013-01-01

    Computational analysis of data produced in deep sequencing (DS) experiments is challenging due to large data volumes and requirements for flexible analysis approaches. Here, we present a mathematical formalism based on set algebra for frequently performed operations in DS data analysis to facilitate translation of biomedical research questions to language amenable for computational analysis. With the help of this formalism, we implemented the Genomic Region Operation Kit (GROK), which supports various DS-related operations such as preprocessing, filtering, file conversion, and sample comparison. GROK provides high-level interfaces for R, Python, Lua, and command line, as well as an extension C++ API. It supports major genomic file formats and allows storing custom genomic regions in efficient data structures such as red-black trees and SQL databases. To demonstrate the utility of GROK, we have characterized the roles of two major transcription factors (TFs) in prostate cancer using data from 10 DS experiments. GROK is freely available with a user guide from >http://csbi.ltdk.helsinki.fi/grok/.

  9. Analysis of Plasmodium falciparum diversity in natural infections by deep sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Manske, Magnus; Miotto, Olivo; Campino, Susana; Auburn, Sarah; Almagro-Garcia, Jacob; Maslen, Gareth; O’Brien, Jack; Djimde, Abdoulaye; Doumbo, Ogobara; Zongo, Issaka; Ouedraogo, Jean-Bosco; Michon, Pascal; Mueller, Ivo; Siba, Peter; Nzila, Alexis; Borrmann, Steffen; Kiara, Steven M.; Marsh, Kevin; Jiang, Hongying; Su, Xin-Zhuan; Amaratunga, Chanaki; Fairhurst, Rick; Socheat, Duong; Nosten, Francois; Imwong, Mallika; White, Nicholas J.; Sanders, Mandy; Anastasi, Elisa; Alcock, Dan; Drury, Eleanor; Oyola, Samuel; Quail, Michael A.; Turner, Daniel J.; Rubio, Valentin Ruano; Jyothi, Dushyanth; Amenga-Etego, Lucas; Hubbart, Christina; Jeffreys, Anna; Rowlands, Kate; Sutherland, Colin; Roper, Cally; Mangano, Valentina; Modiano, David; Tan, John C.; Ferdig, Michael T.; Amambua-Ngwa, Alfred; Conway, David J.; Takala-Harrison, Shannon; Plowe, Christopher V.; Rayner, Julian C.; Rockett, Kirk A.; Clark, Taane G.; Newbold, Chris I.; Berriman, Matthew; MacInnis, Bronwyn; Kwiatkowski, Dominic P.

    2013-01-01

    Malaria elimination strategies require surveillance of the parasite population for genetic changes that demand a public health response, such as new forms of drug resistance. 1,2 Here we describe methods for large-scale analysis of genetic variation in Plasmodium falciparum by deep sequencing of parasite DNA obtained from the blood of patients with malaria, either directly or after short term culture. Analysis of 86,158 exonic SNPs that passed genotyping quality control in 227 samples from Africa, Asia and Oceania provides genome-wide estimates of allele frequency distribution, population structure and linkage disequilibrium. By comparing the genetic diversity of individual infections with that of the local parasite population, we derive a metric of within-host diversity that is related to the level of inbreeding in the population. An open-access web application has been established for exploration of regional differences in allele frequency and of highly differentiated loci in the P. falciparum genome. PMID:22722859

  10. Importance of extended spatial coverage for quantitative susceptibility mapping of iron-rich deep gray matter.

    PubMed

    Elkady, Ahmed M; Sun, Hongfu; Wilman, Alan H

    2016-05-01

    Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping (QSM) is an emerging area of brain research with clear application to brain iron studies in deep gray matter. However, acquisition of standard whole brain QSM can be time-consuming. One means to reduce scan time is to use a focal acquisition restricted only to the regions of interest such as deep gray matter. However, the non-local dipole field necessary for QSM reconstruction extends far beyond the structure of interest. We demonstrate the practical implications of these non-local fields on the choice of brain volume for QSM. In an illustrative numerical simulation and then in human brain experiments, we examine the effect on QSM of volume reduction in each dimension. For the globus pallidus, as an example of iron-rich deep gray matter, we demonstrate that substantial errors can arise even when the field-of-view far exceeds the physical structural boundaries. Thus, QSM reconstruction requires a non-local field-of-view prescription to ensure minimal errors. An axial QSM acquisition, centered on the globus pallidus, should encompass at least 76mm in the superior-inferior direction to conserve susceptibility values from the globus pallidus. This dimension exceeds the physical coronal extent of this structure by at least five-fold. As QSM sees wider use in the neuroscience community, its unique requirement for an extended field-of-view needs to be considered. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  11. Determination of subthalamic nucleus location by quantitative analysis of despiked background neural activity from microelectrode recordings obtained during deep brain stimulation surgery.

    PubMed

    Danish, Shabbar F; Baltuch, Gordon H; Jaggi, Jurg L; Wong, Stephen

    2008-04-01

    Microelectrode recording during deep brain stimulation surgery is a useful adjunct for subthalamic nucleus (STN) localization. We hypothesize that information in the nonspike background activity can help identify STN boundaries. We present results from a novel quantitative analysis that accomplishes this goal. Thirteen consecutive microelectrode recordings were retrospectively analyzed. Spikes were removed from the recordings with an automated algorithm. The remaining "despiked" signals were converted via root mean square amplitude and curve length calculations into "feature profile" time series. Subthalamic nucleus boundaries determined by inspection, based on sustained deviations from baseline for each feature profile, were compared against those determined intraoperatively by the clinical neurophysiologist. Feature profile activity within STN exhibited a sustained rise in 10 of 13 tracks (77%). The sensitivity of STN entry was 60% and 90% for curve length and root mean square amplitude, respectively, when agreement within 0.5 mm of the neurophysiologist's prediction was used. Sensitivities were 70% and 100% for 1 mm accuracy. Exit point sensitivities were 80% and 90% for both features within 0.5 mm and 1.0 mm, respectively. Reproducible activity patterns in deep brain stimulation microelectrode recordings can allow accurate identification of STN boundaries. Quantitative analyses of this type may provide useful adjunctive information for electrode placement in deep brain stimulation surgery.

  12. Characterization of skin ulceration syndrome associated microRNAs in sea cucumber Apostichopus japonicus by deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Li, Chenghua; Feng, Weida; Qiu, Lihua; Xia, Changge; Su, Xiurong; Jin, Chunhua; Zhou, Tingting; Zeng, Yuan; Li, Taiwu

    2012-08-01

    MicroRNAs (miRNAs) constitute a family of small RNA species which have been demonstrated to be one of key effectors in mediating host-pathogen interaction. In this study, two haemocytes miRNA libraries were constructed with deep sequenced by illumina Hiseq2000 from healthy (L1) and skin ulceration syndrome Apostichopus japonicus (L2). The high throughput solexa sequencing resulted in 9,579,038 and 7,742,558 clean data from L1 and L2, respectively. Sequences analysis revealed that 40 conserved miRNAs were found in both libraries, in which let-7 and mir-125 were speculated to be clustered together and expressed accordingly. Eighty-six miRNA candidates were also identified by reference genome search and stem-loop structure prediction. Importantly, mir-31 and mir-2008 displayed significant differential expression between the two libraries according to FPKM model, which might be considered as promising targets for elucidating the intrinsic mechanism of skin ulceration syndrome outbreak in the species. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  13. Deep sequencing of small RNA repertoires in mice reveals metabolic disorders-associated hepatic miRNAs.

    PubMed

    Liang, Tingming; Liu, Chang; Ye, Zhenchao

    2013-01-01

    Obesity and associated metabolic disorders contribute importantly to the metabolic syndrome. On the other hand, microRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small non-coding RNAs that repress target gene expression by inducing mRNA degradation and/or translation repression. Dysregulation of specific miRNAs in obesity may influence energy metabolism and cause insulin resistance, which leads to dyslipidemia, steatosis hepatis and type 2 diabetes. In the present study, we comprehensively analyzed and validated dysregulated miRNAs in ob/ob mouse liver, as well as miRNA groups based on miRNA gene cluster and gene family by using deep sequencing miRNA datasets. We found that over 13.8% of the total analyzed miRNAs were dysregulated, of which 37 miRNA species showed significantly differential expression. Further RT-qPCR analysis in some selected miRNAs validated the similar expression patterns observed in deep sequencing. Interestingly, we found that miRNA gene cluster and family always showed consistent dysregulation patterns in ob/ob mouse liver, although they had various enrichment levels. Functional enrichment analysis revealed the versatile physiological roles (over six signal pathways and five human diseases) of these miRNAs. Biological studies indicated that overexpression of miR-126 or inhibition of miR-24 in AML-12 cells attenuated free fatty acids-induced fat accumulation. Taken together, our data strongly suggest that obesity and metabolic disturbance are tightly associated with functional miRNAs. We also identified hepatic miRNA candidates serving as potential biomarkers for the diagnose of the metabolic syndrome.

  14. MusiteDeep: a deep-learning framework for general and kinase-specific phosphorylation site prediction.

    PubMed

    Wang, Duolin; Zeng, Shuai; Xu, Chunhui; Qiu, Wangren; Liang, Yanchun; Joshi, Trupti; Xu, Dong

    2017-12-15

    Computational methods for phosphorylation site prediction play important roles in protein function studies and experimental design. Most existing methods are based on feature extraction, which may result in incomplete or biased features. Deep learning as the cutting-edge machine learning method has the ability to automatically discover complex representations of phosphorylation patterns from the raw sequences, and hence it provides a powerful tool for improvement of phosphorylation site prediction. We present MusiteDeep, the first deep-learning framework for predicting general and kinase-specific phosphorylation sites. MusiteDeep takes raw sequence data as input and uses convolutional neural networks with a novel two-dimensional attention mechanism. It achieves over a 50% relative improvement in the area under the precision-recall curve in general phosphorylation site prediction and obtains competitive results in kinase-specific prediction compared to other well-known tools on the benchmark data. MusiteDeep is provided as an open-source tool available at https://github.com/duolinwang/MusiteDeep. xudong@missouri.edu. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

  15. Quantitative analysis of tumor-derived methylated RUNX3 sequences in the serum of gastric cancer patients.

    PubMed

    Sakakura, Chouhei; Hamada, Takuo; Miyagawa, Koji; Nishio, Minoru; Miyashita, Atushi; Nagata, Hiroyuki; Ida, Hiroshi; Yazumi, Shujiro; Otsuji, Eigo; Chiba, Tsutomu; Ito, Kosei; Ito, Yoshiaki

    2009-07-01

    Using real-time quantitative methylation-specific PCR (RTQ-MSP), methylated RUNX3 sequences were quantified and the fractional concentrations of circulating tumor DNA in serum were determined, along with peripheral blood cells collected preoperatively, intraoperatively and postoperatively from 65 patients with gastric cancer. RTQ-MSP was sufficiently sensitive to detect RUNX3 methylation. Quantitative MSP data were expressed in terms of the methylation index, which was defined as the relative amount of methylated RUNX3 sequences divided by the concentration of methylated actin. High levels of methylated RUNX3 sequences were detected in the peripheral circulation of 29% (19 of 65) of the gastric cancer patients. The RUNX3 methylation index was concordant with cancer stage, histology, lymphatic and vascular invasion, and was more sensitive than carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) as a biomarker. Twenty-nine percent (19 out of 65) of preoperative serum samples had methylated RUNX3 sequences, ranging from 5.2 to 1625955 (median quantity=43 m-index, sensitivity 95.5%, specificity 62.5%, AUC 0.8651). After surgical resection, the median RUNX3 methylation index in serum significantly decreased. These results demonstrate the clinical usefulness and effectiveness of peripheral blood RTQ-MSP for detecting and monitoring gastric cancer after treatment. Furthermore, 5 out of the 30 preoperative control samples of benign disease (cases of panperitonitis due to acute appendicitis or cholecystitis) showed transient RUNX3 methylation which decreased after the operation in accordance with recovery. Quantification of epigenetic changes in serum RUNX3 methylation using RTQ-MSP is useful for the detection and monitoring of gastric cancer.

  16. Deep sequencing-based transcriptome analysis of Plutella xylostella larvae parasitized by Diadegma semiclausum

    PubMed Central

    2011-01-01

    Background Parasitoid insects manipulate their hosts' physiology by injecting various factors into their host upon parasitization. Transcriptomic approaches provide a powerful approach to study insect host-parasitoid interactions at the molecular level. In order to investigate the effects of parasitization by an ichneumonid wasp (Diadegma semiclausum) on the host (Plutella xylostella), the larval transcriptome profile was analyzed using a short-read deep sequencing method (Illumina). Symbiotic polydnaviruses (PDVs) associated with ichneumonid parasitoids, known as ichnoviruses, play significant roles in host immune suppression and developmental regulation. In the current study, D. semiclausum ichnovirus (DsIV) genes expressed in P. xylostella were identified and their sequences compared with other reported PDVs. Five of these genes encode proteins of unknown identity, that have not previously been reported. Results De novo assembly of cDNA sequence data generated 172,660 contigs between 100 and 10000 bp in length; with 35% of > 200 bp in length. Parasitization had significant impacts on expression levels of 928 identified insect host transcripts. Gene ontology data illustrated that the majority of the differentially expressed genes are involved in binding, catalytic activity, and metabolic and cellular processes. In addition, the results show that transcription levels of antimicrobial peptides, such as gloverin, cecropin E and lysozyme, were up-regulated after parasitism. Expression of ichnovirus genes were detected in parasitized larvae with 19 unique sequences identified from five PDV gene families including vankyrin, viral innexin, repeat elements, a cysteine-rich motif, and polar residue rich protein. Vankyrin 1 and repeat element 1 genes showed the highest transcription levels among the DsIV genes. Conclusion This study provides detailed information on differential expression of P. xylostella larval genes following parasitization, DsIV genes expressed in the

  17. Sequence stratigraphy and high-frequency cycles: New aspects for a quantitative evaluation of the Gulf of Suez basin, Egypt

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Nio, S.D.; Yang, C.S.; Tewfik, N.

    1993-09-01

    A new development in the application of sequence stratigraphic concepts in marine as well as continental basins is the recognition of high-frequency cyclic patterns in rock successions in the subsurface. Studies of six wells from the northern, central, and southern parts of the Gulf of Suez show the presence of well-preserved, high-frequency cycles with periodicities similar to the orbitally forced Malankovitch parameters. Subsurface rock successions, third-order sequences, and high-frequency cycles were compared with outcrops. After establishing the biostratigraphic framework for the above-mentioned wells, a sequence analysis was performed. Sequence boundaries and maximum flooding positions in each well were calibrated withmore » the occurrences and evaluation of the high-frequency cycles. It became obvious that there is an intimate relationship between these high-frequency Milankovitch cycles and sequence organization. In addition, a close relationship can be observed in the subsurface as well as in outcrops between high-frequency climatic changes (connected to the Milankovitch cycles) and (litho)facies variability. Quantitative evaluations of each sequence and/or systems tract can be computed with the International Geoservices' cyclicity analysis tool (MILABAR). The results are summarized in a well composite chart, rate (NAR), and ratio of preserved time. In correlations between the wells, an accuracy of 500-100 Ka can be obtained. The quantitative evaluation of the sequence and high-frequency cycle analysis gave some new aspects concerning the (litho)facies and geodynamic development during the pre- as well as the synrift stages of the Gulf of Suez Basin.« less

  18. Quantitative statistical analysis of cis-regulatory sequences in ABA/VP1- and CBF/DREB1-regulated genes of Arabidopsis.

    PubMed

    Suzuki, Masaharu; Ketterling, Matthew G; McCarty, Donald R

    2005-09-01

    We have developed a simple quantitative computational approach for objective analysis of cis-regulatory sequences in promoters of coregulated genes. The program, designated MotifFinder, identifies oligo sequences that are overrepresented in promoters of coregulated genes. We used this approach to analyze promoter sequences of Viviparous1 (VP1)/abscisic acid (ABA)-regulated genes and cold-regulated genes, respectively, of Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). We detected significantly enriched sequences in up-regulated genes but not in down-regulated genes. This result suggests that gene activation but not repression is mediated by specific and common sequence elements in promoters. The enriched motifs include several known cis-regulatory sequences as well as previously unidentified motifs. With respect to known cis-elements, we dissected the flanking nucleotides of the core sequences of Sph element, ABA response elements (ABREs), and the C repeat/dehydration-responsive element. This analysis identified the motif variants that may correlate with qualitative and quantitative differences in gene expression. While both VP1 and cold responses are mediated in part by ABA signaling via ABREs, these responses correlate with unique ABRE variants distinguished by nucleotides flanking the ACGT core. ABRE and Sph motifs are tightly associated uniquely in the coregulated set of genes showing a strict dependence on VP1 and ABA signaling. Finally, analysis of distribution of the enriched sequences revealed a striking concentration of enriched motifs in a proximal 200-base region of VP1/ABA and cold-regulated promoters. Overall, each class of coregulated genes possesses a discrete set of the enriched motifs with unique distributions in their promoters that may account for the specificity of gene regulation.

  19. Increasing Clinical Severity during a Dengue Virus Type 3 Cuban Epidemic: Deep Sequencing of Evolving Viral Populations

    PubMed Central

    Blanc, Hervé; Bordería, Antonio V.; Díaz, Gisell; Henningsson, Rasmus; Gonzalez, Daniel; Santana, Emidalys; Alvarez, Mayling; Castro, Osvaldo; Fontes, Magnus; Vignuzzi, Marco; Guzman, Maria G.

    2016-01-01

    ABSTRACT During the dengue virus type 3 (DENV-3) epidemic that occurred in Havana in 2001 to 2002, severe disease was associated with the infection sequence DENV-1 followed by DENV-3 (DENV-1/DENV-3), while the sequence DENV-2/DENV-3 was associated with mild/asymptomatic infections. To determine the role of the virus in the increasing severity demonstrated during the epidemic, serum samples collected at different time points were studied. A total of 22 full-length sequences were obtained using a deep-sequencing approach. Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of consensus sequences revealed that two DENV-3 lineages were circulating in Havana at that time, both grouped within genotype III. The predominant lineage is closely related to Peruvian and Ecuadorian strains, while the minor lineage is related to Venezuelan strains. According to consensus sequences, relatively few nonsynonymous mutations were observed; only one was fixed during the epidemic at position 4380 in the NS2B gene. Intrahost genetic analysis indicated that a significant minor population was selected and became predominant toward the end of the epidemic. In conclusion, greater variability was detected during the epidemic's progression in terms of significant minority variants, particularly in the nonstructural genes. An increasing trend of genetic diversity toward the end of the epidemic was observed only for synonymous variant allele rates, with higher variability in secondary cases. Remarkably, significant intrahost genetic variation was demonstrated within the same patient during the course of secondary infection with DENV-1/DENV-3, including changes in the structural proteins premembrane (PrM) and envelope (E). Therefore, the dynamic of evolving viral populations in the context of heterotypic antibodies could be related to the increasing clinical severity observed during the epidemic. IMPORTANCE Based on the evidence that DENV fitness is context dependent, our research has focused on the study of viral

  20. Deep Learning and Its Applications in Biomedicine.

    PubMed

    Cao, Chensi; Liu, Feng; Tan, Hai; Song, Deshou; Shu, Wenjie; Li, Weizhong; Zhou, Yiming; Bo, Xiaochen; Xie, Zhi

    2018-02-01

    Advances in biological and medical technologies have been providing us explosive volumes of biological and physiological data, such as medical images, electroencephalography, genomic and protein sequences. Learning from these data facilitates the understanding of human health and disease. Developed from artificial neural networks, deep learning-based algorithms show great promise in extracting features and learning patterns from complex data. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of deep learning techniques and some of the state-of-the-art applications in the biomedical field. We first introduce the development of artificial neural network and deep learning. We then describe two main components of deep learning, i.e., deep learning architectures and model optimization. Subsequently, some examples are demonstrated for deep learning applications, including medical image classification, genomic sequence analysis, as well as protein structure classification and prediction. Finally, we offer our perspectives for the future directions in the field of deep learning. Copyright © 2018. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V.

  1. Deep sequencing of the small RNA transcriptome of normal and malignant human B cells identifies hundreds of novel microRNAs

    PubMed Central

    Jima, Dereje D.; Zhang, Jenny; Jacobs, Cassandra; Richards, Kristy L.; Dunphy, Cherie H.; Choi, William W. L.; Yan Au, Wing; Srivastava, Gopesh; Czader, Magdalena B.; Rizzieri, David A.; Lagoo, Anand S.; Lugar, Patricia L.; Mann, Karen P.; Flowers, Christopher R.; Bernal-Mizrachi, Leon; Naresh, Kikkeri N.; Evens, Andrew M.; Gordon, Leo I.; Luftig, Micah; Friedman, Daphne R.; Weinberg, J. Brice; Thompson, Michael A.; Gill, Javed I.; Liu, Qingquan; How, Tam; Grubor, Vladimir; Gao, Yuan; Patel, Amee; Wu, Han; Zhu, Jun; Blobe, Gerard C.; Lipsky, Peter E.; Chadburn, Amy

    2010-01-01

    A role for microRNA (miRNA) has been recognized in nearly every biologic system examined thus far. A complete delineation of their role must be preceded by the identification of all miRNAs present in any system. We elucidated the complete small RNA transcriptome of normal and malignant B cells through deep sequencing of 31 normal and malignant human B-cell samples that comprise the spectrum of B-cell differentiation and common malignant phenotypes. We identified the expression of 333 known miRNAs, which is more than twice the number previously recognized in any tissue type. We further identified the expression of 286 candidate novel miRNAs in normal and malignant B cells. These miRNAs were validated at a high rate (92%) using quantitative polymerase chain reaction, and we demonstrated their application in the distinction of clinically relevant subgroups of lymphoma. We further demonstrated that a novel miRNA cluster, previously annotated as a hypothetical gene LOC100130622, contains 6 novel miRNAs that regulate the transforming growth factor-β pathway. Thus, our work suggests that more than a third of the miRNAs present in most cellular types are currently unknown and that these miRNAs may regulate important cellular functions. PMID:20733160

  2. MicroRNA repertoire for functional genome research in tilapia identified by deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Yan, Biao; Wang, Zhen-Hua; Zhu, Chang-Dong; Guo, Jin-Tao; Zhao, Jin-Liang

    2014-08-01

    The Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus; Cichlidae) is an economically important species in aquaculture and occupies a prominent position in the aquaculture industry. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of noncoding RNAs that post-transcriptionally regulate gene expression involved in diverse biological and metabolic processes. To increase the repertoire of miRNAs characterized in tilapia, we used the Illumina/Solexa sequencing technology to sequence a small RNA library using pooled RNA sample isolated from the different developmental stages of tilapia. Bioinformatic analyses suggest that 197 conserved and 27 novel miRNAs are expressed in tilapia. Sequence alignments indicate that all tested miRNAs and miRNAs* are highly conserved across many species. In addition, we characterized the tissue expression patterns of five miRNAs using real-time quantitative PCR. We found that miR-1/206, miR-7/9, and miR-122 is abundantly expressed in muscle, brain, and liver, respectively, implying a potential role in the regulation of tissue differentiation or the maintenance of tissue identity. Overall, our results expand the number of tilapia miRNAs, and the discovery of miRNAs in tilapia genome contributes to a better understanding the role of miRNAs in regulating diverse biological processes.

  3. Acute West Nile Virus Meningoencephalitis Diagnosed Via Metagenomic Deep Sequencing of Cerebrospinal Fluid in a Renal Transplant Patient.

    PubMed

    Wilson, M R; Zimmermann, L L; Crawford, E D; Sample, H A; Soni, P R; Baker, A N; Khan, L M; DeRisi, J L

    2017-03-01

    Solid organ transplant patients are vulnerable to suffering neurologic complications from a wide array of viral infections and can be sentinels in the population who are first to get serious complications from emerging infections like the recent waves of arboviruses, including West Nile virus, Chikungunya virus, Zika virus, and Dengue virus. The diverse and rapidly changing landscape of possible causes of viral encephalitis poses great challenges for traditional candidate-based infectious disease diagnostics that already fail to identify a causative pathogen in approximately 50% of encephalitis cases. We present the case of a 14-year-old girl on immunosuppression for a renal transplant who presented with acute meningoencephalitis. Traditional diagnostics failed to identify an etiology. RNA extracted from her cerebrospinal fluid was subjected to unbiased metagenomic deep sequencing, enhanced with the use of a Cas9-based technique for host depletion. This analysis identified West Nile virus (WNV). Convalescent serum serologies subsequently confirmed WNV seroconversion. These results support a clear clinical role for metagenomic deep sequencing in the setting of suspected viral encephalitis, especially in the context of the high-risk transplant patient population. © 2016 The Authors. American Journal of Transplantation published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of American Society of Transplant Surgeons.

  4. Exome and deep sequencing of clinically aggressive neuroblastoma reveal somatic mutations that affect key pathways involved in cancer progression

    PubMed Central

    Lasorsa, Vito Alessandro; Formicola, Daniela; Pignataro, Piero; Cimmino, Flora; Calabrese, Francesco Maria; Mora, Jaume; Esposito, Maria Rosaria; Pantile, Marcella; Zanon, Carlo; De Mariano, Marilena; Longo, Luca; Hogarty, Michael D.; de Torres, Carmen; Tonini, Gian Paolo; Iolascon, Achille; Capasso, Mario

    2016-01-01

    The spectrum of somatic mutation of the most aggressive forms of neuroblastoma is not completely determined. We sought to identify potential cancer drivers in clinically aggressive neuroblastoma. Whole exome sequencing was conducted on 17 germline and tumor DNA samples from high-risk patients with adverse events within 36 months from diagnosis (HR-Event3) to identify somatic mutations and deep targeted sequencing of 134 genes selected from the initial screening in additional 48 germline and tumor pairs (62.5% HR-Event3 and high-risk patients), 17 HR-Event3 tumors and 17 human-derived neuroblastoma cell lines. We revealed 22 significantly mutated genes, many of which implicated in cancer progression. Fifteen genes (68.2%) were highly expressed in neuroblastoma supporting their involvement in the disease. CHD9, a cancer driver gene, was the most significantly altered (4.0% of cases) after ALK. Other genes (PTK2, NAV3, NAV1, FZD1 and ATRX), expressed in neuroblastoma and involved in cell invasion and migration were mutated at frequency ranged from 4% to 2%. Focal adhesion and regulation of actin cytoskeleton pathways, were frequently disrupted (14.1% of cases) thus suggesting potential novel therapeutic strategies to prevent disease progression. Notably BARD1, CHEK2 and AXIN2 were enriched in rare, potentially pathogenic, germline variants. In summary, whole exome and deep targeted sequencing identified novel cancer genes of clinically aggressive neuroblastoma. Our analyses show pathway-level implications of infrequently mutated genes in leading neuroblastoma progression. PMID:27009842

  5. Exome and deep sequencing of clinically aggressive neuroblastoma reveal somatic mutations that affect key pathways involved in cancer progression.

    PubMed

    Lasorsa, Vito Alessandro; Formicola, Daniela; Pignataro, Piero; Cimmino, Flora; Calabrese, Francesco Maria; Mora, Jaume; Esposito, Maria Rosaria; Pantile, Marcella; Zanon, Carlo; De Mariano, Marilena; Longo, Luca; Hogarty, Michael D; de Torres, Carmen; Tonini, Gian Paolo; Iolascon, Achille; Capasso, Mario

    2016-04-19

    The spectrum of somatic mutation of the most aggressive forms of neuroblastoma is not completely determined. We sought to identify potential cancer drivers in clinically aggressive neuroblastoma.Whole exome sequencing was conducted on 17 germline and tumor DNA samples from high-risk patients with adverse events within 36 months from diagnosis (HR-Event3) to identify somatic mutations and deep targeted sequencing of 134 genes selected from the initial screening in additional 48 germline and tumor pairs (62.5% HR-Event3 and high-risk patients), 17 HR-Event3 tumors and 17 human-derived neuroblastoma cell lines.We revealed 22 significantly mutated genes, many of which implicated in cancer progression. Fifteen genes (68.2%) were highly expressed in neuroblastoma supporting their involvement in the disease. CHD9, a cancer driver gene, was the most significantly altered (4.0% of cases) after ALK.Other genes (PTK2, NAV3, NAV1, FZD1 and ATRX), expressed in neuroblastoma and involved in cell invasion and migration were mutated at frequency ranged from 4% to 2%.Focal adhesion and regulation of actin cytoskeleton pathways, were frequently disrupted (14.1% of cases) thus suggesting potential novel therapeutic strategies to prevent disease progression.Notably BARD1, CHEK2 and AXIN2 were enriched in rare, potentially pathogenic, germline variants.In summary, whole exome and deep targeted sequencing identified novel cancer genes of clinically aggressive neuroblastoma. Our analyses show pathway-level implications of infrequently mutated genes in leading neuroblastoma progression.

  6. Phylogenetic and Genome-Wide Deep-Sequencing Analyses of Canine Parvovirus Reveal Co-Infection with Field Variants and Emergence of a Recent Recombinant Strain

    PubMed Central

    Pérez, Ruben; Calleros, Lucía; Marandino, Ana; Sarute, Nicolás; Iraola, Gregorio; Grecco, Sofia; Blanc, Hervé; Vignuzzi, Marco; Isakov, Ofer; Shomron, Noam; Carrau, Lucía; Hernández, Martín; Francia, Lourdes; Sosa, Katia; Tomás, Gonzalo; Panzera, Yanina

    2014-01-01

    Canine parvovirus (CPV), a fast-evolving single-stranded DNA virus, comprises three antigenic variants (2a, 2b, and 2c) with different frequencies and genetic variability among countries. The contribution of co-infection and recombination to the genetic variability of CPV is far from being fully elucidated. Here we took advantage of a natural CPV population, recently formed by the convergence of divergent CPV-2c and CPV-2a strains, to study co-infection and recombination. Complete sequences of the viral coding region of CPV-2a and CPV-2c strains from 40 samples were generated and analyzed using phylogenetic tools. Two samples showed co-infection and were further analyzed by deep sequencing. The sequence profile of one of the samples revealed the presence of CPV-2c and CPV-2a strains that differed at 29 nucleotides. The other sample included a minor CPV-2a strain (13.3% of the viral population) and a major recombinant strain (86.7%). The recombinant strain arose from inter-genotypic recombination between CPV-2c and CPV-2a strains within the VP1/VP2 gene boundary. Our findings highlight the importance of deep-sequencing analysis to provide a better understanding of CPV molecular diversity. PMID:25365348

  7. Synthetic internal control sequences to increase negative call veracity in multiplexed, quantitative PCR assays for Phakopsora pachyrhizi

    USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

    Quantitative PCR (Q-PCR) utilizing specific primer sequences and a fluorogenic, 5’-exonuclease linear hydrolysis probe is well established as a detection and identification method for Phakopsora pachyrhizi, the soybean rust pathogen. Because of the extreme sensitivity of Q-PCR, the DNA of a single u...

  8. The deep biosphere in terrestrial sediments in the chesapeake bay area, virginia, USA.

    PubMed

    Breuker, Anja; Köweker, Gerrit; Blazejak, Anna; Schippers, Axel

    2011-01-01

    For the first time quantitative data on the abundance of Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya in deep terrestrial sediments are provided using multiple methods (total cell counting, quantitative real-time PCR, Q-PCR and catalyzed reporter deposition-fluorescence in situ hybridization, CARD-FISH). The oligotrophic (organic carbon content of ∼0.2%) deep terrestrial sediments in the Chesapeake Bay area at Eyreville, Virginia, USA, were drilled and sampled up to a depth of 140 m in 2006. The possibility of contamination during drilling was checked using fluorescent microspheres. Total cell counts decreased from 10(9) to 10(6) cells/g dry weight within the uppermost 20 m, and did not further decrease with depth below. Within the top 7 m, a significant proportion of the total cell counts could be detected with CARD-FISH. The CARD-FISH numbers for Bacteria were about an order of magnitude higher than those for Archaea. The dominance of Bacteria over Archaea was confirmed by Q-PCR. The down core quantitative distribution of prokaryotic and eukaryotic small subunit ribosomal RNA genes as well as functional genes involved in different biogeochemical processes was revealed by Q-PCR for the uppermost 10 m and for 80-140 m depth. Eukarya and the Fe(III)- and Mn(IV)-reducing bacterial group Geobacteriaceae were almost exclusively found in the uppermost meter (arable soil), where reactive iron was detected in higher amounts. The bacterial candidate division JS-1 and the classes Anaerolineae and Caldilineae of the phylum Chloroflexi, highly abundant in marine sediments, were found up to the maximum sampling depth in high copy numbers at this terrestrial site as well. A similar high abundance of the functional gene cbbL encoding for the large subunit of RubisCO suggests that autotrophic microorganisms could be relevant in addition to heterotrophs. The functional gene aprA of sulfate reducing bacteria was found within distinct layers up to ca. 100 m depth in low copy numbers

  9. DeepLoc: prediction of protein subcellular localization using deep learning.

    PubMed

    Almagro Armenteros, José Juan; Sønderby, Casper Kaae; Sønderby, Søren Kaae; Nielsen, Henrik; Winther, Ole

    2017-11-01

    The prediction of eukaryotic protein subcellular localization is a well-studied topic in bioinformatics due to its relevance in proteomics research. Many machine learning methods have been successfully applied in this task, but in most of them, predictions rely on annotation of homologues from knowledge databases. For novel proteins where no annotated homologues exist, and for predicting the effects of sequence variants, it is desirable to have methods for predicting protein properties from sequence information only. Here, we present a prediction algorithm using deep neural networks to predict protein subcellular localization relying only on sequence information. At its core, the prediction model uses a recurrent neural network that processes the entire protein sequence and an attention mechanism identifying protein regions important for the subcellular localization. The model was trained and tested on a protein dataset extracted from one of the latest UniProt releases, in which experimentally annotated proteins follow more stringent criteria than previously. We demonstrate that our model achieves a good accuracy (78% for 10 categories; 92% for membrane-bound or soluble), outperforming current state-of-the-art algorithms, including those relying on homology information. The method is available as a web server at http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/services/DeepLoc. Example code is available at https://github.com/JJAlmagro/subcellular_localization. The dataset is available at http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/services/DeepLoc/data.php. jjalma@dtu.dk. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com

  10. Analyses of deep mammalian sequence alignments and constraint predictions for 1% of the human genome

    PubMed Central

    Margulies, Elliott H.; Cooper, Gregory M.; Asimenos, George; Thomas, Daryl J.; Dewey, Colin N.; Siepel, Adam; Birney, Ewan; Keefe, Damian; Schwartz, Ariel S.; Hou, Minmei; Taylor, James; Nikolaev, Sergey; Montoya-Burgos, Juan I.; Löytynoja, Ari; Whelan, Simon; Pardi, Fabio; Massingham, Tim; Brown, James B.; Bickel, Peter; Holmes, Ian; Mullikin, James C.; Ureta-Vidal, Abel; Paten, Benedict; Stone, Eric A.; Rosenbloom, Kate R.; Kent, W. James; Bouffard, Gerard G.; Guan, Xiaobin; Hansen, Nancy F.; Idol, Jacquelyn R.; Maduro, Valerie V.B.; Maskeri, Baishali; McDowell, Jennifer C.; Park, Morgan; Thomas, Pamela J.; Young, Alice C.; Blakesley, Robert W.; Muzny, Donna M.; Sodergren, Erica; Wheeler, David A.; Worley, Kim C.; Jiang, Huaiyang; Weinstock, George M.; Gibbs, Richard A.; Graves, Tina; Fulton, Robert; Mardis, Elaine R.; Wilson, Richard K.; Clamp, Michele; Cuff, James; Gnerre, Sante; Jaffe, David B.; Chang, Jean L.; Lindblad-Toh, Kerstin; Lander, Eric S.; Hinrichs, Angie; Trumbower, Heather; Clawson, Hiram; Zweig, Ann; Kuhn, Robert M.; Barber, Galt; Harte, Rachel; Karolchik, Donna; Field, Matthew A.; Moore, Richard A.; Matthewson, Carrie A.; Schein, Jacqueline E.; Marra, Marco A.; Antonarakis, Stylianos E.; Batzoglou, Serafim; Goldman, Nick; Hardison, Ross; Haussler, David; Miller, Webb; Pachter, Lior; Green, Eric D.; Sidow, Arend

    2007-01-01

    A key component of the ongoing ENCODE project involves rigorous comparative sequence analyses for the initially targeted 1% of the human genome. Here, we present orthologous sequence generation, alignment, and evolutionary constraint analyses of 23 mammalian species for all ENCODE targets. Alignments were generated using four different methods; comparisons of these methods reveal large-scale consistency but substantial differences in terms of small genomic rearrangements, sensitivity (sequence coverage), and specificity (alignment accuracy). We describe the quantitative and qualitative trade-offs concomitant with alignment method choice and the levels of technical error that need to be accounted for in applications that require multisequence alignments. Using the generated alignments, we identified constrained regions using three different methods. While the different constraint-detecting methods are in general agreement, there are important discrepancies relating to both the underlying alignments and the specific algorithms. However, by integrating the results across the alignments and constraint-detecting methods, we produced constraint annotations that were found to be robust based on multiple independent measures. Analyses of these annotations illustrate that most classes of experimentally annotated functional elements are enriched for constrained sequences; however, large portions of each class (with the exception of protein-coding sequences) do not overlap constrained regions. The latter elements might not be under primary sequence constraint, might not be constrained across all mammals, or might have expendable molecular functions. Conversely, 40% of the constrained sequences do not overlap any of the functional elements that have been experimentally identified. Together, these findings demonstrate and quantify how many genomic functional elements await basic molecular characterization. PMID:17567995

  11. Transcriptome and Small RNA Deep Sequencing Reveals Deregulation of miRNA Biogenesis in Human Glioma

    PubMed Central

    Moore, Lynette M.; Kivinen, Virpi; Liu, Yuexin; Annala, Matti; Cogdell, David; Liu, Xiuping; Liu, Chang-Gong; Sawaya, Raymond; Yli-Harja, Olli; Shmulevich, Ilya; Fuller, Gregory N.; Zhang, Wei; Nykter, Matti

    2013-01-01

    Altered expression of oncogenic and tumor-suppressing microRNAs (miRNAs) is widely associated with tumorigenesis. However, the regulatory mechanisms underlying these alterations are poorly understood. We sought to shed light on the deregulation of miRNA biogenesis promoting the aberrant miRNA expression profiles identified in these tumors. Using sequencing technology to perform both whole-transcriptome and small RNA sequencing of glioma patient samples, we examined precursor and mature miRNAs to directly evaluate the miRNA maturation process, and interrogated expression profiles for genes involved in the major steps of miRNA biogenesis. We found that ratios of mature to precursor forms of a large number of miRNAs increased with the progression from normal brain to low-grade and then to high-grade gliomas. The expression levels of genes involved in each of the three major steps of miRNA biogenesis (nuclear processing, nucleo-cytoplasmic transport, and cytoplasmic processing) were systematically altered in glioma tissues. Survival analysis of an independent data set demonstrated that the alteration of genes involved in miRNA maturation correlates with survival in glioma patients. Direct quantification of miRNA maturation with deep sequencing demonstrated that deregulation of the miRNA biogenesis pathway is a hallmark for glioma genesis and progression. PMID:23007860

  12. Deep RNNs for video denoising

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Chen, Xinyuan; Song, Li; Yang, Xiaokang

    2016-09-01

    Video denoising can be described as the problem of mapping from a specific length of noisy frames to clean one. We propose a deep architecture based on Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) for video denoising. The model learns a patch-based end-to-end mapping between the clean and noisy video sequences. It takes the corrupted video sequences as the input and outputs the clean one. Our deep network, which we refer to as deep Recurrent Neural Networks (deep RNNs or DRNNs), stacks RNN layers where each layer receives the hidden state of the previous layer as input. Experiment shows (i) the recurrent architecture through temporal domain extracts motion information and does favor to video denoising, and (ii) deep architecture have large enough capacity for expressing mapping relation between corrupted videos as input and clean videos as output, furthermore, (iii) the model has generality to learned different mappings from videos corrupted by different types of noise (e.g., Poisson-Gaussian noise). By training on large video databases, we are able to compete with some existing video denoising methods.

  13. DeepSig: deep learning improves signal peptide detection in proteins.

    PubMed

    Savojardo, Castrense; Martelli, Pier Luigi; Fariselli, Piero; Casadio, Rita

    2018-05-15

    The identification of signal peptides in protein sequences is an important step toward protein localization and function characterization. Here, we present DeepSig, an improved approach for signal peptide detection and cleavage-site prediction based on deep learning methods. Comparative benchmarks performed on an updated independent dataset of proteins show that DeepSig is the current best performing method, scoring better than other available state-of-the-art approaches on both signal peptide detection and precise cleavage-site identification. DeepSig is available as both standalone program and web server at https://deepsig.biocomp.unibo.it. All datasets used in this study can be obtained from the same website. pierluigi.martelli@unibo.it. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

  14. Sequence of structures in fine-grained turbidites: Comparison of recent deep-sea and ancient flysch sediments

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Stow, Dorrik A. V.; Shanmugam, Ganapathy

    1980-01-01

    A comparative study of the sequence of sedimentary structures in ancient and modern fine-grained turbidites is made in three contrasting areas. They are (1) Holocene and Pleistocene deep-sea muds of the Nova Scotian Slope and Rise, (2) Middle Ordovician Sevier Shale of the Valley and Ridge Province of the Southern Appalachians, and (3) Cambro-Ordovician Halifax Slate of the Meguma Group in Nova Scotia. A standard sequence of structures is proposed for fine-grained turbidites. The complete sequence has nine sub-divisions that are here termed T 0 to T 8. "The lower subdivision (T 0) comprises a silt lamina which has a sharp, scoured and load-cast base, internal parallel-lamination and cross-lamination, and a sharp current-lineated or wavy surface with 'fading-ripples' (= Type C etc. …)." (= Type C ripple-drift cross-lamination, Jopling and Walker, 1968). The overlying sequence shows textural and compositional grading through alternating silt and mud laminae. A convolute-laminated sub-division (T 1) is overlain by low-amplitude climbing ripples (T 2), thin regular laminae (T 3), thin indistinct laminae (T 4), and thin wipsy or convolute laminae (T 5). The topmost three divisions, graded mud (T 6), ungraded mud (T 7) and bioturbated mud (T 8), do not have silt laminae but rare patchy silt lenses and silt pseudonodules and a thin zone of micro-burrowing near the upper surface. The proposed sequence is analogous to the Bouma (1962) structural scheme for sandy turbidites and is approximately equivalent to Bouma's (C)DE divisions. The repetition of partial sequences characterizes different parts of the slope/base-of-slope/basin plain environment, and represents deposition from different stages of evolution of a large, muddy, turbidity flow. Microstructural detail and sequence are well preserved in ancient and even slightly metamorphosed sediments. Their recognition is important for determining depositional processes and for palaeoenvironmental interpretation.

  15. Quantitative Comparison Of Vesicular Glutamate Transporters in rat Deep Cerebellar Nuclei.

    PubMed

    Mao, Haian; Hamodeh, Salah; Sultan, Fahad

    2018-04-15

    The excitatory synapses of the rat deep cerebellar nuclei (DCN) were quantitatively analyzed by vesicular glutamate transporter 1 and 2 (vGluT1 and vGluT2) immunolabeling. We calculated the number and sizes of the labeled boutons and compared them between lateral/dentate nucleus (LN/DN), posterior interposed nucleus (PIN), anterior interposed nucleus (AIN), and medial nucleus (MN). The density of vGluT1+ boutons differs significantly within these nuclei. In contrast, the vGluT2+ bouton density is more similar between different nuclei. The phylogenetically newer DCN (LN/DN and PIN) have a 39% higher density of vGluT1+ boutons than the phylogenetically older DCN (AIN and MN). The volume of vGluT1+ boutons does not differ between the DCN, however the average volume of vGluT2+ boutons is larger in MN. In summary, our current results confirm and extend our previous findings showing that the increase in dendritic and axonal wiring in phylogenetically newer DCN is associated with an increase in vGluT1+ bouton density. Copyright © 2018 IBRO. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  16. Deep sequencing of foot-and-mouth disease virus reveals RNA sequences involved in genome packaging.

    PubMed

    Logan, Grace; Newman, Joseph; Wright, Caroline F; Lasecka-Dykes, Lidia; Haydon, Daniel T; Cottam, Eleanor M; Tuthill, Tobias J

    2017-10-18

    Non-enveloped viruses protect their genomes by packaging them into an outer shell or capsid of virus-encoded proteins. Packaging and capsid assembly in RNA viruses can involve interactions between capsid proteins and secondary structures in the viral genome as exemplified by the RNA bacteriophage MS2 and as proposed for other RNA viruses of plants, animals and human. In the picornavirus family of non-enveloped RNA viruses, the requirements for genome packaging remain poorly understood. Here we show a novel and simple approach to identify predicted RNA secondary structures involved in genome packaging in the picornavirus foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV). By interrogating deep sequencing data generated from both packaged and unpackaged populations of RNA we have determined multiple regions of the genome with constrained variation in the packaged population. Predicted secondary structures of these regions revealed stem loops with conservation of structure and a common motif at the loop. Disruption of these features resulted in attenuation of virus growth in cell culture due to a reduction in assembly of mature virions. This study provides evidence for the involvement of predicted RNA structures in picornavirus packaging and offers a readily transferable methodology for identifying packaging requirements in many other viruses. Importance In order to transmit their genetic material to a new host, non-enveloped viruses must protect their genomes by packaging them into an outer shell or capsid of virus-encoded proteins. For many non-enveloped RNA viruses the requirements for this critical part of the viral life cycle remain poorly understood. We have identified RNA sequences involved in genome packaging of the picornavirus foot-and-mouth disease virus. This virus causes an economically devastating disease of livestock affecting both the developed and developing world. The experimental methods developed to carry out this work are novel, simple and transferable to the

  17. Human brain atlas for automated region of interest selection in quantitative susceptibility mapping: application to determine iron content in deep gray matter structures.

    PubMed

    Lim, Issel Anne L; Faria, Andreia V; Li, Xu; Hsu, Johnny T C; Airan, Raag D; Mori, Susumu; van Zijl, Peter C M

    2013-11-15

    The purpose of this paper is to extend the single-subject Eve atlas from Johns Hopkins University, which currently contains diffusion tensor and T1-weighted anatomical maps, by including contrast based on quantitative susceptibility mapping. The new atlas combines a "deep gray matter parcellation map" (DGMPM) derived from a single-subject quantitative susceptibility map with the previously established "white matter parcellation map" (WMPM) from the same subject's T1-weighted and diffusion tensor imaging data into an MNI coordinate map named the "Everything Parcellation Map in Eve Space," also known as the "EvePM." It allows automated segmentation of gray matter and white matter structures. Quantitative susceptibility maps from five healthy male volunteers (30 to 33 years of age) were coregistered to the Eve Atlas with AIR and Large Deformation Diffeomorphic Metric Mapping (LDDMM), and the transformation matrices were applied to the EvePM to produce automated parcellation in subject space. Parcellation accuracy was measured with a kappa analysis for the left and right structures of six deep gray matter regions. For multi-orientation QSM images, the Kappa statistic was 0.85 between automated and manual segmentation, with the inter-rater reproducibility Kappa being 0.89 for the human raters, suggesting "almost perfect" agreement between all segmentation methods. Segmentation seemed slightly more difficult for human raters on single-orientation QSM images, with the Kappa statistic being 0.88 between automated and manual segmentation, and 0.85 and 0.86 between human raters. Overall, this atlas provides a time-efficient tool for automated coregistration and segmentation of quantitative susceptibility data to analyze many regions of interest. These data were used to establish a baseline for normal magnetic susceptibility measurements for over 60 brain structures of 30- to 33-year-old males. Correlating the average susceptibility with age-based iron concentrations in gray

  18. Human brain atlas for automated region of interest selection in quantitative susceptibility mapping: application to determine iron content in deep gray matter structures

    PubMed Central

    Lim, Issel Anne L.; Faria, Andreia V.; Li, Xu; Hsu, Johnny T.C.; Airan, Raag D.; Mori, Susumu; van Zijl, Peter C. M.

    2013-01-01

    The purpose of this paper is to extend the single-subject Eve atlas from Johns Hopkins University, which currently contains diffusion tensor and T1-weighted anatomical maps, by including contrast based on quantitative susceptibility mapping. The new atlas combines a “deep gray matter parcellation map” (DGMPM) derived from a single-subject quantitative susceptibility map with the previously established “white matter parcellation map” (WMPM) from the same subject’s T1-weighted and diffusion tensor imaging data into an MNI coordinate map named the “Everything Parcellation Map in Eve Space,” also known as the “EvePM.” It allows automated segmentation of gray matter and white matter structures. Quantitative susceptibility maps from five healthy male volunteers (30 to 33 years of age) were coregistered to the Eve Atlas with AIR and Large Deformation Diffeomorphic Metric Mapping (LDDMM), and the transformation matrices were applied to the EvePM to produce automated parcellation in subject space. Parcellation accuracy was measured with a kappa analysis for the left and right structures of six deep gray matter regions. For multi-orientation QSM images, the Kappa statistic was 0.85 between automated and manual segmentation, with the inter-rater reproducibility Kappa being 0.89 for the human raters, suggesting “almost perfect” agreement between all segmentation methods. Segmentation seemed slightly more difficult for human raters on single-orientation QSM images, with the Kappa statistic being 0.88 between automated and manual segmentation, and 0.85 and 0.86 between human raters. Overall, this atlas provides a time-efficient tool for automated coregistration and segmentation of quantitative susceptibility data to analyze many regions of interest. These data were used to establish a baseline for normal magnetic susceptibility measurements for over 60 brain structures of 30- to 33-year-old males. Correlating the average susceptibility with age-based iron

  19. Development of a genus-specific next generation sequencing approach for sensitive and quantitative determination of the Legionella microbiome in freshwater systems.

    PubMed

    Pereira, Rui P A; Peplies, Jörg; Brettar, Ingrid; Höfle, Manfred G

    2017-03-31

    Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) has revolutionized the analysis of natural and man-made microbial communities by using universal primers for bacteria in a PCR based approach targeting the 16S rRNA gene. In our study we narrowed primer specificity to a single, monophyletic genus because for many questions in microbiology only a specific part of the whole microbiome is of interest. We have chosen the genus Legionella, comprising more than 20 pathogenic species, due to its high relevance for water-based respiratory infections. A new NGS-based approach was designed by sequencing 16S rRNA gene amplicons specific for the genus Legionella using the Illumina MiSeq technology. This approach was validated and applied to a set of representative freshwater samples. Our results revealed that the generated libraries presented a low average raw error rate per base (<0.5%); and substantiated the use of high-fidelity enzymes, such as KAPA HiFi, for increased sequence accuracy and quality. The approach also showed high in situ specificity (>95%) and very good repeatability. Only in samples in which the gammabacterial clade SAR86 was present more than 1% non-Legionella sequences were observed. Next-generation sequencing read counts did not reveal considerable amplification/sequencing biases and showed a sensitive as well as precise quantification of L. pneumophila along a dilution range using a spiked-in, certified genome standard. The genome standard and a mock community consisting of six different Legionella species demonstrated that the developed NGS approach was quantitative and specific at the level of individual species, including L. pneumophila. The sensitivity of our genus-specific approach was at least one order of magnitude higher compared to the universal NGS approach. Comparison of quantification by real-time PCR showed consistency with the NGS data. Overall, our NGS approach can determine the quantitative abundances of Legionella species, i. e. the complete Legionella

  20. Quantitative methods for evaluating the efficacy of thalamic deep brain stimulation in patients with essential tremor.

    PubMed

    Wastensson, Gunilla; Holmberg, Björn; Johnels, Bo; Barregard, Lars

    2013-01-01

    Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the thalamus is a safe and efficient method for treatment of disabling tremor in patient with essential tremor (ET). However, successful tremor suppression after surgery requires careful selection of stimulus parameters. Our aim was to examine the possible use of certain quantitative methods for evaluating the efficacy of thalamic DBS in ET patients in clinical practice, and to compare these methods with traditional clinical tests. We examined 22 patients using the Essential Tremor Rating Scale (ETRS) and quantitative assessment of tremor with the stimulator both activated and deactivated. We used an accelerometer (CATSYS tremor Pen) for quantitative measurement of postural tremor, and a eurythmokinesimeter (EKM) to evaluate kinetic tremor in a rapid pointing task. The efficacy of DBS on tremor suppression was prominent irrespective of the method used. The agreement between clinical rating of postural tremor and tremor intensity as measured by the CATSYS tremor pen was relatively high (rs = 0.74). The agreement between kinetic tremor as assessed by the ETRS and the main outcome variable from the EKM test was low (rs = 0.34). The lack of agreement indicates that the EKM test is not comparable with the clinical test. Quantitative methods, such as the CATSYS tremor pen, could be a useful complement to clinical tremor assessment in evaluating the efficacy of DBS in clinical practice. Future studies should evaluate the precision of these methods and long-term impact on tremor suppression, activities of daily living (ADL) function and quality of life.

  1. Qualitative Slow Blood Flow in Lower Extremity Deep Veins on Doppler Sonography: Quantitative Assessment and Preliminary Evaluation of Correlation With Subsequent Deep Venous Thrombosis Development in a Tertiary Care Oncology Center.

    PubMed

    Jensen, Corey T; Chahin, Antoun; Amin, Veral D; Khalaf, Ahmed M; Elsayes, Khaled M; Wagner-Bartak, Nicolaus; Zhao, Bo; Zhou, Shouhao; Bedi, Deepak G

    2017-09-01

    To determine whether the qualitative sonographic appearance of slow deep venous flow in the lower extremities correlates with quantitative slow flow and an increased risk of deep venous thrombosis (DVT) in oncology patients. In this Institutional Review Board-approved retrospective study, we reviewed lower extremity venous Doppler sonographic examinations of 975 consecutive patients: 482 with slow flow and 493 with normal flow. The subjective slow venous flow and absence of initial DVT were confirmed by 2 radiologists. Peak velocities were recorded at 3 levels. Each patient was followed for DVT development. The associations between DVT and the presence of slow venous flow were examined by the Fisher exact test; a 2-sample t test was used for peak velocity and DVT group comparisons. The optimal cutoff peak velocity for correlation with the radiologists' perceived slow flow was determined by the Youden index. Deep venous thrombosis development in the slow-flow group (21 of 482 [4.36%]) was almost doubled compared with patients who had normal flow (11 of 493 [2.23%]; P = .0456). Measured peak venous velocities were lower in the slow-venous flow group (P < .001). Patients with subsequent DVT did not have a significant difference in venous velocities compared with their respective patient groups. The sum of 3 venous level velocities resulted in the best cutoff for dichotomizing groups into normal versus slow venous flow. Qualitative slow venous flow in the lower extremities on Doppler sonography accurately correlates with quantitatively slower flow, and this preliminary evaluation suggests an associated mildly increased rate of subsequent DVT development in oncology patients. © 2017 by the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine.

  2. Assessing deep and shallow learning methods for quantitative prediction of acute chemical toxicity.

    PubMed

    Liu, Ruifeng; Madore, Michael; Glover, Kyle P; Feasel, Michael G; Wallqvist, Anders

    2018-05-02

    Animal-based methods for assessing chemical toxicity are struggling to meet testing demands. In silico approaches, including machine-learning methods, are promising alternatives. Recently, deep neural networks (DNNs) were evaluated and reported to outperform other machine-learning methods for quantitative structure-activity relationship modeling of molecular properties. However, most of the reported performance evaluations relied on global performance metrics, such as the root mean squared error (RMSE) between the predicted and experimental values of all samples, without considering the impact of sample distribution across the activity spectrum. Here, we carried out an in-depth analysis of DNN performance for quantitative prediction of acute chemical toxicity using several datasets. We found that the overall performance of DNN models on datasets of up to 30,000 compounds was similar to that of random forest (RF) models, as measured by the RMSE and correlation coefficients between the predicted and experimental results. However, our detailed analyses demonstrated that global performance metrics are inappropriate for datasets with a highly uneven sample distribution, because they show a strong bias for the most populous compounds along the toxicity spectrum. For highly toxic compounds, DNN and RF models trained on all samples performed much worse than the global performance metrics indicated. Surprisingly, our variable nearest neighbor method, which utilizes only structurally similar compounds to make predictions, performed reasonably well, suggesting that information of close near neighbors in the training sets is a key determinant of acute toxicity predictions.

  3. Antibody performance in ChIP-sequencing assays: From quality scores of public data sets to quantitative certification.

    PubMed

    Mendoza-Parra, Marco-Antonio; Saravaki, Vincent; Cholley, Pierre-Etienne; Blum, Matthias; Billoré, Benjamin; Gronemeyer, Hinrich

    2016-01-01

    We have established a certification system for antibodies to be used in chromatin immunoprecipitation assays coupled to massive parallel sequencing (ChIP-seq). This certification comprises a standardized ChIP procedure and the attribution of a numerical quality control indicator (QCi) to biological replicate experiments. The QCi computation is based on a universally applicable quality assessment that quantitates the global deviation of randomly sampled subsets of ChIP-seq dataset with the original genome-aligned sequence reads. Comparison with a QCi database for >28,000 ChIP-seq assays were used to attribute quality grades (ranging from 'AAA' to 'DDD') to a given dataset. In the present report we used the numerical QC system to assess the factors influencing the quality of ChIP-seq assays, including the nature of the target, the sequencing depth and the commercial source of the antibody.  We have used this approach specifically to certify mono and polyclonal antibodies obtained from Active Motif directed against the histone modification marks H3K4me3, H3K27ac and H3K9ac for ChIP-seq. The antibodies received the grades AAA to BBC ( www.ngs-qc.org). We propose to attribute such quantitative grading of all antibodies attributed with the label "ChIP-seq grade".

  4. Identification of microRNAs from Amur grape (vitis amurensis Rupr.) by deep sequencing and analysis of microRNA variations with bioinformatics

    PubMed Central

    2012-01-01

    Background MicroRNA (miRNA) is a class of functional non-coding small RNA with 19-25 nucleotides in length while Amur grape (Vitis amurensis Rupr.) is an important wild fruit crop with the strongest cold resistance among the Vitis species, is used as an excellent breeding parent for grapevine, and has elicited growing interest in wine production. To date, there is a relatively large number of grapevine miRNAs (vv-miRNAs) from cultivated grapevine varieties such as Vitis vinifera L. and hybrids of V. vinifera and V. labrusca, but there is no report on miRNAs from Vitis amurensis Rupr, a wild grapevine species. Results A small RNA library from Amur grape was constructed and Solexa technology used to perform deep sequencing of the library followed by subsequent bioinformatics analysis to identify new miRNAs. In total, 126 conserved miRNAs belonging to 27 miRNA families were identified, and 34 known but non-conserved miRNAs were also found. Significantly, 72 new potential Amur grape-specific miRNAs were discovered. The sequences of these new potential va-miRNAs were further validated through miR-RACE, and accumulation of 18 new va-miRNAs in seven tissues of grapevines confirmed by real time RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis. The expression levels of va-miRNAs in flowers and berries were found to be basically consistent in identity to those from deep sequenced sRNAs libraries of combined corresponding tissues. We also describe the conservation and variation of va-miRNAs using miR-SNPs and miR-LDs during plant evolution based on comparison of orthologous sequences, and further reveal that the number and sites of miR-SNP in diverse miRNA families exhibit distinct divergence. Finally, 346 target genes for the new miRNAs were predicted and they include a number of Amur grape stress tolerance genes and many genes regulating anthocyanin synthesis and sugar metabolism. Conclusions Deep sequencing of short RNAs from Amur grape flowers and berries identified 72 new potential miRNAs and

  5. Identification of microRNAs from Amur grape (Vitis amurensis Rupr.) by deep sequencing and analysis of microRNA variations with bioinformatics.

    PubMed

    Wang, Chen; Han, Jian; Liu, Chonghuai; Kibet, Korir Nicholas; Kayesh, Emrul; Shangguan, Lingfei; Li, Xiaoying; Fang, Jinggui

    2012-03-29

    MicroRNA (miRNA) is a class of functional non-coding small RNA with 19-25 nucleotides in length while Amur grape (Vitis amurensis Rupr.) is an important wild fruit crop with the strongest cold resistance among the Vitis species, is used as an excellent breeding parent for grapevine, and has elicited growing interest in wine production. To date, there is a relatively large number of grapevine miRNAs (vv-miRNAs) from cultivated grapevine varieties such as Vitis vinifera L. and hybrids of V. vinifera and V. labrusca, but there is no report on miRNAs from Vitis amurensis Rupr, a wild grapevine species. A small RNA library from Amur grape was constructed and Solexa technology used to perform deep sequencing of the library followed by subsequent bioinformatics analysis to identify new miRNAs. In total, 126 conserved miRNAs belonging to 27 miRNA families were identified, and 34 known but non-conserved miRNAs were also found. Significantly, 72 new potential Amur grape-specific miRNAs were discovered. The sequences of these new potential va-miRNAs were further validated through miR-RACE, and accumulation of 18 new va-miRNAs in seven tissues of grapevines confirmed by real time RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis. The expression levels of va-miRNAs in flowers and berries were found to be basically consistent in identity to those from deep sequenced sRNAs libraries of combined corresponding tissues. We also describe the conservation and variation of va-miRNAs using miR-SNPs and miR-LDs during plant evolution based on comparison of orthologous sequences, and further reveal that the number and sites of miR-SNP in diverse miRNA families exhibit distinct divergence. Finally, 346 target genes for the new miRNAs were predicted and they include a number of Amur grape stress tolerance genes and many genes regulating anthocyanin synthesis and sugar metabolism. Deep sequencing of short RNAs from Amur grape flowers and berries identified 72 new potential miRNAs and 34 known but non-conserved mi

  6. Discovery of Pod Shatter-Resistant Associated SNPs by Deep Sequencing of a Representative Library Followed by Bulk Segregant Analysis in Rapeseed

    PubMed Central

    Huang, Shunmou; Yang, Hongli; Zhan, Gaomiao; Wang, Xinfa; Liu, Guihua; Wang, Hanzhong

    2012-01-01

    Background Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are an important class of genetic marker for target gene mapping. As of yet, there is no rapid and effective method to identify SNPs linked with agronomic traits in rapeseed and other crop species. Methodology/Principal Findings We demonstrate a novel method for identifying SNP markers in rapeseed by deep sequencing a representative library and performing bulk segregant analysis. With this method, SNPs associated with rapeseed pod shatter-resistance were discovered. Firstly, a reduced representation of the rapeseed genome was used. Genomic fragments ranging from 450–550 bp were prepared from the susceptible bulk (ten F2 plants with the silique shattering resistance index, SSRI <0.10) and the resistance bulk (ten F2 plants with SSRI >0.90), and also Solexa sequencing-produced 90 bp reads. Approximately 50 million of these sequence reads were assembled into contigs to a depth of 20-fold coverage. Secondly, 60,396 ‘simple SNPs’ were identified, and the statistical significance was evaluated using Fisher's exact test. There were 70 associated SNPs whose –log10 p value over 16 were selected to be further analyzed. The distribution of these SNPs appeared a tight cluster, which consisted of 14 associated SNPs within a 396 kb region on chromosome A09. Our evidence indicates that this region contains a major quantitative trait locus (QTL). Finally, two associated SNPs from this region were mapped on a major QTL region. Conclusions/Significance 70 associated SNPs were discovered and a major QTL for rapeseed pod shatter-resistance was found on chromosome A09 using our novel method. The associated SNP markers were used for mapping of the QTL, and may be useful for improving pod shatter-resistance in rapeseed through marker-assisted selection and map-based cloning. This approach will accelerate the discovery of major QTLs and the cloning of functional genes for important agronomic traits in rapeseed and other crop

  7. Deep learning methods for protein torsion angle prediction.

    PubMed

    Li, Haiou; Hou, Jie; Adhikari, Badri; Lyu, Qiang; Cheng, Jianlin

    2017-09-18

    Deep learning is one of the most powerful machine learning methods that has achieved the state-of-the-art performance in many domains. Since deep learning was introduced to the field of bioinformatics in 2012, it has achieved success in a number of areas such as protein residue-residue contact prediction, secondary structure prediction, and fold recognition. In this work, we developed deep learning methods to improve the prediction of torsion (dihedral) angles of proteins. We design four different deep learning architectures to predict protein torsion angles. The architectures including deep neural network (DNN) and deep restricted Boltzmann machine (DRBN), deep recurrent neural network (DRNN) and deep recurrent restricted Boltzmann machine (DReRBM) since the protein torsion angle prediction is a sequence related problem. In addition to existing protein features, two new features (predicted residue contact number and the error distribution of torsion angles extracted from sequence fragments) are used as input to each of the four deep learning architectures to predict phi and psi angles of protein backbone. The mean absolute error (MAE) of phi and psi angles predicted by DRNN, DReRBM, DRBM and DNN is about 20-21° and 29-30° on an independent dataset. The MAE of phi angle is comparable to the existing methods, but the MAE of psi angle is 29°, 2° lower than the existing methods. On the latest CASP12 targets, our methods also achieved the performance better than or comparable to a state-of-the art method. Our experiment demonstrates that deep learning is a valuable method for predicting protein torsion angles. The deep recurrent network architecture performs slightly better than deep feed-forward architecture, and the predicted residue contact number and the error distribution of torsion angles extracted from sequence fragments are useful features for improving prediction accuracy.

  8. [Value of mDIXON-Quant sequence, diffusion-weighted imaging in quantitatively diagnosing the sacroiliitis stages].

    PubMed

    An, Y Y; Li, H X; Zhan, Y; Lei, X W

    2017-10-10

    Objective: To evaluate the value of mDIXON-Quant sequence, diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) in quantitative diagnosing of the sacroiliitis stages in patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS). Methods: Based on the Bath Ankylosing Spondylitis Activity Index (BASDAI) and laboratory parameters, a total of 51 patients were diagnosed with AS. They were divided into two groups as early active group ( n =20) and chronic active group ( n =31), and at the same time, 25 healthy people from Tianjin were included as control group. The regular MRI sequences and mDIXON-Quant sequence, DWI were obtained. The apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) and fat-signal fraction (FF) value of bone marrow with edema of the sacroiliac joints in early active group and chronic active group and of subchondral bone marrow of sacroiliac joint in control group all were measured by ADC maps and FF maps. Mean (FF, ADC) values were compared between groups. Results: The ADC value of the early active group, chronic active group and the control group is (1.07±0.20)×10(-3)mm(2)/s, (1.00±0.22)×10(-3)mm(2)/s, (0.25±0.07)×10(-3)mm(2)/s, respectively, and the differences of ADC value between early active group and control group, chronic active group and control group were significant ( P <0.01), but the difference of the ADC value between early active group and chronic active group was not significant ( P =0.394). That is to say, the ADC value can't distinguish the early active group and chronic active group. The differences of FF value between groups was significant ( P <0.01), and the FF value of bone marrow with edema in chronic active group were higher than that in early active group. Conclusions: The mDIXON-Quant sequence can quantitatively diagnose early active group and chronic active group, and the diagnostic value is better than DWI. Thus, it can provide guidance for clinical treatment and prognosis.

  9. ViVaMBC: estimating viral sequence variation in complex populations from illumina deep-sequencing data using model-based clustering.

    PubMed

    Verbist, Bie; Clement, Lieven; Reumers, Joke; Thys, Kim; Vapirev, Alexander; Talloen, Willem; Wetzels, Yves; Meys, Joris; Aerssens, Jeroen; Bijnens, Luc; Thas, Olivier

    2015-02-22

    Deep-sequencing allows for an in-depth characterization of sequence variation in complex populations. However, technology associated errors may impede a powerful assessment of low-frequency mutations. Fortunately, base calls are complemented with quality scores which are derived from a quadruplet of intensities, one channel for each nucleotide type for Illumina sequencing. The highest intensity of the four channels determines the base that is called. Mismatch bases can often be corrected by the second best base, i.e. the base with the second highest intensity in the quadruplet. A virus variant model-based clustering method, ViVaMBC, is presented that explores quality scores and second best base calls for identifying and quantifying viral variants. ViVaMBC is optimized to call variants at the codon level (nucleotide triplets) which enables immediate biological interpretation of the variants with respect to their antiviral drug responses. Using mixtures of HCV plasmids we show that our method accurately estimates frequencies down to 0.5%. The estimates are unbiased when average coverages of 25,000 are reached. A comparison with the SNP-callers V-Phaser2, ShoRAH, and LoFreq shows that ViVaMBC has a superb sensitivity and specificity for variants with frequencies above 0.4%. Unlike the competitors, ViVaMBC reports a higher number of false-positive findings with frequencies below 0.4% which might partially originate from picking up artificial variants introduced by errors in the sample and library preparation step. ViVaMBC is the first method to call viral variants directly at the codon level. The strength of the approach lies in modeling the error probabilities based on the quality scores. Although the use of second best base calls appeared very promising in our data exploration phase, their utility was limited. They provided a slight increase in sensitivity, which however does not warrant the additional computational cost of running the offline base caller. Apparently

  10. Differential expression analysis of Paralichthys olivaceus microRNAs in adult ovary and testis by deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Gu, Yifeng; Zhang, Lei; Chen, Xiaowu

    2014-08-01

    MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play an important role in gonadal development and differentiation in fish. However, understanding of the mechanism of this process is hindered by our poor knowledge of miRNA expression patterns in fish gonads. In this study, miRNA libraries derived from adult gonads of Paralichthys olivaceus were generated by using next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology. Bioinformatics analysis was performed to distinguish mature miRNA sequences from two classes of small RNAs represented in the sequencing data. A total of 141 mature miRNAs were identified, in which 21 miRNAs were found in P. olivaceus for the first time. Variance and preference of miRNAs expression were concluded from the deep sequencing reads. Some miRNAs, such as pol-miR-143, pol-miR-26a and pol-let-7a were found with quite high expression levels in both gonads, while some exhibited a clear sex-biased expression in different gonad. Approximate 20.0% and 13.1% of the isolated miRNAs were preferentially expressed in the testis (FC<0.5) or ovary (FC>2), respectively. The identification and the preliminary analysis of the sex-biased expression of miRNAs in P. olivaceus gonads in our work by using NGS will provide us a basic catalog of miRNAs to facilitate future improvement and exploitation of sexual regulatory mechanisms in P. olivaceus. Copyright © 2014. Published by Elsevier Inc.

  11. Natural Variation in Brachypodium disctachyon: Deep Sequencing of Highly Diverse Natural Accessions (2013 DOE JGI Genomics of Energy and Environment 8th Annual User Meeting)

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Gordon, Sean

    2013-03-01

    Sean Gordon of the USDA on Natural variation in Brachypodium disctachyon: Deep Sequencing of Highly Diverse Natural Accessions at the 8th Annual Genomics of Energy Environment Meeting on March 27, 2013 in Walnut Creek, CA.

  12. Benchmarking of the Oxford Nanopore MinION sequencing for quantitative and qualitative assessment of cDNA populations.

    PubMed

    Oikonomopoulos, Spyros; Wang, Yu Chang; Djambazian, Haig; Badescu, Dunarel; Ragoussis, Jiannis

    2016-08-24

    To assess the performance of the Oxford Nanopore Technologies MinION sequencing platform, cDNAs from the External RNA Controls Consortium (ERCC) RNA Spike-In mix were sequenced. This mix mimics mammalian mRNA species and consists of 92 polyadenylated transcripts with known concentration. cDNA libraries were generated using a template switching protocol to facilitate the direct comparison between different sequencing platforms. The MinION performance was assessed for its ability to sequence the cDNAs directly with good accuracy in terms of abundance and full length. The abundance of the ERCC cDNA molecules sequenced by MinION agreed with their expected concentration. No length or GC content bias was observed. The majority of cDNAs were sequenced as full length. Additionally, a complex cDNA population derived from a human HEK-293 cell line was sequenced on an Illumina HiSeq 2500, PacBio RS II and ONT MinION platforms. We observed that there was a good agreement in the measured cDNA abundance between PacBio RS II and ONT MinION (rpearson = 0.82, isoforms with length more than 700bp) and between Illumina HiSeq 2500 and ONT MinION (rpearson = 0.75). This indicates that the ONT MinION can sequence quantitatively both long and short full length cDNA molecules.

  13. Metavisitor, a Suite of Galaxy Tools for Simple and Rapid Detection and Discovery of Viruses in Deep Sequence Data

    PubMed Central

    Vernick, Kenneth D.

    2017-01-01

    Metavisitor is a software package that allows biologists and clinicians without specialized bioinformatics expertise to detect and assemble viral genomes from deep sequence datasets. The package is composed of a set of modular bioinformatic tools and workflows that are implemented in the Galaxy framework. Using the graphical Galaxy workflow editor, users with minimal computational skills can use existing Metavisitor workflows or adapt them to suit specific needs by adding or modifying analysis modules. Metavisitor works with DNA, RNA or small RNA sequencing data over a range of read lengths and can use a combination of de novo and guided approaches to assemble genomes from sequencing reads. We show that the software has the potential for quick diagnosis as well as discovery of viruses from a vast array of organisms. Importantly, we provide here executable Metavisitor use cases, which increase the accessibility and transparency of the software, ultimately enabling biologists or clinicians to focus on biological or medical questions. PMID:28045932

  14. Single molecule quantitation and sequencing of rare translocations using microfluidic nested digital PCR.

    PubMed

    Shuga, Joe; Zeng, Yong; Novak, Richard; Lan, Qing; Tang, Xiaojiang; Rothman, Nathaniel; Vermeulen, Roel; Li, Laiyu; Hubbard, Alan; Zhang, Luoping; Mathies, Richard A; Smith, Martyn T

    2013-09-01

    Cancers are heterogeneous and genetically unstable. New methods are needed that provide the sensitivity and specificity to query single cells at the genetic loci that drive cancer progression, thereby enabling researchers to study the progression of individual tumors. Here, we report the development and application of a bead-based hemi-nested microfluidic droplet digital PCR (dPCR) technology to achieve 'quantitative' measurement and single-molecule sequencing of somatically acquired carcinogenic translocations at extremely low levels (<10(-6)) in healthy subjects. We use this technique in our healthy study population to determine the overall concentration of the t(14;18) translocation, which is strongly associated with follicular lymphoma. The nested dPCR approach improves the detection limit to 1×10(-7) or lower while maintaining the analysis efficiency and specificity. Further, the bead-based dPCR enabled us to isolate and quantify the relative amounts of the various clonal forms of t(14;18) translocation in these subjects, and the single-molecule sensitivity and resolution of dPCR led to the discovery of new clonal forms of t(14;18) that were otherwise masked by the conventional quantitative PCR measurements. In this manner, we created a quantitative map for this carcinogenic mutation in this healthy population and identified the positions on chromosomes 14 and 18 where the vast majority of these t(14;18) events occur.

  15. Evolution of simeprevir-resistant variants over time by ultra-deep sequencing in HCV genotype 1b.

    PubMed

    Akuta, Norio; Suzuki, Fumitaka; Sezaki, Hitomi; Suzuki, Yoshiyuki; Hosaka, Tetsuya; Kobayashi, Masahiro; Kobayashi, Mariko; Saitoh, Satoshi; Ikeda, Kenji; Kumada, Hiromitsu

    2014-08-01

    Using ultra-deep sequencing technology, the present study was designed to investigate the evolution of simeprevir-resistant variants (amino acid substitutions of aa80, aa155, aa156, and aa168 positions in HCV NS3 region) over time. In Toranomon Hospital, 18 Japanese patients infected with HCV genotype 1b, received triple therapy of simeprevir/PEG-IFN/ribavirin (DRAGON or CONCERT study). Sustained virological response rate was 67%, and that was significantly higher in patients with IL28B rs8099917 TT than in those with non-TT. Six patients, who did not achieve sustained virological response, were tested for resistant variants by ultra-deep sequencing, at the baseline, at the time of re-elevation of viral loads, and at 96 weeks after the completion of treatment. Twelve of 18 resistant variants, detected at re-elevation of viral load, were de novo resistant variants. Ten of 12 de novo resistant variants become undetectable over time, and that five of seven resistant variants, detected at baseline, persisted over time. In one patient, variants of Q80R at baseline (0.3%) increased at 96-week after the cessation of treatment (10.2%), and de novo resistant variants of D168E (0.3%) also increased at 96-week after the cessation of treatment (9.7%). In conclusion, the present study indicates that the emergence of simeprevir-resistant variants after the start of treatment could not be predicted at baseline, and the majority of de novo resistant variants become undetectable over time. Further large-scale prospective studies should be performed to investigate the clinical utility in detecting simeprevir-resistant variants. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  16. Ultra-deep sequencing reveals high prevalence and broad structural diversity of hepatitis B surface antigen mutations in a global population.

    PubMed

    Gencay, Mikael; Hübner, Kirsten; Gohl, Peter; Seffner, Anja; Weizenegger, Michael; Neofytos, Dionysios; Batrla, Richard; Woeste, Andreas; Kim, Hyon-Suk; Westergaard, Gaston; Reinsch, Christine; Brill, Eva; Thu Thuy, Pham Thi; Hoang, Bui Huu; Sonderup, Mark; Spearman, C Wendy; Pabinger, Stephan; Gautier, Jérémie; Brancaccio, Giuseppina; Fasano, Massimo; Santantonio, Teresa; Gaeta, Giovanni B; Nauck, Markus; Kaminski, Wolfgang E

    2017-01-01

    The diversity of the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) has a significant impact on the performance of diagnostic screening tests and the clinical outcome of hepatitis B infection. Neutralizing or diagnostic antibodies against the HBsAg are directed towards its highly conserved major hydrophilic region (MHR), in particular towards its "a" determinant subdomain. Here, we explored, on a global scale, the genetic diversity of the HBsAg MHR in a large, multi-ethnic cohort of randomly selected subjects with HBV infection from four continents. A total of 1553 HBsAg positive blood samples of subjects originating from 20 different countries across Africa, America, Asia and central Europe were characterized for amino acid variation in the MHR. Using highly sensitive ultra-deep sequencing, we found 72.8% of the successfully sequenced subjects (n = 1391) demonstrated amino acid sequence variation in the HBsAg MHR. This indicates that the global variation frequency in the HBsAg MHR is threefold higher than previously reported. The majority of the amino acid mutations were found in the HBV genotypes B (28.9%) and C (25.4%). Collectively, we identified 345 distinct amino acid mutations in the MHR. Among these, we report 62 previously unknown mutations, which extends the worldwide pool of currently known HBsAg MHR mutations by 22%. Importantly, topological analysis identified the "a" determinant upstream flanking region as the structurally most diverse subdomain of the HBsAg MHR. The highest prevalence of "a" determinant region mutations was observed in subjects from Asia, followed by the African, American and European cohorts, respectively. Finally, we found that more than half (59.3%) of all HBV subjects investigated carried multiple MHR mutations. Together, this worldwide ultra-deep sequencing based genotyping study reveals that the global prevalence and structural complexity of variation in the hepatitis B surface antigen have, to date, been significantly underappreciated.

  17. Rapid gene identification in sugar beet using deep sequencing of DNA from phenotypic pools selected from breeding panels.

    PubMed

    Ries, David; Holtgräwe, Daniela; Viehöver, Prisca; Weisshaar, Bernd

    2016-03-15

    The combination of bulk segregant analysis (BSA) and next generation sequencing (NGS), also known as mapping by sequencing (MBS), has been shown to significantly accelerate the identification of causal mutations for species with a reference genome sequence. The usual approach is to cross homozygous parents that differ for the monogenic trait to address, to perform deep sequencing of DNA from F2 plants pooled according to their phenotype, and subsequently to analyze the allele frequency distribution based on a marker table for the parents studied. The method has been successfully applied for EMS induced mutations as well as natural variation. Here, we show that pooling genetically diverse breeding lines according to a contrasting phenotype also allows high resolution mapping of the causal gene in a crop species. The test case was the monogenic locus causing red vs. green hypocotyl color in Beta vulgaris (R locus). We determined the allele frequencies of polymorphic sequences using sequence data from two diverging phenotypic pools of 180 B. vulgaris accessions each. A single interval of about 31 kbp among the nine chromosomes was identified which indeed contained the causative mutation. By applying a variation of the mapping by sequencing approach, we demonstrated that phenotype-based pooling of diverse accessions from breeding panels and subsequent direct determination of the allele frequency distribution can be successfully applied for gene identification in a crop species. Our approach made it possible to identify a small interval around the causative gene. Sequencing of parents or individual lines was not necessary. Whenever the appropriate plant material is available, the approach described saves time compared to the generation of an F2 population. In addition, we provide clues for planning similar experiments with regard to pool size and the sequencing depth required.

  18. Complete genome sequence of southern tomato virus identified from China using next generation sequencing

    USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

    Complete genome sequence of a double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) virus, southern tomato virus (STV), on tomatoes in China, was elucidated using small RNAs deep sequencing. The identified STV_CN12 shares 99% sequence identity to other isolates from Mexico, France, Spain, and U.S. This is the first report ...

  19. High-throughput analysis of the protein sequence-stability landscape using a quantitative "yeast surface two-hybrid" system and fragment reconstitution

    PubMed Central

    Dutta, Sanjib; Koide, Akiko; Koide, Shohei

    2008-01-01

    Stability evaluation of many mutants can lead to a better understanding of the sequence determinants of a structural motif and of factors governing protein stability and protein evolution. The traditional biophysical analysis of protein stability is low throughput, limiting our ability to widely explore the sequence space in a quantitative manner. In this study, we have developed a high-throughput library screening method for quantifying stability changes, which is based on protein fragment reconstitution and yeast surface display. Our method exploits the thermodynamic linkage between protein stability and fragment reconstitution and the ability of the yeast surface display technique to quantitatively evaluate protein-protein interactions. The method was applied to a fibronectin type III (FN3) domain. Characterization of fragment reconstitution was facilitated by the co-expression of two FN3 fragments, thus establishing a "yeast surface two-hybrid" method. Importantly, our method does not rely on competition between clones and thus eliminates a common limitation of high-throughput selection methods in which the most stable variants are predominantly recovered. Thus, it allows for the isolation of sequences that exhibits a desired level of stability. We identified over one hundred unique sequences for a β-bulge motif, which was significantly more informative than natural sequences of the FN3 family in revealing the sequence determinants for the β-bulge. Our method provides a powerful means to rapidly assess stability of many variants, to systematically assess contribution of different factors to protein stability and to enhance protein stability. PMID:18674545

  20. Resolving the Complexity of Human Skin Metagenomes Using Single-Molecule Sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Tsai, Yu-Chih; Deming, Clayton; Segre, Julia A.; Kong, Heidi H.; Korlach, Jonas

    2016-01-01

    ABSTRACT Deep metagenomic shotgun sequencing has emerged as a powerful tool to interrogate composition and function of complex microbial communities. Computational approaches to assemble genome fragments have been demonstrated to be an effective tool for de novo reconstruction of genomes from these communities. However, the resultant “genomes” are typically fragmented and incomplete due to the limited ability of short-read sequence data to assemble complex or low-coverage regions. Here, we use single-molecule, real-time (SMRT) sequencing to reconstruct a high-quality, closed genome of a previously uncharacterized Corynebacterium simulans and its companion bacteriophage from a skin metagenomic sample. Considerable improvement in assembly quality occurs in hybrid approaches incorporating short-read data, with even relatively small amounts of long-read data being sufficient to improve metagenome reconstruction. Using short-read data to evaluate strain variation of this C. simulans in its skin community at single-nucleotide resolution, we observed a dominant C. simulans strain with moderate allelic heterozygosity throughout the population. We demonstrate the utility of SMRT sequencing and hybrid approaches in metagenome quantitation, reconstruction, and annotation. PMID:26861018

  1. Characterization by Deep Sequencing of Prunus virus T, a Novel Tepovirus Infecting Prunus Species.

    PubMed

    Marais, Armelle; Faure, Chantal; Mustafayev, Eldar; Barone, Maria; Alioto, Daniela; Candresse, Thierry

    2015-01-01

    Double-stranded RNAs purified from a cherry tree collected in Italy and a plum tree collected in Azerbaijan were submitted to deep sequencing. Contigs showing weak but significant identity with various members of the family Betaflexiviridae were reconstructed. Sequence comparisons led to the conclusion that the viral isolates identified in the analyzed Prunus plants belong to the same viral species. Their genome organization is similar to that of some members of the family Betaflexiviridae, with three overlapping open reading frames (RNA polymerase, movement protein, and capsid protein). Phylogenetic analyses of the deduced encoded proteins showed a clustering with the sole member of the genus Tepovirus, Potato virus T (PVT). Given these results, the name Prunus virus T (PrVT) is proposed for the new virus. It should be considered as a new member of the genus Tepovirus, even if the level of nucleotide identity with PVT is borderline with the genus demarcation criteria for the family Betaflexiviridae. A reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction detection assay was developed and allowed the identification of two other PrVT isolates and an estimate of 1% prevalence in the large Prunus collection screened. Due to the mixed infection status of all hosts identified to date, it was not possible to correlate the presence of PrVT with specific symptoms.

  2. Deep sequencing-based analysis of the anaerobic stimulon in Neisseria gonorrhoeae

    PubMed Central

    2011-01-01

    Background Maintenance of an anaerobic denitrification system in the obligate human pathogen, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, suggests that an anaerobic lifestyle may be important during the course of infection. Furthermore, mounting evidence suggests that reduction of host-produced nitric oxide has several immunomodulary effects on the host. However, at this point there have been no studies analyzing the complete gonococcal transcriptome response to anaerobiosis. Here we performed deep sequencing to compare the gonococcal transcriptomes of aerobically and anaerobically grown cells. Using the information derived from this sequencing, we discuss the implications of the robust transcriptional response to anaerobic growth. Results We determined that 198 chromosomal genes were differentially expressed (~10% of the genome) in response to anaerobic conditions. We also observed a large induction of genes encoded within the cryptic plasmid, pJD1. Validation of RNA-seq data using translational-lacZ fusions or RT-PCR demonstrated the RNA-seq results to be very reproducible. Surprisingly, many genes of prophage origin were induced anaerobically, as well as several transcriptional regulators previously unknown to be involved in anaerobic growth. We also confirmed expression and regulation of a small RNA, likely a functional equivalent of fnrS in the Enterobacteriaceae family. We also determined that many genes found to be responsive to anaerobiosis have also been shown to be responsive to iron and/or oxidative stress. Conclusions Gonococci will be subject to many forms of environmental stress, including oxygen-limitation, during the course of infection. Here we determined that the anaerobic stimulon in gonococci was larger than previous studies would suggest. Many new targets for future research have been uncovered, and the results derived from this study may have helped to elucidate factors or mechanisms of virulence that may have otherwise been overlooked. PMID:21251255

  3. Quantitative genome re-sequencing defines multiple mutations conferring chloroquine resistance in rodent malaria

    PubMed Central

    2012-01-01

    Background Drug resistance in the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum severely compromises the treatment and control of malaria. A knowledge of the critical mutations conferring resistance to particular drugs is important in understanding modes of drug action and mechanisms of resistances. They are required to design better therapies and limit drug resistance. A mutation in the gene (pfcrt) encoding a membrane transporter has been identified as a principal determinant of chloroquine resistance in P. falciparum, but we lack a full account of higher level chloroquine resistance. Furthermore, the determinants of resistance in the other major human malaria parasite, P. vivax, are not known. To address these questions, we investigated the genetic basis of chloroquine resistance in an isogenic lineage of rodent malaria parasite P. chabaudi in which high level resistance to chloroquine has been progressively selected under laboratory conditions. Results Loci containing the critical genes were mapped by Linkage Group Selection, using a genetic cross between the high-level chloroquine-resistant mutant and a genetically distinct sensitive strain. A novel high-resolution quantitative whole-genome re-sequencing approach was used to reveal three regions of selection on chr11, chr03 and chr02 that appear progressively at increasing drug doses on three chromosomes. Whole-genome sequencing of the chloroquine-resistant parent identified just four point mutations in different genes on these chromosomes. Three mutations are located at the foci of the selection valleys and are therefore predicted to confer different levels of chloroquine resistance. The critical mutation conferring the first level of chloroquine resistance is found in aat1, a putative aminoacid transporter. Conclusions Quantitative trait loci conferring selectable phenotypes, such as drug resistance, can be mapped directly using progressive genome-wide linkage group selection. Quantitative genome-wide short

  4. Demystifying Multitask Deep Neural Networks for Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships.

    PubMed

    Xu, Yuting; Ma, Junshui; Liaw, Andy; Sheridan, Robert P; Svetnik, Vladimir

    2017-10-23

    Deep neural networks (DNNs) are complex computational models that have found great success in many artificial intelligence applications, such as computer vision1,2 and natural language processing.3,4 In the past four years, DNNs have also generated promising results for quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) tasks.5,6 Previous work showed that DNNs can routinely make better predictions than traditional methods, such as random forests, on a diverse collection of QSAR data sets. It was also found that multitask DNN models-those trained on and predicting multiple QSAR properties simultaneously-outperform DNNs trained separately on the individual data sets in many, but not all, tasks. To date there has been no satisfactory explanation of why the QSAR of one task embedded in a multitask DNN can borrow information from other unrelated QSAR tasks. Thus, using multitask DNNs in a way that consistently provides a predictive advantage becomes a challenge. In this work, we explored why multitask DNNs make a difference in predictive performance. Our results show that during prediction a multitask DNN does borrow "signal" from molecules with similar structures in the training sets of the other tasks. However, whether this borrowing leads to better or worse predictive performance depends on whether the activities are correlated. On the basis of this, we have developed a strategy to use multitask DNNs that incorporate prior domain knowledge to select training sets with correlated activities, and we demonstrate its effectiveness on several examples.

  5. Ultra-Deep Sequencing Analysis of the Hepatitis A Virus 5'-Untranslated Region among Cases of the Same Outbreak from a Single Source

    PubMed Central

    Wu, Shuang; Nakamoto, Shingo; Kanda, Tatsuo; Jiang, Xia; Nakamura, Masato; Miyamura, Tatsuo; Shirasawa, Hiroshi; Sugiura, Nobuyuki; Takahashi-Nakaguchi, Azusa; Gonoi, Tohru; Yokosuka, Osamu

    2014-01-01

    Hepatitis A virus (HAV) is a causative agent of acute viral hepatitis for which an effective vaccine has been developed. Here we describe ultra-deep pyrosequences (UDPSs) of HAV 5'-untranslated region (5'UTR) among cases of the same outbreak, which arose from a single source, associated with a revolving sushi bar. We determined the reference sequence from HAV-derived clone from an attendant by the Sanger method. Sixteen UDPSs from this outbreak and one from another sporadic case were compared with this reference. Nucleotide errors yielded a UDPS error rate of < 1%. This study confirmed that nucleotide substitutions of this region are transition mutations in outbreak cases, that insertion was observed only in non-severe cases, and that these nucleotide substitutions were different from those of the sporadic case. Analysis of UDPSs detected low-prevalence HAV variations in 5'UTR, but no specific mutations associated with severity in these outbreak cases. To our surprise, HAV strains in this outbreak conserved HAV IRES sequence even if we performed analysis of UDPSs. UDPS analysis of HAV 5'UTR gave us no association between the disease severity of hepatitis A and HAV 5'UTR substitutions. It might be more interesting to perform ultra-deep sequencing of full length HAV genome in order to reveal possible unknown genomic determinants associated with disease severity. Further studies will be needed. PMID:24396287

  6. Sequence stratigraphic applications to deep-water exploration in the Makassar Strait, offshore East Kalimantan, Indonesia

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Malacek, S.J.; Reaves, C.M.; Atmadja, W.S.

    1994-07-01

    A sequence stratigraphic study was conducted to help evaluate the exploration potential of the Makassar PSC, offshore East Kalimantan, Indonesia. The PSC is on the present-day slope in water depths of 500-3000 ft and borders the large oil and gas fields of the Mahakam delta. The study provided important insights on reservoir distribution, trapping style, and seismic hydrocarbon indicators. Lowstand deposition on a slope modified by growth faulting and shale diapirism controlled reservoir distribution within the prospective late Miocene section. Three major lowstand intervals can be seismically defined and tied to deep-water sands in nearby wells where log character andmore » biostratigraphic data support the seismic system tract interpretation. The three intervals appear to correlate with third-order global lowstand events and are consistent with existing sequence stratigraphic schemes for the shelf and upper slope in the Makassar area. Seismic mapping delineated lowstand features, including incised valleys and intraslope to basin-floor thicks. Regional information on positions of middle-late Miocene delta lobes and shelf edges, helped complete the picture for sand sources, transport routes, and depocenters.« less

  7. High temporal resolution dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI using compressed sensing-combined sequence in quantitative renal perfusion measurement.

    PubMed

    Chen, Bin; Zhao, Kai; Li, Bo; Cai, Wenchao; Wang, Xiaoying; Zhang, Jue; Fang, Jing

    2015-10-01

    To demonstrate the feasibility of the improved temporal resolution by using compressed sensing (CS) combined imaging sequence in dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) of kidney, and investigate its quantitative effects on renal perfusion measurements. Ten rabbits were included in the accelerated scans with a CS-combined 3D pulse sequence. To evaluate the image quality, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) were compared between the proposed CS strategy and the conventional full sampling method. Moreover, renal perfusion was estimated by using the separable compartmental model in both CS simulation and realistic CS acquisitions. The CS method showed DCE-MRI images with improved temporal resolution and acceptable image contrast, while presenting significantly higher SNR than the fully sampled images (p<.01) at 2-, 3- and 4-X acceleration. In quantitative measurements, renal perfusion results were in good agreement with the fully sampled one (concordance correlation coefficient=0.95, 0.91, 0.88) at 2-, 3- and 4-X acceleration in CS simulation. Moreover, in realistic acquisitions, the estimated perfusion by the separable compartmental model exhibited no significant differences (p>.05) between each CS-accelerated acquisition and the full sampling method. The CS-combined 3D sequence could improve the temporal resolution for DCE-MRI in kidney while yielding diagnostically acceptable image quality, and it could provide effective measurements of renal perfusion. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  8. Biosynthesis and genetic encoding of phosphothreonine through parallel selection and deep sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Huguenin-Dezot, Nicolas; Liang, Alexandria D.; Schmied, Wolfgang H.; Rogerson, Daniel T.; Chin, Jason W.

    2017-01-01

    The phosphorylation of threonine residues in proteins regulates diverse processes in eukaryotic cells, and thousands of threonine phosphorylations have been identified. An understanding of how threonine phosphorylation regulates biological function will be accelerated by general methods to bio-synthesize defined phospho-proteins. Here we address limitations in current methods for discovering aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase/tRNA pairs for incorporating non-natural amino acids into proteins, by combining parallel positive selections with deep sequencing and statistical analysis, to create a rapid approach for directly discovering aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase/tRNA pairs that selectively incorporate non-natural substrates. Our approach is scalable and enables the direct discovery of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase/tRNA pairs with mutually orthogonal substrate specificity. We biosynthesize phosphothreonine in cells, and use our new selection approach to discover a phosphothreonyl-tRNA synthetase/tRNACUA pair. By combining these advances we create an entirely biosynthetic route to incorporating phosphothreonine in proteins and biosynthesize several phosphoproteins; enabling phosphoprotein structure determination and synthetic protein kinase activation. PMID:28553966

  9. Deep Logic Networks: Inserting and Extracting Knowledge From Deep Belief Networks.

    PubMed

    Tran, Son N; d'Avila Garcez, Artur S

    2018-02-01

    Developments in deep learning have seen the use of layerwise unsupervised learning combined with supervised learning for fine-tuning. With this layerwise approach, a deep network can be seen as a more modular system that lends itself well to learning representations. In this paper, we investigate whether such modularity can be useful to the insertion of background knowledge into deep networks, whether it can improve learning performance when it is available, and to the extraction of knowledge from trained deep networks, and whether it can offer a better understanding of the representations learned by such networks. To this end, we use a simple symbolic language-a set of logical rules that we call confidence rules-and show that it is suitable for the representation of quantitative reasoning in deep networks. We show by knowledge extraction that confidence rules can offer a low-cost representation for layerwise networks (or restricted Boltzmann machines). We also show that layerwise extraction can produce an improvement in the accuracy of deep belief networks. Furthermore, the proposed symbolic characterization of deep networks provides a novel method for the insertion of prior knowledge and training of deep networks. With the use of this method, a deep neural-symbolic system is proposed and evaluated, with the experimental results indicating that modularity through the use of confidence rules and knowledge insertion can be beneficial to network performance.

  10. Rational Protein Engineering Guided by Deep Mutational Scanning

    PubMed Central

    Shin, HyeonSeok; Cho, Byung-Kwan

    2015-01-01

    Sequence–function relationship in a protein is commonly determined by the three-dimensional protein structure followed by various biochemical experiments. However, with the explosive increase in the number of genome sequences, facilitated by recent advances in sequencing technology, the gap between protein sequences available and three-dimensional structures is rapidly widening. A recently developed method termed deep mutational scanning explores the functional phenotype of thousands of mutants via massive sequencing. Coupled with a highly efficient screening system, this approach assesses the phenotypic changes made by the substitution of each amino acid sequence that constitutes a protein. Such an informational resource provides the functional role of each amino acid sequence, thereby providing sufficient rationale for selecting target residues for protein engineering. Here, we discuss the current applications of deep mutational scanning and consider experimental design. PMID:26404267

  11. Deep Recurrent Neural Networks for Human Activity Recognition

    PubMed Central

    Murad, Abdulmajid

    2017-01-01

    Adopting deep learning methods for human activity recognition has been effective in extracting discriminative features from raw input sequences acquired from body-worn sensors. Although human movements are encoded in a sequence of successive samples in time, typical machine learning methods perform recognition tasks without exploiting the temporal correlations between input data samples. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) address this issue by using convolutions across a one-dimensional temporal sequence to capture dependencies among input data. However, the size of convolutional kernels restricts the captured range of dependencies between data samples. As a result, typical models are unadaptable to a wide range of activity-recognition configurations and require fixed-length input windows. In this paper, we propose the use of deep recurrent neural networks (DRNNs) for building recognition models that are capable of capturing long-range dependencies in variable-length input sequences. We present unidirectional, bidirectional, and cascaded architectures based on long short-term memory (LSTM) DRNNs and evaluate their effectiveness on miscellaneous benchmark datasets. Experimental results show that our proposed models outperform methods employing conventional machine learning, such as support vector machine (SVM) and k-nearest neighbors (KNN). Additionally, the proposed models yield better performance than other deep learning techniques, such as deep believe networks (DBNs) and CNNs. PMID:29113103

  12. Deep Recurrent Neural Networks for Human Activity Recognition.

    PubMed

    Murad, Abdulmajid; Pyun, Jae-Young

    2017-11-06

    Adopting deep learning methods for human activity recognition has been effective in extracting discriminative features from raw input sequences acquired from body-worn sensors. Although human movements are encoded in a sequence of successive samples in time, typical machine learning methods perform recognition tasks without exploiting the temporal correlations between input data samples. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) address this issue by using convolutions across a one-dimensional temporal sequence to capture dependencies among input data. However, the size of convolutional kernels restricts the captured range of dependencies between data samples. As a result, typical models are unadaptable to a wide range of activity-recognition configurations and require fixed-length input windows. In this paper, we propose the use of deep recurrent neural networks (DRNNs) for building recognition models that are capable of capturing long-range dependencies in variable-length input sequences. We present unidirectional, bidirectional, and cascaded architectures based on long short-term memory (LSTM) DRNNs and evaluate their effectiveness on miscellaneous benchmark datasets. Experimental results show that our proposed models outperform methods employing conventional machine learning, such as support vector machine (SVM) and k-nearest neighbors (KNN). Additionally, the proposed models yield better performance than other deep learning techniques, such as deep believe networks (DBNs) and CNNs.

  13. Protein Secondary Structure Prediction Using Deep Convolutional Neural Fields.

    PubMed

    Wang, Sheng; Peng, Jian; Ma, Jianzhu; Xu, Jinbo

    2016-01-11

    Protein secondary structure (SS) prediction is important for studying protein structure and function. When only the sequence (profile) information is used as input feature, currently the best predictors can obtain ~80% Q3 accuracy, which has not been improved in the past decade. Here we present DeepCNF (Deep Convolutional Neural Fields) for protein SS prediction. DeepCNF is a Deep Learning extension of Conditional Neural Fields (CNF), which is an integration of Conditional Random Fields (CRF) and shallow neural networks. DeepCNF can model not only complex sequence-structure relationship by a deep hierarchical architecture, but also interdependency between adjacent SS labels, so it is much more powerful than CNF. Experimental results show that DeepCNF can obtain ~84% Q3 accuracy, ~85% SOV score, and ~72% Q8 accuracy, respectively, on the CASP and CAMEO test proteins, greatly outperforming currently popular predictors. As a general framework, DeepCNF can be used to predict other protein structure properties such as contact number, disorder regions, and solvent accessibility.

  14. Protein Secondary Structure Prediction Using Deep Convolutional Neural Fields

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Wang, Sheng; Peng, Jian; Ma, Jianzhu; Xu, Jinbo

    2016-01-01

    Protein secondary structure (SS) prediction is important for studying protein structure and function. When only the sequence (profile) information is used as input feature, currently the best predictors can obtain ~80% Q3 accuracy, which has not been improved in the past decade. Here we present DeepCNF (Deep Convolutional Neural Fields) for protein SS prediction. DeepCNF is a Deep Learning extension of Conditional Neural Fields (CNF), which is an integration of Conditional Random Fields (CRF) and shallow neural networks. DeepCNF can model not only complex sequence-structure relationship by a deep hierarchical architecture, but also interdependency between adjacent SS labels, so it is much more powerful than CNF. Experimental results show that DeepCNF can obtain ~84% Q3 accuracy, ~85% SOV score, and ~72% Q8 accuracy, respectively, on the CASP and CAMEO test proteins, greatly outperforming currently popular predictors. As a general framework, DeepCNF can be used to predict other protein structure properties such as contact number, disorder regions, and solvent accessibility.

  15. DeepGene: an advanced cancer type classifier based on deep learning and somatic point mutations.

    PubMed

    Yuan, Yuchen; Shi, Yi; Li, Changyang; Kim, Jinman; Cai, Weidong; Han, Zeguang; Feng, David Dagan

    2016-12-23

    With the developments of DNA sequencing technology, large amounts of sequencing data have become available in recent years and provide unprecedented opportunities for advanced association studies between somatic point mutations and cancer types/subtypes, which may contribute to more accurate somatic point mutation based cancer classification (SMCC). However in existing SMCC methods, issues like high data sparsity, small volume of sample size, and the application of simple linear classifiers, are major obstacles in improving the classification performance. To address the obstacles in existing SMCC studies, we propose DeepGene, an advanced deep neural network (DNN) based classifier, that consists of three steps: firstly, the clustered gene filtering (CGF) concentrates the gene data by mutation occurrence frequency, filtering out the majority of irrelevant genes; secondly, the indexed sparsity reduction (ISR) converts the gene data into indexes of its non-zero elements, thereby significantly suppressing the impact of data sparsity; finally, the data after CGF and ISR is fed into a DNN classifier, which extracts high-level features for accurate classification. Experimental results on our curated TCGA-DeepGene dataset, which is a reformulated subset of the TCGA dataset containing 12 selected types of cancer, show that CGF, ISR and DNN all contribute in improving the overall classification performance. We further compare DeepGene with three widely adopted classifiers and demonstrate that DeepGene has at least 24% performance improvement in terms of testing accuracy. Based on deep learning and somatic point mutation data, we devise DeepGene, an advanced cancer type classifier, which addresses the obstacles in existing SMCC studies. Experiments indicate that DeepGene outperforms three widely adopted existing classifiers, which is mainly attributed to its deep learning module that is able to extract the high level features between combinatorial somatic point mutations and

  16. Potential Physiologies of Deep Branches on the Tree of Life with Deep Subsurface Samples from IODP Leg 347: Baltic Sea Paleoenvironment

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Lloyd, K. G.; Bird, J. T.; Shumaker, A.

    2014-12-01

    Very little is known about how evolutionary branches that are distantly related to cultured microorganisms make a living in the deep subsurface marine environment. Here, sediments are cut-off from surface inputs of organic substrates for tens of thousands of years; yet somehow support a diverse population of microorganisms. We examined the potential metabolic and ecological roles of uncultured archaea and bacteria in IODP Leg 347: Baltic Sea Paleoenvironment samples, using quantitative PCR holes 60B, 63E, 65C, and 59C and single cell genomic analysis for hole 60B. We quantified changes in total archaea and bacteria, as well as deeply-branching archaeal taxa with depth. These sediment cores alternate between high and low salinities, following a glacial cycle. This allows changes in the quantities of these groups to be placed in the context of potentially vastly different organic matter sources. In addition, single cells were isolated, and their genomes were amplified and sequenced to allow a deeper look into potential physiologies of uncultured deeply-branching organisms found up to 86 meters deep in marine sediments. Together, these data provide deeper insight into the relationship between microorganisms and their organic matter substrates in this extreme environments.

  17. An adaptive model approach for quantitative wrist rigidity evaluation during deep brain stimulation surgery.

    PubMed

    Assis, Sofia; Costa, Pedro; Rosas, Maria Jose; Vaz, Rui; Silva Cunha, Joao Paulo

    2016-08-01

    Intraoperative evaluation of the efficacy of Deep Brain Stimulation includes evaluation of the effect on rigidity. A subjective semi-quantitative scale is used, dependent on the examiner perception and experience. A system was proposed previously, aiming to tackle this subjectivity, using quantitative data and providing real-time feedback of the computed rigidity reduction, hence supporting the physician decision. This system comprised of a gyroscope-based motion sensor in a textile band, placed in the patients hand, which communicated its measurements to a laptop. The latter computed a signal descriptor from the angular velocity of the hand during wrist flexion in DBS surgery. The first approach relied on using a general rigidity reduction model, regardless of the initial severity of the symptom. Thus, to enhance the performance of the previously presented system, we aimed to develop models for high and low baseline rigidity, according to the examiner assessment before any stimulation. This would allow a more patient-oriented approach. Additionally, usability was improved by having in situ processing in a smartphone, instead of a computer. Such system has shown to be reliable, presenting an accuracy of 82.0% and a mean error of 3.4%. Relatively to previous results, the performance was similar, further supporting the importance of considering the cogwheel rigidity to better infer about the reduction in rigidity. Overall, we present a simple, wearable, mobile system, suitable for intra-operatory conditions during DBS, supporting a physician in decision-making when setting stimulation parameters.

  18. Cognitive Implications of Deep Gray Matter Iron in Multiple Sclerosis.

    PubMed

    Fujiwara, E; Kmech, J A; Cobzas, D; Sun, H; Seres, P; Blevins, G; Wilman, A H

    2017-05-01

    Deep gray matter iron accumulation is increasingly recognized in association with multiple sclerosis and can be measured in vivo with MR imaging. The cognitive implications of this pathology are not well-understood, especially vis-à-vis deep gray matter atrophy. Our aim was to investigate the relationships between cognition and deep gray matter iron in MS by using 2 MR imaging-based iron-susceptibility measures. Forty patients with multiple sclerosis (relapsing-remitting, n = 16; progressive, n = 24) and 27 healthy controls were imaged at 4.7T by using the transverse relaxation rate and quantitative susceptibility mapping. The transverse relaxation rate and quantitative susceptibility mapping values and volumes (atrophy) of the caudate, putamen, globus pallidus, and thalamus were determined by multiatlas segmentation. Cognition was assessed with the Brief Repeatable Battery of Neuropsychological Tests. Relationships between cognition and deep gray matter iron were examined by hierarchic regressions. Compared with controls, patients showed reduced memory ( P < .001) and processing speed ( P = .02) and smaller putamen ( P < .001), globus pallidus ( P = .002), and thalamic volumes ( P < .001). Quantitative susceptibility mapping values were increased in patients compared with controls in the putamen ( P = .003) and globus pallidus ( P = .003). In patients only, thalamus ( P < .001) and putamen ( P = .04) volumes were related to cognitive performance. After we controlled for volume effects, quantitative susceptibility mapping values in the globus pallidus ( P = .03; trend for transverse relaxation rate, P = .10) were still related to cognition. Quantitative susceptibility mapping was more sensitive compared with the transverse relaxation rate in detecting deep gray matter iron accumulation in the current multiple sclerosis cohort. Atrophy and iron accumulation in deep gray matter both have negative but separable relationships to cognition in multiple sclerosis.

  19. Deep neural nets as a method for quantitative structure-activity relationships.

    PubMed

    Ma, Junshui; Sheridan, Robert P; Liaw, Andy; Dahl, George E; Svetnik, Vladimir

    2015-02-23

    Neural networks were widely used for quantitative structure-activity relationships (QSAR) in the 1990s. Because of various practical issues (e.g., slow on large problems, difficult to train, prone to overfitting, etc.), they were superseded by more robust methods like support vector machine (SVM) and random forest (RF), which arose in the early 2000s. The last 10 years has witnessed a revival of neural networks in the machine learning community thanks to new methods for preventing overfitting, more efficient training algorithms, and advancements in computer hardware. In particular, deep neural nets (DNNs), i.e. neural nets with more than one hidden layer, have found great successes in many applications, such as computer vision and natural language processing. Here we show that DNNs can routinely make better prospective predictions than RF on a set of large diverse QSAR data sets that are taken from Merck's drug discovery effort. The number of adjustable parameters needed for DNNs is fairly large, but our results show that it is not necessary to optimize them for individual data sets, and a single set of recommended parameters can achieve better performance than RF for most of the data sets we studied. The usefulness of the parameters is demonstrated on additional data sets not used in the calibration. Although training DNNs is still computationally intensive, using graphical processing units (GPUs) can make this issue manageable.

  20. SHARAKU: an algorithm for aligning and clustering read mapping profiles of deep sequencing in non-coding RNA processing.

    PubMed

    Tsuchiya, Mariko; Amano, Kojiro; Abe, Masaya; Seki, Misato; Hase, Sumitaka; Sato, Kengo; Sakakibara, Yasubumi

    2016-06-15

    Deep sequencing of the transcripts of regulatory non-coding RNA generates footprints of post-transcriptional processes. After obtaining sequence reads, the short reads are mapped to a reference genome, and specific mapping patterns can be detected called read mapping profiles, which are distinct from random non-functional degradation patterns. These patterns reflect the maturation processes that lead to the production of shorter RNA sequences. Recent next-generation sequencing studies have revealed not only the typical maturation process of miRNAs but also the various processing mechanisms of small RNAs derived from tRNAs and snoRNAs. We developed an algorithm termed SHARAKU to align two read mapping profiles of next-generation sequencing outputs for non-coding RNAs. In contrast with previous work, SHARAKU incorporates the primary and secondary sequence structures into an alignment of read mapping profiles to allow for the detection of common processing patterns. Using a benchmark simulated dataset, SHARAKU exhibited superior performance to previous methods for correctly clustering the read mapping profiles with respect to 5'-end processing and 3'-end processing from degradation patterns and in detecting similar processing patterns in deriving the shorter RNAs. Further, using experimental data of small RNA sequencing for the common marmoset brain, SHARAKU succeeded in identifying the significant clusters of read mapping profiles for similar processing patterns of small derived RNA families expressed in the brain. The source code of our program SHARAKU is available at http://www.dna.bio.keio.ac.jp/sharaku/, and the simulated dataset used in this work is available at the same link. Accession code: The sequence data from the whole RNA transcripts in the hippocampus of the left brain used in this work is available from the DNA DataBank of Japan (DDBJ) Sequence Read Archive (DRA) under the accession number DRA004502. yasu@bio.keio.ac.jp Supplementary data are available

  1. RNA deep sequencing as a tool for selection of cell lines for systematic subcellular localization of all human proteins.

    PubMed

    Danielsson, Frida; Wiking, Mikaela; Mahdessian, Diana; Skogs, Marie; Ait Blal, Hammou; Hjelmare, Martin; Stadler, Charlotte; Uhlén, Mathias; Lundberg, Emma

    2013-01-04

    One of the major challenges of a chromosome-centric proteome project is to explore in a systematic manner the potential proteins identified from the chromosomal genome sequence, but not yet characterized on a protein level. Here, we describe the use of RNA deep sequencing to screen human cell lines for RNA profiles and to use this information to select cell lines suitable for characterization of the corresponding gene product. In this manner, the subcellular localization of proteins can be analyzed systematically using antibody-based confocal microscopy. We demonstrate the usefulness of selecting cell lines with high expression levels of RNA transcripts to increase the likelihood of high quality immunofluorescence staining and subsequent successful subcellular localization of the corresponding protein. The results show a path to combine transcriptomics with affinity proteomics to characterize the proteins in a gene- or chromosome-centric manner.

  2. Two-phase designs for joint quantitative-trait-dependent and genotype-dependent sampling in post-GWAS regional sequencing.

    PubMed

    Espin-Garcia, Osvaldo; Craiu, Radu V; Bull, Shelley B

    2018-02-01

    We evaluate two-phase designs to follow-up findings from genome-wide association study (GWAS) when the cost of regional sequencing in the entire cohort is prohibitive. We develop novel expectation-maximization-based inference under a semiparametric maximum likelihood formulation tailored for post-GWAS inference. A GWAS-SNP (where SNP is single nucleotide polymorphism) serves as a surrogate covariate in inferring association between a sequence variant and a normally distributed quantitative trait (QT). We assess test validity and quantify efficiency and power of joint QT-SNP-dependent sampling and analysis under alternative sample allocations by simulations. Joint allocation balanced on SNP genotype and extreme-QT strata yields significant power improvements compared to marginal QT- or SNP-based allocations. We illustrate the proposed method and evaluate the sensitivity of sample allocation to sampling variation using data from a sequencing study of systolic blood pressure. © 2017 The Authors. Genetic Epidemiology Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  3. Population-genomic variation within RNA viruses of the Western honey bee, Apis mellifera, inferred from deep sequencing

    PubMed Central

    2013-01-01

    Background Deep sequencing of viruses isolated from infected hosts is an efficient way to measure population-genetic variation and can reveal patterns of dispersal and natural selection. In this study, we mined existing Illumina sequence reads to investigate single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within two RNA viruses of the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera), deformed wing virus (DWV) and Israel acute paralysis virus (IAPV). All viral RNA was extracted from North American samples of honey bees or, in one case, the ectoparasitic mite Varroa destructor. Results Coverage depth was generally lower for IAPV than DWV, and marked gaps in coverage occurred in several narrow regions (< 50 bp) of IAPV. These coverage gaps occurred across sequencing runs and were virtually unchanged when reads were re-mapped with greater permissiveness (up to 8% divergence), suggesting a recurrent sequencing artifact rather than strain divergence. Consensus sequences of DWV for each sample showed little phylogenetic divergence, low nucleotide diversity, and strongly negative values of Fu and Li’s D statistic, suggesting a recent population bottleneck and/or purifying selection. The Kakugo strain of DWV fell outside of all other DWV sequences at 100% bootstrap support. IAPV consensus sequences supported the existence of multiple clades as had been previously reported, and Fu and Li’s D was closer to neutral expectation overall, although a sliding-window analysis identified a significantly positive D within the protease region, suggesting selection maintains diversity in that region. Within-sample mean diversity was comparable between the two viruses on average, although for both viruses there was substantial variation among samples in mean diversity at third codon positions and in the number of high-diversity sites. FST values were bimodal for DWV, likely reflecting neutral divergence in two low-diversity populations, whereas IAPV had several sites that were strong outliers with very low

  4. Population-genomic variation within RNA viruses of the Western honey bee, Apis mellifera, inferred from deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Cornman, Robert Scott; Boncristiani, Humberto; Dainat, Benjamin; Chen, Yanping; vanEngelsdorp, Dennis; Weaver, Daniel; Evans, Jay D

    2013-03-07

    Deep sequencing of viruses isolated from infected hosts is an efficient way to measure population-genetic variation and can reveal patterns of dispersal and natural selection. In this study, we mined existing Illumina sequence reads to investigate single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within two RNA viruses of the Western honey bee (Apis mellifera), deformed wing virus (DWV) and Israel acute paralysis virus (IAPV). All viral RNA was extracted from North American samples of honey bees or, in one case, the ectoparasitic mite Varroa destructor. Coverage depth was generally lower for IAPV than DWV, and marked gaps in coverage occurred in several narrow regions (< 50 bp) of IAPV. These coverage gaps occurred across sequencing runs and were virtually unchanged when reads were re-mapped with greater permissiveness (up to 8% divergence), suggesting a recurrent sequencing artifact rather than strain divergence. Consensus sequences of DWV for each sample showed little phylogenetic divergence, low nucleotide diversity, and strongly negative values of Fu and Li's D statistic, suggesting a recent population bottleneck and/or purifying selection. The Kakugo strain of DWV fell outside of all other DWV sequences at 100% bootstrap support. IAPV consensus sequences supported the existence of multiple clades as had been previously reported, and Fu and Li's D was closer to neutral expectation overall, although a sliding-window analysis identified a significantly positive D within the protease region, suggesting selection maintains diversity in that region. Within-sample mean diversity was comparable between the two viruses on average, although for both viruses there was substantial variation among samples in mean diversity at third codon positions and in the number of high-diversity sites. FST values were bimodal for DWV, likely reflecting neutral divergence in two low-diversity populations, whereas IAPV had several sites that were strong outliers with very low FST. This initial

  5. Ultra-deep sequencing reveals high prevalence and broad structural diversity of hepatitis B surface antigen mutations in a global population

    PubMed Central

    Gencay, Mikael; Hübner, Kirsten; Gohl, Peter; Seffner, Anja; Weizenegger, Michael; Neofytos, Dionysios; Batrla, Richard; Woeste, Andreas; Kim, Hyon-suk; Westergaard, Gaston; Reinsch, Christine; Brill, Eva; Thu Thuy, Pham Thi; Hoang, Bui Huu; Sonderup, Mark; Spearman, C. Wendy; Pabinger, Stephan; Gautier, Jérémie; Brancaccio, Giuseppina; Fasano, Massimo; Santantonio, Teresa; Gaeta, Giovanni B.; Nauck, Markus; Kaminski, Wolfgang E.

    2017-01-01

    The diversity of the hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) has a significant impact on the performance of diagnostic screening tests and the clinical outcome of hepatitis B infection. Neutralizing or diagnostic antibodies against the HBsAg are directed towards its highly conserved major hydrophilic region (MHR), in particular towards its “a” determinant subdomain. Here, we explored, on a global scale, the genetic diversity of the HBsAg MHR in a large, multi-ethnic cohort of randomly selected subjects with HBV infection from four continents. A total of 1553 HBsAg positive blood samples of subjects originating from 20 different countries across Africa, America, Asia and central Europe were characterized for amino acid variation in the MHR. Using highly sensitive ultra-deep sequencing, we found 72.8% of the successfully sequenced subjects (n = 1391) demonstrated amino acid sequence variation in the HBsAg MHR. This indicates that the global variation frequency in the HBsAg MHR is threefold higher than previously reported. The majority of the amino acid mutations were found in the HBV genotypes B (28.9%) and C (25.4%). Collectively, we identified 345 distinct amino acid mutations in the MHR. Among these, we report 62 previously unknown mutations, which extends the worldwide pool of currently known HBsAg MHR mutations by 22%. Importantly, topological analysis identified the “a” determinant upstream flanking region as the structurally most diverse subdomain of the HBsAg MHR. The highest prevalence of “a” determinant region mutations was observed in subjects from Asia, followed by the African, American and European cohorts, respectively. Finally, we found that more than half (59.3%) of all HBV subjects investigated carried multiple MHR mutations. Together, this worldwide ultra-deep sequencing based genotyping study reveals that the global prevalence and structural complexity of variation in the hepatitis B surface antigen have, to date, been significantly

  6. Key roles for freshwater Actinobacteria revealed by deep metagenomic sequencing.

    PubMed

    Ghai, Rohit; Mizuno, Carolina Megumi; Picazo, Antonio; Camacho, Antonio; Rodriguez-Valera, Francisco

    2014-12-01

    Freshwater ecosystems are critical but fragile environments directly affecting society and its welfare. However, our understanding of genuinely freshwater microbial communities, constrained by our capacity to manipulate its prokaryotic participants in axenic cultures, remains very rudimentary. Even the most abundant components, freshwater Actinobacteria, remain largely unknown. Here, applying deep metagenomic sequencing to the microbial community of a freshwater reservoir, we were able to circumvent this traditional bottleneck and reconstruct de novo seven distinct streamlined actinobacterial genomes. These genomes represent three new groups of photoheterotrophic, planktonic Actinobacteria. We describe for the first time genomes of two novel clades, acMicro (Micrococcineae, related to Luna2,) and acAMD (Actinomycetales, related to acTH1). Besides, an aggregate of contigs belonged to a new branch of the Acidimicrobiales. All are estimated to have small genomes (approximately 1.2 Mb), and their GC content varied from 40 to 61%. One of the Micrococcineae genomes encodes a proteorhodopsin, a rhodopsin type reported for the first time in Actinobacteria. The remarkable potential capacity of some of these genomes to transform recalcitrant plant detrital material, particularly lignin-derived compounds, suggests close linkages between the terrestrial and aquatic realms. Moreover, abundances of Actinobacteria correlate inversely to those of Cyanobacteria that are responsible for prolonged and frequently irretrievable damage to freshwater ecosystems. This suggests that they might serve as sentinels of impending ecological catastrophes. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  7. Deep sequencing identifies circulating mouse miRNAs that are functionally implicated in manifestations of aging and responsive to calorie restriction.

    PubMed

    Dhahbi, Joseph M; Spindler, Stephen R; Atamna, Hani; Yamakawa, Amy; Guerrero, Noel; Boffelli, Dario; Mote, Patricia; Martin, David I K

    2013-02-01

    MicroRNAs (miRNAs) function to modulate gene expression, and through this property they regulate a broad spectrum of cellular processes. They can circulate in blood and thereby mediate cell-to-cell communication. Aging involves changes in many cellular processes that are potentially regulated by miRNAs, and some evidence has implicated circulating miRNAs in the aging process. In order to initiate a comprehensive assessment of the role of circulating miRNAs in aging, we have used deep sequencing to characterize circulating miRNAs in the serum of young mice, old mice, and old mice maintained on calorie restriction (CR). Deep sequencing identifies a set of novel miRNAs, and also accurately measures all known miRNAs present in serum. This analysis demonstrates that the levels of many miRNAs circulating in the mouse are increased with age, and that the increases can be antagonized by CR. The genes targeted by this set of age-modulated miRNAs are predicted to regulate biological processes directly relevant to the manifestations of aging including metabolic changes, and the miRNAs themselves have been linked to diseases associated with old age. This finding implicates circulating miRNAs in the aging process, raising questions about their tissues of origin, their cellular targets, and their functional role in metabolic changes that occur with aging.

  8. Identification and characterization of novel serum microRNA candidates from deep sequencing in cervical cancer patients.

    PubMed

    Juan, Li; Tong, Hong-li; Zhang, Pengjun; Guo, Guanghong; Wang, Zi; Wen, Xinyu; Dong, Zhennan; Tian, Ya-ping

    2014-09-03

    Small non-coding microRNAs (miRNAs) are involved in cancer development and progression, and serum profiles of cervical cancer patients may be useful for identifying novel miRNAs. We performed deep sequencing on serum pools of cervical cancer patients and healthy controls with 3 replicates and constructed a small RNA library. We used MIREAP to predict novel miRNAs and identified 2 putative novel miRNAs between serum pools of cervical cancer patients and healthy controls after filtering out pseudo-pre-miRNAs using Triplet-SVM analysis. The 2 putative novel miRNAs were validated by real time PCR and were significantly decreased in cervical cancer patients compared with healthy controls. One novel miRNA had an area under curve (AUC) of 0.921 (95% CI: 0.883, 0.959) with a sensitivity of 85.7% and a specificity of 88.2% when discriminating between cervical cancer patients and healthy controls. Our results suggest that characterizing serum profiles of cervical cancers by Solexa sequencing may be a good method for identifying novel miRNAs and that the validated novel miRNAs described here may be cervical cancer-associated biomarkers.

  9. NNAlign: A Web-Based Prediction Method Allowing Non-Expert End-User Discovery of Sequence Motifs in Quantitative Peptide Data

    PubMed Central

    Andreatta, Massimo; Schafer-Nielsen, Claus; Lund, Ole; Buus, Søren; Nielsen, Morten

    2011-01-01

    Recent advances in high-throughput technologies have made it possible to generate both gene and protein sequence data at an unprecedented rate and scale thereby enabling entirely new “omics”-based approaches towards the analysis of complex biological processes. However, the amount and complexity of data that even a single experiment can produce seriously challenges researchers with limited bioinformatics expertise, who need to handle, analyze and interpret the data before it can be understood in a biological context. Thus, there is an unmet need for tools allowing non-bioinformatics users to interpret large data sets. We have recently developed a method, NNAlign, which is generally applicable to any biological problem where quantitative peptide data is available. This method efficiently identifies underlying sequence patterns by simultaneously aligning peptide sequences and identifying motifs associated with quantitative readouts. Here, we provide a web-based implementation of NNAlign allowing non-expert end-users to submit their data (optionally adjusting method parameters), and in return receive a trained method (including a visual representation of the identified motif) that subsequently can be used as prediction method and applied to unknown proteins/peptides. We have successfully applied this method to several different data sets including peptide microarray-derived sets containing more than 100,000 data points. NNAlign is available online at http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/services/NNAlign. PMID:22073191

  10. NNAlign: a web-based prediction method allowing non-expert end-user discovery of sequence motifs in quantitative peptide data.

    PubMed

    Andreatta, Massimo; Schafer-Nielsen, Claus; Lund, Ole; Buus, Søren; Nielsen, Morten

    2011-01-01

    Recent advances in high-throughput technologies have made it possible to generate both gene and protein sequence data at an unprecedented rate and scale thereby enabling entirely new "omics"-based approaches towards the analysis of complex biological processes. However, the amount and complexity of data that even a single experiment can produce seriously challenges researchers with limited bioinformatics expertise, who need to handle, analyze and interpret the data before it can be understood in a biological context. Thus, there is an unmet need for tools allowing non-bioinformatics users to interpret large data sets. We have recently developed a method, NNAlign, which is generally applicable to any biological problem where quantitative peptide data is available. This method efficiently identifies underlying sequence patterns by simultaneously aligning peptide sequences and identifying motifs associated with quantitative readouts. Here, we provide a web-based implementation of NNAlign allowing non-expert end-users to submit their data (optionally adjusting method parameters), and in return receive a trained method (including a visual representation of the identified motif) that subsequently can be used as prediction method and applied to unknown proteins/peptides. We have successfully applied this method to several different data sets including peptide microarray-derived sets containing more than 100,000 data points. NNAlign is available online at http://www.cbs.dtu.dk/services/NNAlign.

  11. Insights into the genetic structure and diversity of 38 South Asian Indians from deep whole-genome sequencing.

    PubMed

    Wong, Lai-Ping; Lai, Jason Kuan-Han; Saw, Woei-Yuh; Ong, Rick Twee-Hee; Cheng, Anthony Youzhi; Pillai, Nisha Esakimuthu; Liu, Xuanyao; Xu, Wenting; Chen, Peng; Foo, Jia-Nee; Tan, Linda Wei-Lin; Koo, Seok-Hwee; Soong, Richie; Wenk, Markus Rene; Lim, Wei-Yen; Khor, Chiea-Chuen; Little, Peter; Chia, Kee-Seng; Teo, Yik-Ying

    2014-05-01

    South Asia possesses a significant amount of genetic diversity due to considerable intergroup differences in culture and language. There have been numerous reports on the genetic structure of Asian Indians, although these have mostly relied on genotyping microarrays or targeted sequencing of the mitochondria and Y chromosomes. Asian Indians in Singapore are primarily descendants of immigrants from Dravidian-language-speaking states in south India, and 38 individuals from the general population underwent deep whole-genome sequencing with a target coverage of 30X as part of the Singapore Sequencing Indian Project (SSIP). The genetic structure and diversity of these samples were compared against samples from the Singapore Sequencing Malay Project and populations in Phase 1 of the 1,000 Genomes Project (1 KGP). SSIP samples exhibited greater intra-population genetic diversity and possessed higher heterozygous-to-homozygous genotype ratio than other Asian populations. When compared against a panel of well-defined Asian Indians, the genetic makeup of the SSIP samples was closely related to South Indians. However, even though the SSIP samples clustered distinctly from the Europeans in the global population structure analysis with autosomal SNPs, eight samples were assigned to mitochondrial haplogroups that were predominantly present in Europeans and possessed higher European admixture than the remaining samples. An analysis of the relative relatedness between SSIP with two archaic hominins (Denisovan, Neanderthal) identified higher ancient admixture in East Asian populations than in SSIP. The data resource for these samples is publicly available and is expected to serve as a valuable complement to the South Asian samples in Phase 3 of 1 KGP.

  12. Single-shot T2 mapping using overlapping-echo detachment planar imaging and a deep convolutional neural network.

    PubMed

    Cai, Congbo; Wang, Chao; Zeng, Yiqing; Cai, Shuhui; Liang, Dong; Wu, Yawen; Chen, Zhong; Ding, Xinghao; Zhong, Jianhui

    2018-04-24

    An end-to-end deep convolutional neural network (CNN) based on deep residual network (ResNet) was proposed to efficiently reconstruct reliable T 2 mapping from single-shot overlapping-echo detachment (OLED) planar imaging. The training dataset was obtained from simulations that were carried out on SPROM (Simulation with PRoduct Operator Matrix) software developed by our group. The relationship between the original OLED image containing two echo signals and the corresponding T 2 mapping was learned by ResNet training. After the ResNet was trained, it was applied to reconstruct the T 2 mapping from simulation and in vivo human brain data. Although the ResNet was trained entirely on simulated data, the trained network was generalized well to real human brain data. The results from simulation and in vivo human brain experiments show that the proposed method significantly outperforms the echo-detachment-based method. Reliable T 2 mapping with higher accuracy is achieved within 30 ms after the network has been trained, while the echo-detachment-based OLED reconstruction method took approximately 2 min. The proposed method will facilitate real-time dynamic and quantitative MR imaging via OLED sequence, and deep convolutional neural network has the potential to reconstruct maps from complex MRI sequences efficiently. © 2018 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

  13. A deep learning method for lincRNA detection using auto-encoder algorithm.

    PubMed

    Yu, Ning; Yu, Zeng; Pan, Yi

    2017-12-06

    RNA sequencing technique (RNA-seq) enables scientists to develop novel data-driven methods for discovering more unidentified lincRNAs. Meantime, knowledge-based technologies are experiencing a potential revolution ignited by the new deep learning methods. By scanning the newly found data set from RNA-seq, scientists have found that: (1) the expression of lincRNAs appears to be regulated, that is, the relevance exists along the DNA sequences; (2) lincRNAs contain some conversed patterns/motifs tethered together by non-conserved regions. The two evidences give the reasoning for adopting knowledge-based deep learning methods in lincRNA detection. Similar to coding region transcription, non-coding regions are split at transcriptional sites. However, regulatory RNAs rather than message RNAs are generated. That is, the transcribed RNAs participate the biological process as regulatory units instead of generating proteins. Identifying these transcriptional regions from non-coding regions is the first step towards lincRNA recognition. The auto-encoder method achieves 100% and 92.4% prediction accuracy on transcription sites over the putative data sets. The experimental results also show the excellent performance of predictive deep neural network on the lincRNA data sets compared with support vector machine and traditional neural network. In addition, it is validated through the newly discovered lincRNA data set and one unreported transcription site is found by feeding the whole annotated sequences through the deep learning machine, which indicates that deep learning method has the extensive ability for lincRNA prediction. The transcriptional sequences of lincRNAs are collected from the annotated human DNA genome data. Subsequently, a two-layer deep neural network is developed for the lincRNA detection, which adopts the auto-encoder algorithm and utilizes different encoding schemes to obtain the best performance over intergenic DNA sequence data. Driven by those newly

  14. Complete genome sequence of the aerobic, heterotroph Marinithermus hydrothermalis type strain (T1T) from a deep-sea hydrothermal vent chimney

    PubMed Central

    Copeland, Alex; Gu, Wei; Yasawong, Montri; Lapidus, Alla; Lucas, Susan; Deshpande, Shweta; Pagani, Ioanna; Tapia, Roxanne; Cheng, Jan-Fang; Goodwin, Lynne A.; Pitluck, Sam; Liolios, Konstantinos; Ivanova, Natalia; Mavromatis, Konstantinos; Mikhailova, Natalia; Pati, Amrita; Chen, Amy; Palaniappan, Krishna; Land, Miriam; Pan, Chongle; Brambilla, Evelyne-Marie; Rohde, Manfred; Tindall, Brian J.; Sikorski, Johannes; Göker, Markus; Detter, John C.; Bristow, James; Eisen, Jonathan A.; Markowitz, Victor; Hugenholtz, Philip; Kyrpides, Nikos C.; Klenk, Hans-Peter; Woyke, Tanja

    2012-01-01

    Marinithermus hydrothermalis Sako et al. 2003 is the type species of the monotypic genus Marinithermus. M. hydrothermalis T1T was the first isolate within the phylum “Thermus-Deinococcus” to exhibit optimal growth under a salinity equivalent to that of sea water and to have an absolute requirement for NaCl for growth. M. hydrothermalis T1T is of interest because it may provide a new insight into the ecological significance of the aerobic, thermophilic decomposers in the circulation of organic compounds in deep-sea hydrothermal vent ecosystems. This is the first completed genome sequence of a member of the genus Marinithermus and the seventh sequence from the family Thermaceae. Here we describe the features of this organism, together with the complete genome sequence and annotation. The 2,269,167 bp long genome with its 2,251 protein-coding and 59 RNA genes is a part of the Genomic Encyclopedia of Bacteria and Archaea project. PMID:22675595

  15. Analysis of Variability in HIV-1 Subtype A Strains in Russia Suggests a Combination of Deep Sequencing and Multitarget RNA Interference for Silencing of the Virus.

    PubMed

    Kretova, Olga V; Chechetkin, Vladimir R; Fedoseeva, Daria M; Kravatsky, Yuri V; Sosin, Dmitri V; Alembekov, Ildar R; Gorbacheva, Maria A; Gashnikova, Natalya M; Tchurikov, Nickolai A

    2017-02-01

    Any method for silencing the activity of the HIV-1 retrovirus should tackle the extremely high variability of HIV-1 sequences and mutational escape. We studied sequence variability in the vicinity of selected RNA interference (RNAi) targets from isolates of HIV-1 subtype A in Russia, and we propose that using artificial RNAi is a potential alternative to traditional antiretroviral therapy. We prove that using multiple RNAi targets overcomes the variability in HIV-1 isolates. The optimal number of targets critically depends on the conservation of the target sequences. The total number of targets that are conserved with a probability of 0.7-0.8 should exceed at least 2. Combining deep sequencing and multitarget RNAi may provide an efficient approach to cure HIV/AIDS.

  16. Multiplexed enrichment of rare DNA variants via sequence-selective and temperature-robust amplification

    PubMed Central

    Wu, Lucia R.; Chen, Sherry X.; Wu, Yalei; Patel, Abhijit A.; Zhang, David Yu

    2018-01-01

    Rare DNA-sequence variants hold important clinical and biological information, but existing detection techniques are expensive, complex, allele-specific, or don’t allow for significant multiplexing. Here, we report a temperature-robust polymerase-chain-reaction method, which we term blocker displacement amplification (BDA), that selectively amplifies all sequence variants, including single-nucleotide variants (SNVs), within a roughly 20-nucleotide window by 1,000-fold over wild-type sequences. This allows for easy detection and quantitation of hundreds of potential variants originally at ≤0.1% in allele frequency. BDA is compatible with inexpensive thermocycler instrumentation and employs a rationally designed competitive hybridization reaction to achieve comparable enrichment performance across annealing temperatures ranging from 56 °C to 64 °C. To show the sequence generality of BDA, we demonstrate enrichment of 156 SNVs and the reliable detection of single-digit copies. We also show that the BDA detection of rare driver mutations in cell-free DNA samples extracted from the blood plasma of lung-cancer patients is highly consistent with deep sequencing using molecular lineage tags, with a receiver operator characteristic accuracy of 95%. PMID:29805844

  17. Aftershock occurrence rate decay for individual sequences and catalogs

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Nyffenegger, Paul A.

    aftershock sequence decay for deep sequences. For seven exceptional deep sequences, we conclude that MOL decay adequately describes these sequences, and little difference exists compared to shallow sequences. However, they do include larger aftershock populations compared to most deep sequences. These results imply that p values for deep sequences are larger than those for intermediate depth sequences.

  18. Massively parallel digital high resolution melt for rapid and absolutely quantitative sequence profiling

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Velez, Daniel Ortiz; Mack, Hannah; Jupe, Julietta; Hawker, Sinead; Kulkarni, Ninad; Hedayatnia, Behnam; Zhang, Yang; Lawrence, Shelley; Fraley, Stephanie I.

    2017-02-01

    In clinical diagnostics and pathogen detection, profiling of complex samples for low-level genotypes represents a significant challenge. Advances in speed, sensitivity, and extent of multiplexing of molecular pathogen detection assays are needed to improve patient care. We report the development of an integrated platform enabling the identification of bacterial pathogen DNA sequences in complex samples in less than four hours. The system incorporates a microfluidic chip and instrumentation to accomplish universal PCR amplification, High Resolution Melting (HRM), and machine learning within 20,000 picoliter scale reactions, simultaneously. Clinically relevant concentrations of bacterial DNA molecules are separated by digitization across 20,000 reactions and amplified with universal primers targeting the bacterial 16S gene. Amplification is followed by HRM sequence fingerprinting in all reactions, simultaneously. The resulting bacteria-specific melt curves are identified by Support Vector Machine learning, and individual pathogen loads are quantified. The platform reduces reaction volumes by 99.995% and achieves a greater than 200-fold increase in dynamic range of detection compared to traditional PCR HRM approaches. Type I and II error rates are reduced by 99% and 100% respectively, compared to intercalating dye-based digital PCR (dPCR) methods. This technology could impact a number of quantitative profiling applications, especially infectious disease diagnostics.

  19. Deep sequencing and flow cytometric characterization of expanded effector memory CD8+CD57+ T cells frequently reveals T-cell receptor Vβ oligoclonality and CDR3 homology in acquired aplastic anemia.

    PubMed

    Giudice, Valentina; Feng, Xingmin; Lin, Zenghua; Hu, Wei; Zhang, Fanmao; Qiao, Wangmin; Ibanez, Maria Del Pilar Fernandez; Rios, Olga; Young, Neal S

    2018-05-01

    Oligoclonal expansion of CD8 + CD28 - lymphocytes has been considered indirect evidence for a pathogenic immune response in acquired aplastic anemia. A subset of CD8 + CD28 - cells with CD57 expression, termed effector memory cells, is expanded in several immune-mediated diseases and may have a role in immune surveillance. We hypothesized that effector memory CD8 + CD28 - CD57 + cells may drive aberrant oligoclonal expansion in aplastic anemia. We found CD8 + CD57 + cells frequently expanded in the blood of aplastic anemia patients, with oligoclonal characteristics by flow cytometric Vβ usage analysis: skewing in 1-5 Vβ families and frequencies of immunodominant clones ranging from 1.98% to 66.5%. Oligoclonal characteristics were also observed in total CD8 + cells from aplastic anemia patients with CD8 + CD57 + cell expansion by T-cell receptor deep sequencing, as well as the presence of 1-3 immunodominant clones. Oligoclonality was confirmed by T-cell receptor repertoire deep sequencing of enriched CD8 + CD57 + cells, which also showed decreased diversity compared to total CD4 + and CD8 + cell pools. From analysis of complementarity-determining region 3 sequences in the CD8 + cell pool, a total of 29 sequences were shared between patients and controls, but these sequences were highly expressed in aplastic anemia subjects and also present in their immunodominant clones. In summary, expansion of effector memory CD8 + T cells is frequent in aplastic anemia and mirrors Vβ oligoclonal expansion. Flow cytometric Vβ usage analysis combined with deep sequencing technologies allows high resolution characterization of the T-cell receptor repertoire, and might represent a useful tool in the diagnosis and periodic evaluation of aplastic anemia patients. (Registered at clinicaltrials.gov identifiers: 00001620, 01623167, 00001397, 00071045, 00081523, 00961064 ). Copyright © 2018 Ferrata Storti Foundation.

  20. SNP discovery through de novo deep sequencing using the next generation of DNA sequencers

    USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

    The production of high volumes of DNA sequence data using new technologies has permitted more efficient identification of single nucleotide polymorphisms in vertebrate genomes. This chapter presented practical methodology for production and analysis of DNA sequence data for SNP discovery....

  1. Discovery and profiling of novel and conserved microRNAs during flower development in Carya cathayensis via deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Wang, Zheng Jia; Huang, Jian Qin; Huang, You Jun; Li, Zheng; Zheng, Bing Song

    2012-08-01

    Hickory (Carya cathayensis Sarg.) is an economically important woody plant in China, but its long juvenile phase delays yield. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are critical regulators of genes and important for normal plant development and physiology, including flower development. We used Solexa technology to sequence two small RNA libraries from two floral differentiation stages in hickory to identify miRNAs related to flower development. We identified 39 conserved miRNA sequences from 114 loci belonging to 23 families as well as two novel and ten potential novel miRNAs belonging to nine families. Moreover, 35 conserved miRNA*s and two novel miRNA*s were detected. Twenty miRNA sequences from 49 loci belonging to 11 families were differentially expressed; all were up-regulated at the later stage of flower development in hickory. Quantitative real-time PCR of 12 conserved miRNA sequences, five novel miRNA families, and two novel miRNA*s validated that all were expressed during hickory flower development, and the expression patterns were similar to those detected with Solexa sequencing. Finally, a total of 146 targets of the novel and conserved miRNAs were predicted. This study identified a diverse set of miRNAs that were closely related to hickory flower development and that could help in plant floral induction.

  2. Structural parameterization and functional prediction of antigenic polypeptome sequences with biological activity through quantitative sequence-activity models (QSAM) by molecular electronegativity edge-distance vector (VMED).

    PubMed

    Li, ZhiLiang; Wu, ShiRong; Chen, ZeCong; Ye, Nancy; Yang, ShengXi; Liao, ChunYang; Zhang, MengJun; Yang, Li; Mei, Hu; Yang, Yan; Zhao, Na; Zhou, Yuan; Zhou, Ping; Xiong, Qing; Xu, Hong; Liu, ShuShen; Ling, ZiHua; Chen, Gang; Li, GenRong

    2007-10-01

    Only from the primary structures of peptides, a new set of descriptors called the molecular electronegativity edge-distance vector (VMED) was proposed and applied to describing and characterizing the molecular structures of oligopeptides and polypeptides, based on the electronegativity of each atom or electronic charge index (ECI) of atomic clusters and the bonding distance between atom-pairs. Here, the molecular structures of antigenic polypeptides were well expressed in order to propose the automated technique for the computerized identification of helper T lymphocyte (Th) epitopes. Furthermore, a modified MED vector was proposed from the primary structures of polypeptides, based on the ECI and the relative bonding distance of the fundamental skeleton groups. The side-chains of each amino acid were here treated as a pseudo-atom. The developed VMED was easy to calculate and able to work. Some quantitative model was established for 28 immunogenic or antigenic polypeptides (AGPP) with 14 (1-14) A(d) and 14 other restricted activities assigned as "1"(+) and "0"(-), respectively. The latter comprised 6 A(b)(15-20), 3 A(k)(21-23), 2 E(k)(24-26), 2 H-2(k)(27 and 28) restricted sequences. Good results were obtained with 90% correct classification (only 2 wrong ones for 20 training samples) and 100% correct prediction (none wrong for 8 testing samples); while contrastively 100% correct classification (none wrong for 20 training samples) and 88% correct classification (1 wrong for 8 testing samples). Both stochastic samplings and cross validations were performed to demonstrate good performance. The described method may also be suitable for estimation and prediction of classes I and II for major histocompatibility antigen (MHC) epitope of human. It will be useful in immune identification and recognition of proteins and genes and in the design and development of subunit vaccines. Several quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) models were developed for various

  3. Quantitative Susceptibility Mapping in Parkinson's Disease.

    PubMed

    Langkammer, Christian; Pirpamer, Lukas; Seiler, Stephan; Deistung, Andreas; Schweser, Ferdinand; Franthal, Sebastian; Homayoon, Nina; Katschnig-Winter, Petra; Koegl-Wallner, Mariella; Pendl, Tamara; Stoegerer, Eva Maria; Wenzel, Karoline; Fazekas, Franz; Ropele, Stefan; Reichenbach, Jürgen Rainer; Schmidt, Reinhold; Schwingenschuh, Petra

    2016-01-01

    Quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM) and R2* relaxation rate mapping have demonstrated increased iron deposition in the substantia nigra of patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the findings in other subcortical deep gray matter nuclei are converse and the sensitivity of QSM and R2* for morphological changes and their relation to clinical measures of disease severity has so far been investigated only sparsely. The local ethics committee approved this study and all subjects gave written informed consent. 66 patients with idiopathic Parkinson's disease and 58 control subjects underwent quantitative MRI at 3T. Susceptibility and R2* maps were reconstructed from a spoiled multi-echo 3D gradient echo sequence. Mean susceptibilities and R2* rates were measured in subcortical deep gray matter nuclei and compared between patients with PD and controls as well as related to clinical variables. Compared to control subjects, patients with PD had increased R2* values in the substantia nigra. QSM also showed higher susceptibilities in patients with PD in substantia nigra, in the nucleus ruber, thalamus, and globus pallidus. Magnetic susceptibility of several of these structures was correlated with the levodopa-equivalent daily dose (LEDD) and clinical markers of motor and non-motor disease severity (total MDS-UPDRS, MDS-UPDRS-I and II). Disease severity as assessed by the Hoehn & Yahr scale was correlated with magnetic susceptibility in the substantia nigra. The established finding of higher R2* rates in the substantia nigra was extended by QSM showing superior sensitivity for PD-related tissue changes in nigrostriatal dopaminergic pathways. QSM additionally reflected the levodopa-dosage and disease severity. These results suggest a more widespread pathologic involvement and QSM as a novel means for its investigation, more sensitive than current MRI techniques.

  4. Uncovering microRNA-mediated response to SO2 stress in Arabidopsis thaliana by deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Li, Lihong; Xue, Meizhao; Yi, Huilan

    2016-10-05

    Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is a major air pollutant and has significant impacts on plants. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of gene expression regulators that play important roles in response to environmental stresses. In this study, deep sequencing was used for genome-wide identification of miRNAs and their expression profiles in response to SO2 stress in Arabidopsis thaliana shoots. A total of 27 conserved miRNAs and 5 novel miRNAs were found to be differentially expressed under SO2 stress. qRT-PCR analysis showed mostly negative correlation between miRNA accumulation and target gene mRNA abundance, suggesting regulatory roles of these miRNAs during SO2 exposure. The target genes of SO2-responsive miRNAs encode transcription factors and proteins that regulate auxin signaling and stress response, and the miRNAs-mediated suppression of these genes could improve plant resistance to SO2 stress. Promoter sequence analysis of genes encoding SO2-responsive miRNAs showed that stress-responsive and phytohormone-related cis-regulatory elements occurred frequently, providing additional evidence of the involvement of miRNAs in adaption to SO2 stress. This study represents a comprehensive expression profiling of SO2-responsive miRNAs in Arabidopsis and broads our perspective on the ubiquitous regulatory roles of miRNAs under stress conditions. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  5. High-throughput sequencing of the entire genomic regions of CCM1/KRIT1, CCM2 and CCM3/PDCD10 to search for pathogenic deep-intronic splice mutations in cerebral cavernous malformations.

    PubMed

    Rath, Matthias; Jenssen, Sönke E; Schwefel, Konrad; Spiegler, Stefanie; Kleimeier, Dana; Sperling, Christian; Kaderali, Lars; Felbor, Ute

    2017-09-01

    Cerebral cavernous malformations (CCM) are vascular lesions of the central nervous system that can cause headaches, seizures and hemorrhagic stroke. Disease-associated mutations have been identified in three genes: CCM1/KRIT1, CCM2 and CCM3/PDCD10. The precise proportion of deep-intronic variants in these genes and their clinical relevance is yet unknown. Here, a long-range PCR (LR-PCR) approach for target enrichment of the entire genomic regions of the three genes was combined with next generation sequencing (NGS) to screen for coding and non-coding variants. NGS detected all six CCM1/KRIT1, two CCM2 and four CCM3/PDCD10 mutations that had previously been identified by Sanger sequencing. Two of the pathogenic variants presented here are novel. Additionally, 20 stringently selected CCM index cases that had remained mutation-negative after conventional sequencing and exclusion of copy number variations were screened for deep-intronic mutations. The combination of bioinformatics filtering and transcript analyses did not reveal any deep-intronic splice mutations in these cases. Our results demonstrate that target enrichment by LR-PCR combined with NGS can be used for a comprehensive analysis of the entire genomic regions of the CCM genes in a research context. However, its clinical utility is limited as deep-intronic splice mutations in CCM1/KRIT1, CCM2 and CCM3/PDCD10 seem to be rather rare. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

  6. Identification of MicroRNAs in Helicoverpa armigera and Spodoptera litura Based on Deep Sequencing and Homology Analysis

    PubMed Central

    Ge, Xie; Zhang, Yong; Jiang, Jianhao; Zhong, Yi; Yang, Xiaonan; Li, Zhiqian; Huang, Yongping; Tan, Anjiang

    2013-01-01

    The current identification of microRNAs (miRNAs) in insects is largely dependent on genome sequences. However, the lack of available genome sequences inhibits the identification of miRNAs in various insect species. In this study, we used a miRNA database of the silkworm Bombyx mori as a reference to identify miRNAs in Helicoverpa armigera and Spodoptera litura using deep sequencing and homology analysis. Because all three species belong to the Lepidoptera, the experiment produced reliable results. Our study identified 97 and 91 conserved miRNAs in H. armigera and S. litura, respectively. Using the genome of B. mori and BAC sequences of H. armigera as references, 1 novel miRNA and 8 novel miRNA candidates were identified in H. armigera, and 4 novel miRNA candidates were identified in S. litura. An evolutionary analysis revealed that most of the identified miRNAs were insect-specific, and more than 20 miRNAs were Lepidoptera-specific. The investigation of the expression patterns of miR-2a, miR-34, miR-2796-3p and miR-11 revealed their potential roles in insect development. miRNA target prediction revealed that conserved miRNA target sites exist in various genes in the 3 species. Conserved miRNA target sites for the Hsp90 gene among the 3 species were validated in the mammalian 293T cell line using a dual-luciferase reporter assay. Our study provides a new approach with which to identify miRNAs in insects lacking genome information and contributes to the functional analysis of insect miRNAs. PMID:23289012

  7. Analytical and Clinical Validation of a Digital Sequencing Panel for Quantitative, Highly Accurate Evaluation of Cell-Free Circulating Tumor DNA

    PubMed Central

    Zill, Oliver A.; Sebisanovic, Dragan; Lopez, Rene; Blau, Sibel; Collisson, Eric A.; Divers, Stephen G.; Hoon, Dave S. B.; Kopetz, E. Scott; Lee, Jeeyun; Nikolinakos, Petros G.; Baca, Arthur M.; Kermani, Bahram G.; Eltoukhy, Helmy; Talasaz, AmirAli

    2015-01-01

    Next-generation sequencing of cell-free circulating solid tumor DNA addresses two challenges in contemporary cancer care. First this method of massively parallel and deep sequencing enables assessment of a comprehensive panel of genomic targets from a single sample, and second, it obviates the need for repeat invasive tissue biopsies. Digital SequencingTM is a novel method for high-quality sequencing of circulating tumor DNA simultaneously across a comprehensive panel of over 50 cancer-related genes with a simple blood test. Here we report the analytic and clinical validation of the gene panel. Analytic sensitivity down to 0.1% mutant allele fraction is demonstrated via serial dilution studies of known samples. Near-perfect analytic specificity (> 99.9999%) enables complete coverage of many genes without the false positives typically seen with traditional sequencing assays at mutant allele frequencies or fractions below 5%. We compared digital sequencing of plasma-derived cell-free DNA to tissue-based sequencing on 165 consecutive matched samples from five outside centers in patients with stage III-IV solid tumor cancers. Clinical sensitivity of plasma-derived NGS was 85.0%, comparable to 80.7% sensitivity for tissue. The assay success rate on 1,000 consecutive samples in clinical practice was 99.8%. Digital sequencing of plasma-derived DNA is indicated in advanced cancer patients to prevent repeated invasive biopsies when the initial biopsy is inadequate, unobtainable for genomic testing, or uninformative, or when the patient’s cancer has progressed despite treatment. Its clinical utility is derived from reduction in the costs, complications and delays associated with invasive tissue biopsies for genomic testing. PMID:26474073

  8. Quantitative assessment of hematopoietic chimerism by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction of sequence polymorphism systems after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.

    PubMed

    Qin, Xiao-ying; Li, Guo-xuan; Qin, Ya-zhen; Wang, Yu; Wang, Feng-rong; Liu, Dai-hong; Xu, Lan-ping; Chen, Huan; Han, Wei; Wang, Jing-zhi; Zhang, Xiao-hui; Li, Jin-lan; Li, Ling-di; Liu, Kai-yan; Huang, Xiao-jun

    2011-08-01

    Analysis of changes in recipient and donor hematopoietic cell origin is extremely useful to monitor the effect of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) and sequential adoptive immunotherapy by donor lymphocyte infusions. We developed a sensitive, reliable and rapid real-time PCR method based on sequence polymorphism systems to quantitatively assess the hematopoietic chimerism after HSCT. A panel of 29 selected sequence polymorphism (SP) markers was screened by real-time PCR in 101 HSCT patients with leukemia and other hematological diseases. The chimerism kinetics of bone marrow samples of 8 HSCT patients in remission and relapse situations were followed longitudinally. Recipient genotype discrimination was possible in 97.0% (98 of 101) with a mean number of 2.5 (1-7) informative markers per recipient/donor pair. Using serial dilutions of plasmids containing specific SP markers, the linear correlation (r) of 0.99, the slope between -3.2 and -3.7 and the sensitivity of 0.1% were proved reproducible. By this method, it was possible to very accurately detect autologous signals in the range from 0.1% to 30%. The accuracy of the method in the very important range of autologous signals below 5% was extraordinarily high (standard deviation <1.85%), which might significantly improve detection accuracy of changes in autologous signals early in the post-transplantation course of follow-up. The main advantage of the real-time PCR method over short tandem repeat PCR chimerism assays is the absence of PCR competition and plateau biases, with demonstrated greater sensitivity and linearity. Finally, we prospectively analyzed bone marrow samples of 8 patients who received allografts and presented the chimerism kinetics of remission and relapse situations that illustrated the sensitivity level and the promising clinical application of this method. This SP-based real-time PCR assay provides a rapid, sensitive, and accurate quantitative assessment of mixed chimerism that can

  9. Event-specific qualitative and quantitative PCR detection of the GMO carnation (Dianthus caryophyllus) variety Moonlite based upon the 5'-transgene integration sequence.

    PubMed

    Li, P; Jia, J W; Jiang, L X; Zhu, H; Bai, L; Wang, J B; Tang, X M; Pan, A H

    2012-04-27

    To ensure the implementation of genetically modified organism (GMO)-labeling regulations, an event-specific detection method was developed based on the junction sequence of an exogenous integrant in the transgenic carnation variety Moonlite. The 5'-transgene integration sequence was isolated by thermal asymmetric interlaced PCR. Based upon the 5'-transgene integration sequence, the event-specific primers and TaqMan probe were designed to amplify the fragments, which spanned the exogenous DNA and carnation genomic DNA. Qualitative and quantitative PCR assays were developed employing the designed primers and probe. The detection limit of the qualitative PCR assay was 0.05% for Moonlite in 100 ng total carnation genomic DNA, corresponding to about 79 copies of the carnation haploid genome; the limit of detection and quantification of the quantitative PCR assay were estimated to be 38 and 190 copies of haploid carnation genomic DNA, respectively. Carnation samples with different contents of genetically modified components were quantified and the bias between the observed and true values of three samples were lower than the acceptance criterion (<25%) of the GMO detection method. These results indicated that these event-specific methods would be useful for the identification and quantification of the GMO carnation Moonlite.

  10. Predicting RNA-protein binding sites and motifs through combining local and global deep convolutional neural networks.

    PubMed

    Pan, Xiaoyong; Shen, Hong-Bin

    2018-05-02

    RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) take over 5∼10% of the eukaryotic proteome and play key roles in many biological processes, e.g. gene regulation. Experimental detection of RBP binding sites is still time-intensive and high-costly. Instead, computational prediction of the RBP binding sites using pattern learned from existing annotation knowledge is a fast approach. From the biological point of view, the local structure context derived from local sequences will be recognized by specific RBPs. However, in computational modeling using deep learning, to our best knowledge, only global representations of entire RNA sequences are employed. So far, the local sequence information is ignored in the deep model construction process. In this study, we present a computational method iDeepE to predict RNA-protein binding sites from RNA sequences by combining global and local convolutional neural networks (CNNs). For the global CNN, we pad the RNA sequences into the same length. For the local CNN, we split a RNA sequence into multiple overlapping fixed-length subsequences, where each subsequence is a signal channel of the whole sequence. Next, we train deep CNNs for multiple subsequences and the padded sequences to learn high-level features, respectively. Finally, the outputs from local and global CNNs are combined to improve the prediction. iDeepE demonstrates a better performance over state-of-the-art methods on two large-scale datasets derived from CLIP-seq. We also find that the local CNN run 1.8 times faster than the global CNN with comparable performance when using GPUs. Our results show that iDeepE has captured experimentally verified binding motifs. https://github.com/xypan1232/iDeepE. xypan172436@gmail.com or hbshen@sjtu.edu.cn. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

  11. Detection and quantification of Plasmodium falciparum in blood samples using quantitative nucleic acid sequence-based amplification.

    PubMed

    Schoone, G J; Oskam, L; Kroon, N C; Schallig, H D; Omar, S A

    2000-11-01

    A quantitative nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (QT-NASBA) assay for the detection of Plasmodium parasites has been developed. Primers and probes were selected on the basis of the sequence of the small-subunit rRNA gene. Quantification was achieved by coamplification of the RNA in the sample with one modified in vitro RNA as a competitor in a single-tube NASBA reaction. Parasite densities ranging from 10 to 10(8) Plasmodium falciparum parasites per ml could be demonstrated and quantified in whole blood. This is approximately 1,000 times more sensitive than conventional microscopy analysis of thick blood smears. Comparison of the parasite densities obtained by microscopy and QT-NASBA with 120 blood samples from Kenyan patients with clinical malaria revealed that for 112 of 120 (93%) of the samples results were within a 1-log difference. QT-NASBA may be especially useful for the detection of low parasite levels in patients with early-stage malaria and for the monitoring of the efficacy of drug treatment.

  12. Three-Dimensional Analysis of Long-Term Midface Volume Change After Vertical Vector Deep-Plane Rhytidectomy.

    PubMed

    Jacono, Andrew A; Malone, Melanie H; Talei, Benjamin

    2015-07-01

    Facial aging is a complicated process that includes volume loss and soft tissue descent. This study provides quantitative 3-dimensional (3D) data on the long-term effect of vertical vector deep-plane rhytidectomy on restoring volume to the midface. To determine if primary vertical vector deep-plane rhytidectomy resulted in long-term volume change in the midface. We performed a prospective study on patients undergoing primary vertical vector deep-plane rhytidectomy to quantitate 3D volume changes in the midface. Quantitative analysis of volume changes was made using the Vectra 3D imaging software (Canfield Scientific, Inc, Fairfield, New Jersey) at a minimum follow-up of 1 year. Forty-three patients (86 hemifaces) were analyzed. The average volume gained in each hemi-midface after vertical vector deep-plane rhytidectomy was 3.2 mL. Vertical vector deep-plane rhytidectomy provides significant long-term augmentation of volume in the midface. These quantitative data demonstrate that some midface volume loss is related to gravitational descent of the cheek fat compartments and that vertical vector deep-plane rhytidectomy may obviate the need for other volumization procedures such as autologous fat grafting in selected cases. 4 Therapeutic. © 2015 The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, Inc. Reprints and permission: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  13. Quantitative Viral Community DNA Analysis Reveals the Dominance of Single-Stranded DNA Viruses in Offshore Upper Bathyal Sediment from Tohoku, Japan

    PubMed Central

    Yoshida, Mitsuhiro; Mochizuki, Tomohiro; Urayama, Syun-Ichi; Yoshida-Takashima, Yukari; Nishi, Shinro; Hirai, Miho; Nomaki, Hidetaka; Takaki, Yoshihiro; Nunoura, Takuro; Takai, Ken

    2018-01-01

    Previous studies on marine environmental virology have primarily focused on double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) viruses; however, it has recently been suggested that single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) viruses are more abundant in marine ecosystems. In this study, we performed a quantitative viral community DNA analysis to estimate the relative abundance and composition of both ssDNA and dsDNA viruses in offshore upper bathyal sediment from Tohoku, Japan (water depth = 500 m). The estimated dsDNA viral abundance ranged from 3 × 106 to 5 × 106 genome copies per cm3 sediment, showing values similar to the range of fluorescence-based direct virus counts. In contrast, the estimated ssDNA viral abundance ranged from 1 × 108 to 3 × 109 genome copies per cm3 sediment, thus providing an estimation that the ssDNA viral populations represent 96.3–99.8% of the benthic total DNA viral assemblages. In the ssDNA viral metagenome, most of the identified viral sequences were associated with ssDNA viral families such as Circoviridae and Microviridae. The principle components analysis of the ssDNA viral sequence components from the sedimentary ssDNA viral metagenomic libraries found that the different depth viral communities at the study site all exhibited similar profiles compared with deep-sea sediment ones at other reference sites. Our results suggested that deep-sea benthic ssDNA viruses have been significantly underestimated by conventional direct virus counts and that their contributions to deep-sea benthic microbial mortality and geochemical cycles should be further addressed by such a new quantitative approach. PMID:29467725

  14. Pre-drill predictions versus post-drill results: use of sequence stratigraphic methods in reduction of exploration risk, Sarawak Deep-water Blocks, Malaysia

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mansor, Md Yazid; Snedden, J. W.; Sarg, J. F.; Smith, B. S.; Kolich, T.; Carter, M.

    1999-04-01

    Limited well control, great distances from age-equivalent producing fields, and a largely unknown stratigraphy necessitated use of sequence stratigraphic methods to assess exploration risk associated with reservoir, source and seal distribution in the Mobil-operated Deep-water Blocks of Sarawak, Malaysia. These methods allowed predictions to be made and reservoir risks to be halved in each of the locations drilled in 1995. Predictions regarding reservoir and stratigraphy proved correct, as the Mulu-1 and Bako-1 wells penetrated numerous high-quality, thick sandstone reservoirs in the Middle to Lower Miocene section. Shallow marine sandstones dominate the vertical succession in both wells, with characteristic aggradational, upward-coarsening log motifs. Cores display classic wave-generated stratification and hummocky cross-bedding. Evidence, such as marginal-marine to neritic microfauna in cuttings of both wells, supports these interpretations. Lack of hydrocarbon charge in the two wells may be due to their position relative to coaly hydrocarbon source beds. These prospects have high trap and seal integrity, being well defined on seismics as high relief horst blocks covered by a very thick shale-prone section. The Mulu-1 well, for example, is located at least 20-30 km down stratigraphic dip from mapped coeval lower coastal-plain deposits. Amplitude anomalies on the flank of the Mulu horst are probably derived from transported organics buried in deep Plio-Pleistocene kitchens in the northwest portion of the Mobil blocks. Remaining potential of mapped prospects is high and efforts continue at characterizing the petroleum system of the Deep-water Blocks. Seismic attribute and interval velocity analyses provide new clues to the location of probable coaly source rocks, especially when viewed in their regional and sequence stratigraphic context. Future work is planned and will serve to reduce risk to acceptable levels and support further drilling in this prospective

  15. Deep Learning for Brain MRI Segmentation: State of the Art and Future Directions.

    PubMed

    Akkus, Zeynettin; Galimzianova, Alfiia; Hoogi, Assaf; Rubin, Daniel L; Erickson, Bradley J

    2017-08-01

    Quantitative analysis of brain MRI is routine for many neurological diseases and conditions and relies on accurate segmentation of structures of interest. Deep learning-based segmentation approaches for brain MRI are gaining interest due to their self-learning and generalization ability over large amounts of data. As the deep learning architectures are becoming more mature, they gradually outperform previous state-of-the-art classical machine learning algorithms. This review aims to provide an overview of current deep learning-based segmentation approaches for quantitative brain MRI. First we review the current deep learning architectures used for segmentation of anatomical brain structures and brain lesions. Next, the performance, speed, and properties of deep learning approaches are summarized and discussed. Finally, we provide a critical assessment of the current state and identify likely future developments and trends.

  16. A quantitative analysis of global intermediate and deep seismicity

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ruscic, Marija; Becker, Dirk; Le Pourhiet, Laetitita; Agard, Philippe; Meier, Thomas

    2017-04-01

    The seismic activity in subduction zones around the world shows a large spatial variabilty with some regions exhibiting strong seismic activity down to depths of almost 700km while in other places seismicity terminates at depths of about 200 or 300 km. Also the decay of the number of seismic events or of the seismic moment with depth is more pronounced in some regions than in others. The same is true for the variability of the ratio of large to small events (the b-value of the Gutenberg-Richter relation) that is varying with depth. These observations are often linked to parameters of the downgoing plate like age or subduction velocity. In this study we investigate a subset of subduction zones utilizing the revised ISC catalogue of intermediate and deep seismicity to determine statistical parameters well suited to describe properties of intermediate deep and deep events. The seismicity is separated into three depth intervals from 50-175km, 175-400km and >400km based on the depth at which the plate contact decouples, the observed nearly exponential decay of the event rate with depth and the supposed depth of phase transition at 410 km depth where also an increase of the event number with depth is observed. For estimation of the b-value and the exponential decay with depth, a restriction of the investigated time interval to the period after 1997 produced significantly better results indicating a globally homogeneous magnitude scale with the magnitude of completeness of about Mw 5. On a global scale the b-value decreases with depth from values of about 1 at 50-175km to values of slightly below 0.8 for events below 400km. Also, there is a slight increase of the b-value with the age of the subducting plate. These changes in the b-value with depth and with age may indicate a varying fragmentation of the slab. With respect to the ratio of the seismic moment between deeper and shallower parts of the subduction zones a dependence on the age is apparent with older slabs

  17. Arthropod phylogenetics in light of three novel millipede (myriapoda: diplopoda) mitochondrial genomes with comments on the appropriateness of mitochondrial genome sequence data for inferring deep level relationships.

    PubMed

    Brewer, Michael S; Swafford, Lynn; Spruill, Chad L; Bond, Jason E

    2013-01-01

    Arthropods are the most diverse group of eukaryotic organisms, but their phylogenetic relationships are poorly understood. Herein, we describe three mitochondrial genomes representing orders of millipedes for which complete genomes had not been characterized. Newly sequenced genomes are combined with existing data to characterize the protein coding regions of myriapods and to attempt to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships within the Myriapoda and Arthropoda. The newly sequenced genomes are similar to previously characterized millipede sequences in terms of synteny and length. Unique translocations occurred within the newly sequenced taxa, including one half of the Appalachioria falcifera genome, which is inverted with respect to other millipede genomes. Across myriapods, amino acid conservation levels are highly dependent on the gene region. Additionally, individual loci varied in the level of amino acid conservation. Overall, most gene regions showed low levels of conservation at many sites. Attempts to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships suffered from questionable relationships and low support values. Analyses of phylogenetic informativeness show the lack of signal deep in the trees (i.e., genes evolve too quickly). As a result, the myriapod tree resembles previously published results but lacks convincing support, and, within the arthropod tree, well established groups were recovered as polyphyletic. The novel genome sequences described herein provide useful genomic information concerning millipede groups that had not been investigated. Taken together with existing sequences, the variety of compositions and evolution of myriapod mitochondrial genomes are shown to be more complex than previously thought. Unfortunately, the use of mitochondrial protein-coding regions in deep arthropod phylogenetics appears problematic, a result consistent with previously published studies. Lack of phylogenetic signal renders the resulting tree topologies as suspect

  18. Quantitative methods for structural characterization of proteins based on deep UV resonance Raman spectroscopy.

    PubMed

    Shashilov, Victor A; Sikirzhytski, Vitali; Popova, Ludmila A; Lednev, Igor K

    2010-09-01

    Here we report on novel quantitative approaches for protein structural characterization using deep UV resonance Raman (DUVRR) spectroscopy. Specifically, we propose a new method combining hydrogen-deuterium (HD) exchange and Bayesian source separation for extracting the DUVRR signatures of various structural elements of aggregated proteins including the cross-beta core and unordered parts of amyloid fibrils. The proposed method is demonstrated using the set of DUVRR spectra of hen egg white lysozyme acquired at various stages of HD exchange. Prior information about the concentration matrix and the spectral features of the individual components was incorporated into the Bayesian equation to eliminate the ill-conditioning of the problem caused by 100% correlation of the concentration profiles of protonated and deuterated species. Secondary structure fractions obtained by partial least squares (PLS) and least squares support vector machines (LS-SVMs) were used as the initial guess for the Bayessian source separation. Advantages of the PLS and LS-SVMs methods over the classical least squares calibration (CLSC) are discussed and illustrated using the DUVRR data of the prion protein in its native and aggregated forms. Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  19. Sequence-specific bias correction for RNA-seq data using recurrent neural networks.

    PubMed

    Zhang, Yao-Zhong; Yamaguchi, Rui; Imoto, Seiya; Miyano, Satoru

    2017-01-25

    The recent success of deep learning techniques in machine learning and artificial intelligence has stimulated a great deal of interest among bioinformaticians, who now wish to bring the power of deep learning to bare on a host of bioinformatical problems. Deep learning is ideally suited for biological problems that require automatic or hierarchical feature representation for biological data when prior knowledge is limited. In this work, we address the sequence-specific bias correction problem for RNA-seq data redusing Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) to model nucleotide sequences without pre-determining sequence structures. The sequence-specific bias of a read is then calculated based on the sequence probabilities estimated by RNNs, and used in the estimation of gene abundance. We explore the application of two popular RNN recurrent units for this task and demonstrate that RNN-based approaches provide a flexible way to model nucleotide sequences without knowledge of predetermined sequence structures. Our experiments show that training a RNN-based nucleotide sequence model is efficient and RNN-based bias correction methods compare well with the-state-of-the-art sequence-specific bias correction method on the commonly used MAQC-III data set. RNNs provides an alternative and flexible way to calculate sequence-specific bias without explicitly pre-determining sequence structures.

  20. Designing deep sequencing experiments: detecting structural variation and estimating transcript abundance.

    PubMed

    Bashir, Ali; Bansal, Vikas; Bafna, Vineet

    2010-06-18

    Massively parallel DNA sequencing technologies have enabled the sequencing of several individual human genomes. These technologies are also being used in novel ways for mRNA expression profiling, genome-wide discovery of transcription-factor binding sites, small RNA discovery, etc. The multitude of sequencing platforms, each with their unique characteristics, pose a number of design challenges, regarding the technology to be used and the depth of sequencing required for a particular sequencing application. Here we describe a number of analytical and empirical results to address design questions for two applications: detection of structural variations from paired-end sequencing and estimating mRNA transcript abundance. For structural variation, our results provide explicit trade-offs between the detection and resolution of rearrangement breakpoints, and the optimal mix of paired-read insert lengths. Specifically, we prove that optimal detection and resolution of breakpoints is achieved using a mix of exactly two insert library lengths. Furthermore, we derive explicit formulae to determine these insert length combinations, enabling a 15% improvement in breakpoint detection at the same experimental cost. On empirical short read data, these predictions show good concordance with Illumina 200 bp and 2 Kbp insert length libraries. For transcriptome sequencing, we determine the sequencing depth needed to detect rare transcripts from a small pilot study. With only 1 Million reads, we derive corrections that enable almost perfect prediction of the underlying expression probability distribution, and use this to predict the sequencing depth required to detect low expressed genes with greater than 95% probability. Together, our results form a generic framework for many design considerations related to high-throughput sequencing. We provide software tools http://bix.ucsd.edu/projects/NGS-DesignTools to derive platform independent guidelines for designing sequencing experiments

  1. Deep sequencing shows that oocytes are not prone to accumulate mtDNA heteroplasmic mutations during ovarian ageing.

    PubMed

    Boucret, L; Bris, C; Seegers, V; Goudenège, D; Desquiret-Dumas, V; Domin-Bernhard, M; Ferré-L'Hotellier, V; Bouet, P E; Descamps, P; Reynier, P; Procaccio, V; May-Panloup, P

    2017-10-01

    Does ovarian ageing increase the number of heteroplasmic mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) point mutations in oocytes? Our results suggest that oocytes are not subject to the accumulation of mtDNA point mutations during ovarian ageing. Ageing is associated with the alteration of mtDNA integrity in various tissues. Primary oocytes, present in the ovary since embryonic life, may accumulate mtDNA mutations during the process of ovarian ageing. This was an observational study of 53 immature oocyte-cumulus complexes retrieved from 35 women undergoing IVF at the University Hospital of Angers, France, from March 2013 to March 2014. The women were classified in two groups, one including 19 women showing signs of ovarian ageing objectified by a diminished ovarian reserve (DOR), and the other, including 16 women with a normal ovarian reserve (NOR), which served as a control group. mtDNA was extracted from isolated oocytes, and from their corresponding cumulus cells (CCs) considered as a somatic cell compartment. The average mtDNA content of each sample was assessed by using a quantitative real-time PCR technique. Deep sequencing was performed using the Ion Torrent Proton for Next-Generation Sequencing. Signal processing and base calling were done by the embedded pre-processing pipeline and the variants were analyzed using an in-house workflow. The distribution of the different variants between DOR and NOR patients, on one hand, and oocyte and CCs, on the other, was analyzed with the generalized mixed linear model to take into account the cluster of cells belonging to a given mother. There were no significant differences between the numbers of mtDNA variants between the DOR and the NOR patients, either in the oocytes (P = 0.867) or in the surrounding CCs (P = 0.154). There were also no differences in terms of variants with potential functional consequences. De-novo mtDNA variants were found in 28% of the oocytes and in 66% of the CCs with the mean number of variants being

  2. Holography as deep learning

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Gan, Wen-Cong; Shu, Fu-Wen

    Quantum many-body problem with exponentially large degrees of freedom can be reduced to a tractable computational form by neural network method [G. Carleo and M. Troyer, Science 355 (2017) 602, arXiv:1606.02318.] The power of deep neural network (DNN) based on deep learning is clarified by mapping it to renormalization group (RG), which may shed lights on holographic principle by identifying a sequence of RG transformations to the AdS geometry. In this paper, we show that any network which reflects RG process has intrinsic hyperbolic geometry, and discuss the structure of entanglement encoded in the graph of DNN. We find the entanglement structure of DNN is of Ryu-Takayanagi form. Based on these facts, we argue that the emergence of holographic gravitational theory is related to deep learning process of the quantum-field theory.

  3. Deep sequencing and proteomic analysis of the microRNA-induced silencing complex in human red blood cells.

    PubMed

    Azzouzi, Imane; Moest, Hansjoerg; Wollscheid, Bernd; Schmugge, Markus; Eekels, Julia J M; Speer, Oliver

    2015-05-01

    During maturation, erythropoietic cells extrude their nuclei but retain their ability to respond to oxidant stress by tightly regulating protein translation. Several studies have reported microRNA-mediated regulation of translation during terminal stages of erythropoiesis, even after enucleation. In the present study, we performed a detailed examination of the endogenous microRNA machinery in human red blood cells using a combination of deep sequencing analysis of microRNAs and proteomic analysis of the microRNA-induced silencing complex. Among the 197 different microRNAs detected, miR-451a was the most abundant, representing more than 60% of all read sequences. In addition, miR-451a and its known target, 14-3-3ζ mRNA, were bound to the microRNA-induced silencing complex, implying their direct interaction in red blood cells. The proteomic characterization of endogenous Argonaute 2-associated microRNA-induced silencing complex revealed 26 cofactor candidates. Among these cofactors, we identified several RNA-binding proteins, as well as motor proteins and vesicular trafficking proteins. Our results demonstrate that red blood cells contain complex microRNA machinery, which might enable immature red blood cells to control protein translation independent of de novo nuclei information. Copyright © 2015 ISEH - International Society for Experimental Hematology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  4. Different rates of spontaneous mutation of chloroplastic and nuclear viroids as determined by high-fidelity ultra-deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    López-Carrasco, Amparo; Ballesteros, Cristina; Sentandreu, Vicente; Delgado, Sonia; Gago-Zachert, Selma; Flores, Ricardo; Sanjuán, Rafael

    2017-09-01

    Mutation rates vary by orders of magnitude across biological systems, being higher for simpler genomes. The simplest known genomes correspond to viroids, subviral plant replicons constituted by circular non-coding RNAs of few hundred bases. Previous work has revealed an extremely high mutation rate for chrysanthemum chlorotic mottle viroid, a chloroplast-replicating viroid. However, whether this is a general feature of viroids remains unclear. Here, we have used high-fidelity ultra-deep sequencing to determine the mutation rate in a common host (eggplant) of two viroids, each representative of one family: the chloroplastic eggplant latent viroid (ELVd, Avsunviroidae) and the nuclear potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTVd, Pospiviroidae). This revealed higher mutation frequencies in ELVd than in PSTVd, as well as marked differences in the types of mutations produced. Rates of spontaneous mutation, quantified in vivo using the lethal mutation method, ranged from 1/1000 to 1/800 for ELVd and from 1/7000 to 1/3800 for PSTVd depending on sequencing run. These results suggest that extremely high mutability is a common feature of chloroplastic viroids, whereas the mutation rates of PSTVd and potentially other nuclear viroids appear significantly lower and closer to those of some RNA viruses.

  5. Deciphering KRAS and NRAS mutated clone dynamics in MLL-AF4 paediatric leukaemia by ultra deep sequencing analysis.

    PubMed

    Trentin, Luca; Bresolin, Silvia; Giarin, Emanuela; Bardini, Michela; Serafin, Valentina; Accordi, Benedetta; Fais, Franco; Tenca, Claudya; De Lorenzo, Paola; Valsecchi, Maria Grazia; Cazzaniga, Giovanni; Kronnie, Geertruy Te; Basso, Giuseppe

    2016-10-04

    To induce and sustain the leukaemogenic process, MLL-AF4+ leukaemia seems to require very few genetic alterations in addition to the fusion gene itself. Studies of infant and paediatric patients with MLL-AF4+ B cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (BCP-ALL) have reported mutations in KRAS and NRAS with incidences ranging from 25 to 50%. Whereas previous studies employed Sanger sequencing, here we used next generation amplicon deep sequencing for in depth evaluation of RAS mutations in 36 paediatric patients at diagnosis of MLL-AF4+ leukaemia. RAS mutations including those in small sub-clones were detected in 63.9% of patients. Furthermore, the mutational analysis of 17 paired samples at diagnosis and relapse revealed complex RAS clone dynamics and showed that the mutated clones present at relapse were almost all originated from clones that were already detectable at diagnosis and survived to the initial therapy. Finally, we showed that mutated patients were indeed characterized by a RAS related signature at both transcriptional and protein levels and that the targeting of the RAS pathway could be of beneficial for treatment of MLL-AF4+ BCP-ALL clones carrying somatic RAS mutations.

  6. Deep Sequencing Analysis of miRNA Expression in Breast Muscle of Fast-Growing and Slow-Growing Broilers

    PubMed Central

    Ouyang, Hongjia; He, Xiaomei; Li, Guihuan; Xu, Haiping; Jia, Xinzheng; Nie, Qinghua; Zhang, Xiquan

    2015-01-01

    Growth performance is an important economic trait in chicken. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been shown to play important roles in various biological processes, but their functions in chicken growth are not yet clear. To investigate the function of miRNAs in chicken growth, breast muscle tissues of the two-tail samples (highest and lowest body weight) from Recessive White Rock (WRR) and Xinghua Chickens (XH) were performed on high throughput small RNA deep sequencing. In this study, a total of 921 miRNAs were identified, including 733 known mature miRNAs and 188 novel miRNAs. There were 200, 279, 257 and 297 differentially expressed miRNAs in the comparisons of WRRh vs. WRRl, WRRh vs. XHh, WRRl vs. XHl, and XHh vs. XHl group, respectively. A total of 22 highly differentially expressed miRNAs (fold change > 2 or < 0.5; p-value < 0.05; q-value < 0.01), which also have abundant expression (read counts > 1000) were found in our comparisons. As far as two analyses (WRRh vs. WRRl, and XHh vs. XHl) are concerned, we found 80 common differentially expressed miRNAs, while 110 miRNAs were found in WRRh vs. XHh and WRRl vs. XHl. Furthermore, 26 common miRNAs were identified among all four comparisons. Four differentially expressed miRNAs (miR-223, miR-16, miR-205a and miR-222b-5p) were validated by quantitative real-time RT-PCR (qRT-PCR). Regulatory networks of interactions among miRNAs and their targets were constructed using integrative miRNA target-prediction and network-analysis. Growth hormone receptor (GHR) was confirmed as a target of miR-146b-3p by dual-luciferase assay and qPCR, indicating that miR-34c, miR-223, miR-146b-3p, miR-21 and miR-205a are key growth-related target genes in the network. These miRNAs are proposed as candidate miRNAs for future studies concerning miRNA-target function on regulation of chicken growth. PMID:26193261

  7. Deep Sequencing Analysis of miRNA Expression in Breast Muscle of Fast-Growing and Slow-Growing Broilers.

    PubMed

    Ouyang, Hongjia; He, Xiaomei; Li, Guihuan; Xu, Haiping; Jia, Xinzheng; Nie, Qinghua; Zhang, Xiquan

    2015-07-17

    Growth performance is an important economic trait in chicken. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) have been shown to play important roles in various biological processes, but their functions in chicken growth are not yet clear. To investigate the function of miRNAs in chicken growth, breast muscle tissues of the two-tail samples (highest and lowest body weight) from Recessive White Rock (WRR) and Xinghua Chickens (XH) were performed on high throughput small RNA deep sequencing. In this study, a total of 921 miRNAs were identified, including 733 known mature miRNAs and 188 novel miRNAs. There were 200, 279, 257 and 297 differentially expressed miRNAs in the comparisons of WRRh vs. WRRl, WRRh vs. XHh, WRRl vs. XHl, and XHh vs. XHl group, respectively. A total of 22 highly differentially expressed miRNAs (fold change > 2 or < 0.5; p-value < 0.05; q-value < 0.01), which also have abundant expression (read counts > 1000) were found in our comparisons. As far as two analyses (WRRh vs. WRRl, and XHh vs. XHl) are concerned, we found 80 common differentially expressed miRNAs, while 110 miRNAs were found in WRRh vs. XHh and WRRl vs. XHl. Furthermore, 26 common miRNAs were identified among all four comparisons. Four differentially expressed miRNAs (miR-223, miR-16, miR-205a and miR-222b-5p) were validated by quantitative real-time RT-PCR (qRT-PCR). Regulatory networks of interactions among miRNAs and their targets were constructed using integrative miRNA target-prediction and network-analysis. Growth hormone receptor (GHR) was confirmed as a target of miR-146b-3p by dual-luciferase assay and qPCR, indicating that miR-34c, miR-223, miR-146b-3p, miR-21 and miR-205a are key growth-related target genes in the network. These miRNAs are proposed as candidate miRNAs for future studies concerning miRNA-target function on regulation of chicken growth.

  8. Fingerprints of Modified RNA Bases from Deep Sequencing Profiles.

    PubMed

    Kietrys, Anna M; Velema, Willem A; Kool, Eric T

    2017-11-29

    Posttranscriptional modifications of RNA bases are not only found in many noncoding RNAs but have also recently been identified in coding (messenger) RNAs as well. They require complex and laborious methods to locate, and many still lack methods for localized detection. Here we test the ability of next-generation sequencing (NGS) to detect and distinguish between ten modified bases in synthetic RNAs. We compare ultradeep sequencing patterns of modified bases, including miscoding, insertions and deletions (indels), and truncations, to unmodified bases in the same contexts. The data show widely varied responses to modification, ranging from no response, to high levels of mutations, insertions, deletions, and truncations. The patterns are distinct for several of the modifications, and suggest the future use of ultradeep sequencing as a fingerprinting strategy for locating and identifying modifications in cellular RNAs.

  9. Multifunctional sample preparation kit and on-chip quantitative nucleic acid sequence-based amplification tests for microbial detection.

    PubMed

    Zhao, Xinyan; Dong, Tao

    2012-10-16

    This study reports a quantitative nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (Q-NASBA) microfluidic platform composed of a membrane-based sampling module, a sample preparation cassette, and a 24-channel Q-NASBA chip for environmental investigations on aquatic microorganisms. This low-cost and highly efficient sampling module, having seamless connection with the subsequent steps of sample preparation and quantitative detection, is designed for the collection of microbial communities from aquatic environments. Eight kinds of commercial membrane filters are relevantly analyzed using Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Escherichia coli, and Staphylococcus aureus as model microorganisms. After the microorganisms are concentrated on the membrane filters, the retentate can be easily conserved in a transport medium (TM) buffer and sent to a remote laboratory. A Q-NASBA-oriented sample preparation cassette is originally designed to extract DNA/RNA molecules directly from the captured cells on the membranes. Sequentially, the extract is analyzed within Q-NASBA chips that are compatible with common microplate readers in laboratories. Particularly, a novel analytical algorithmic method is developed for simple but robust on-chip Q-NASBA assays. The reported multifunctional microfluidic system could detect a few microorganisms quantitatively and simultaneously. Further research should be conducted to simplify and standardize ecological investigations on aquatic environments.

  10. Limitations of quantitative analysis of deep crustal seismic reflection data: Examples from GLIMPCE

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Lee, Myung W.; Hutchinson, Deborah R.

    1992-01-01

    Amplitude preservation in seismic reflection data can be obtained by a relative true amplitude (RTA) processing technique in which the relative strength of reflection amplitudes is preserved vertically as well as horizontally, after compensating for amplitude distortion by near-surface effects and propagation effects. Quantitative analysis of relative true amplitudes of the Great Lakes International Multidisciplinary Program on Crustal Evolution seismic data is hampered by large uncertainties in estimates of the water bottom reflection coefficient and the vertical amplitude correction and by inadequate noise suppression. Processing techniques such as deconvolution, F-K filtering, and migration significantly change the overall shape of amplitude curves and hence calculation of reflection coefficients and average reflectance. Thus lithological interpretation of deep crustal seismic data based on the absolute value of estimated reflection strength alone is meaningless. The relative strength of individual events, however, is preserved on curves generated at different stages in the processing. We suggest that qualitative comparisons of relative strength, if used carefully, provide a meaningful measure of variations in reflectivity. Simple theoretical models indicate that peg-leg multiples rather than water bottom multiples are the most severe source of noise contamination. These multiples are extremely difficult to remove when the water bottom reflection coefficient is large (>0.6), a condition that exists beneath parts of Lake Superior and most of Lake Huron.

  11. Zero-Echo-Time and Dixon Deep Pseudo-CT (ZeDD CT): Direct Generation of Pseudo-CT Images for Pelvic PET/MRI Attenuation Correction Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks with Multiparametric MRI.

    PubMed

    Leynes, Andrew P; Yang, Jaewon; Wiesinger, Florian; Kaushik, Sandeep S; Shanbhag, Dattesh D; Seo, Youngho; Hope, Thomas A; Larson, Peder E Z

    2018-05-01

    Accurate quantification of uptake on PET images depends on accurate attenuation correction in reconstruction. Current MR-based attenuation correction methods for body PET use a fat and water map derived from a 2-echo Dixon MRI sequence in which bone is neglected. Ultrashort-echo-time or zero-echo-time (ZTE) pulse sequences can capture bone information. We propose the use of patient-specific multiparametric MRI consisting of Dixon MRI and proton-density-weighted ZTE MRI to directly synthesize pseudo-CT images with a deep learning model: we call this method ZTE and Dixon deep pseudo-CT (ZeDD CT). Methods: Twenty-six patients were scanned using an integrated 3-T time-of-flight PET/MRI system. Helical CT images of the patients were acquired separately. A deep convolutional neural network was trained to transform ZTE and Dixon MR images into pseudo-CT images. Ten patients were used for model training, and 16 patients were used for evaluation. Bone and soft-tissue lesions were identified, and the SUV max was measured. The root-mean-squared error (RMSE) was used to compare the MR-based attenuation correction with the ground-truth CT attenuation correction. Results: In total, 30 bone lesions and 60 soft-tissue lesions were evaluated. The RMSE in PET quantification was reduced by a factor of 4 for bone lesions (10.24% for Dixon PET and 2.68% for ZeDD PET) and by a factor of 1.5 for soft-tissue lesions (6.24% for Dixon PET and 4.07% for ZeDD PET). Conclusion: ZeDD CT produces natural-looking and quantitatively accurate pseudo-CT images and reduces error in pelvic PET/MRI attenuation correction compared with standard methods. © 2018 by the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging.

  12. mRNA deep sequencing reveals 75 new genes and a complex transcriptional landscape in Mimivirus.

    PubMed

    Legendre, Matthieu; Audic, Stéphane; Poirot, Olivier; Hingamp, Pascal; Seltzer, Virginie; Byrne, Deborah; Lartigue, Audrey; Lescot, Magali; Bernadac, Alain; Poulain, Julie; Abergel, Chantal; Claverie, Jean-Michel

    2010-05-01

    Mimivirus, a virus infecting Acanthamoeba, is the prototype of the Mimiviridae, the latest addition to the nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses. The Mimivirus genome encodes close to 1000 proteins, many of them never before encountered in a virus, such as four amino-acyl tRNA synthetases. To explore the physiology of this exceptional virus and identify the genes involved in the building of its characteristic intracytoplasmic "virion factory," we coupled electron microscopy observations with the massively parallel pyrosequencing of the polyadenylated RNA fractions of Acanthamoeba castellanii cells at various time post-infection. We generated 633,346 reads, of which 322,904 correspond to Mimivirus transcripts. This first application of deep mRNA sequencing (454 Life Sciences [Roche] FLX) to a large DNA virus allowed the precise delineation of the 5' and 3' extremities of Mimivirus mRNAs and revealed 75 new transcripts including several noncoding RNAs. Mimivirus genes are expressed across a wide dynamic range, in a finely regulated manner broadly described by three main temporal classes: early, intermediate, and late. This RNA-seq study confirmed the AAAATTGA sequence as an early promoter element, as well as the presence of palindromes at most of the polyadenylation sites. It also revealed a new promoter element correlating with late gene expression, which is also prominent in Sputnik, the recently described Mimivirus "virophage." These results-validated genome-wide by the hybridization of total RNA extracted from infected Acanthamoeba cells on a tiling array (Agilent)--will constitute the foundation on which to build subsequent functional studies of the Mimivirus/Acanthamoeba system.

  13. Complete genome sequence of Southern tomato virus naturally infecting tomatoes in Bangladesh using small RNA deep sequencing

    USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

    The complete genome sequence of a Southern tomato virus (STV) isolate on tomato plants in a seed production field in Bangladesh was obtained for the first time using next generation sequencing. The identified isolate STV_BD-13 shares high degree of sequence identity (99%) with several known STV isol...

  14. Evolutionary process of deep-sea bathymodiolus mussels.

    PubMed

    Miyazaki, Jun-Ichi; de Oliveira Martins, Leonardo; Fujita, Yuko; Matsumoto, Hiroto; Fujiwara, Yoshihiro

    2010-04-27

    Since the discovery of deep-sea chemosynthesis-based communities, much work has been done to clarify their organismal and environmental aspects. However, major topics remain to be resolved, including when and how organisms invade and adapt to deep-sea environments; whether strategies for invasion and adaptation are shared by different taxa or unique to each taxon; how organisms extend their distribution and diversity; and how they become isolated to speciate in continuous waters. Deep-sea mussels are one of the dominant organisms in chemosynthesis-based communities, thus investigations of their origin and evolution contribute to resolving questions about life in those communities. We investigated worldwide phylogenetic relationships of deep-sea Bathymodiolus mussels and their mytilid relatives by analyzing nucleotide sequences of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) and NADH dehydrogenase subunit 4 (ND4) genes. Phylogenetic analysis of the concatenated sequence data showed that mussels of the subfamily Bathymodiolinae from vents and seeps were divided into four groups, and that mussels of the subfamily Modiolinae from sunken wood and whale carcasses assumed the outgroup position and shallow-water modioline mussels were positioned more distantly to the bathymodioline mussels. We provisionally hypothesized the evolutionary history of Bathymodilolus mussels by estimating evolutionary time under a relaxed molecular clock model. Diversification of bathymodioline mussels was initiated in the early Miocene, and subsequently diversification of the groups occurred in the early to middle Miocene. The phylogenetic relationships support the "Evolutionary stepping stone hypothesis," in which mytilid ancestors exploited sunken wood and whale carcasses in their progressive adaptation to deep-sea environments. This hypothesis is also supported by the evolutionary transition of symbiosis in that nutritional adaptation to the deep sea proceeded from extracellular

  15. [Comparative analysis of real-time quantitative PCR-Sanger sequencing method and TaqMan probe method for detection of KRAS/BRAF mutation in colorectal carcinomas].

    PubMed

    Zhang, Xun; Wang, Yuehua; Gao, Ning; Wang, Jinfen

    2014-02-01

    To compare the application values of real-time quantitative PCR-Sanger sequencing and TaqMan probe method in the detection of KRAS and BRAF mutations, and to correlate KRAS/BRAF mutations with the clinicopathological characteristics in colorectal carcinomas. Genomic DNA of the tumor cells was extracted from formalin fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissue samples of 344 colorectal carcinomas by microdissection. Real-time quantitative PCR-Sanger sequencing and TaqMan probe method were performed to detect the KRAS/BRAF mutations. The frequency and types of KRAS/BRAF mutations, clinicopathological characteristics and survival time were analyzed. KRAS mutations were detected in 39.8% (137/344) and 38.7% (133/344) of 344 colorectal carcinomas by using real-time quantitative PCR-Sanger sequencing and TaqMan probe method, respectively. BRAF mutation was detected in 4.7% (16/344) and 4.1% (14/344), respectively. There was no significant correlation between the two methods. The frequency of the KRAS mutation in female was higher than that in male (P < 0.05). The frequency of the BRAF mutation in colon was higher than that in rectum. The frequency of the BRAF mutation in stage III-IV cases was higher than that in stageI-II cases. The frequency of the BRAF mutation in signet ring cell carcinoma was higher than that in mucinous carcinoma and nonspecific adenocarcinoma had the lowest mutation rate. The frequency of the BRAF mutation in grade III cases was higher than that in grade II cases (P < 0.05). The overall concordance for the two methods of KRAS/BRAF mutation detection was 98.8% (kappa = 0.976). There was statistic significance between BRAF and KRAS mutations for the survival time of colorectal carcinomas (P = 0.039). There were no statistic significance between BRAF mutation type and BRAF/KRAS wild type (P = 0.058). (1) Compared with real-time quantitative PCR-Sanger sequencing, TaqMan probe method is better with regard to handling time, efficiency, repeatability, cost

  16. Deep sequencing reveals complex mechanisms of diapause preparation in the invasive mosquito, Aedes albopictus.

    PubMed

    Poelchau, Monica F; Reynolds, Julie A; Elsik, Christine G; Denlinger, David L; Armbruster, Peter A

    2013-05-22

    Seasonal environments present fundamental physiological challenges to a wide range of insects. Many temperate insects surmount the exigencies of winter by undergoing photoperiodic diapause, in which photoperiod provides a token cue that initiates an alternative developmental programme leading to dormancy. Pre-diapause is a crucial preparatory phase of this process, preceding developmental arrest. However, the regulatory and physiological mechanisms of diapause preparation are largely unknown. Using high-throughput gene expression profiling in the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, we reveal major shifts in endocrine signalling, cell proliferation, metabolism, energy production and cellular structure across pre-diapause development. While some hallmarks of diapause, such as insulin signalling and stress response, were not important at the transcriptional level, two genes, Pepck and PCNA, appear to show diapause-induced transcriptional changes across insect taxa. These processes demonstrate physiological commonalities between Ae. albopictus pre-diapause and diapause strategies across insects, and support the idea of a genetic 'toolkit' for diapause. Observations of gene expression trends from a comparative developmental perspective suggest that individual physiological processes are delayed against a background of a fixed morphological ontogeny. Our results demonstrate how deep sequencing can provide new insights into elusive molecular bases of complex ecological adaptations.

  17. Application of Tandem Two-Dimensional Mass Spectrometry for Top-Down Deep Sequencing of Calmodulin.

    PubMed

    Floris, Federico; Chiron, Lionel; Lynch, Alice M; Barrow, Mark P; Delsuc, Marc-André; O'Connor, Peter B

    2018-06-04

    Two-dimensional mass spectrometry (2DMS) involves simultaneous acquisition of the fragmentation patterns of all the analytes in a mixture by correlating their precursor and fragment ions by modulating precursor ions systematically through a fragmentation zone. Tandem two-dimensional mass spectrometry (MS/2DMS) unites the ultra-high accuracy of Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance (FT-ICR) MS/MS and the simultaneous data-independent fragmentation of 2DMS to achieve extensive inter-residue fragmentation of entire proteins. 2DMS was recently developed for top-down proteomics (TDP), and applied to the analysis of calmodulin (CaM), reporting a cleavage coverage of about ~23% using infrared multiphoton dissociation (IRMPD) as fragmentation technique. The goal of this work is to expand the utility of top-down protein analysis using MS/2DMS in order to extend the cleavage coverage in top-down proteomics further into the interior regions of the protein. In this case, using MS/2DMS, the cleavage coverage of CaM increased from ~23% to ~42%. Graphical Abstract Two-dimensional mass spectrometry, when applied to primary fragment ions from the source, allows deep-sequencing of the protein calmodulin.

  18. Identification of MicroRNAs and transcript targets in Camelina sativa by deep sequencing and computational methods

    DOE PAGES

    Poudel, Saroj; Aryal, Niranjan; Lu, Chaofu; ...

    2015-03-31

    Camelina sativa is an annual oilseed crop that is under intensive development for renewable resources of biofuels and industrial oils. MicroRNAs, or miRNAs, are endogenously encoded small RNAs that play key roles in diverse plant biological processes. Here, we conducted deep sequencing on small RNA libraries prepared from camelina leaves, flower buds and two stages of developing seeds corresponding to initial and peak storage products accumulation. Computational analyses identified 207 known miRNAs belonging to 63 families, as well as 5 novel miRNAs. These miRNAs, especially members of the miRNA families, varied greatly in different tissues and developmental stages. The predictedmore » miRNA target genes are involved in a broad range of physiological functions including lipid metabolism. This report is the first step toward elucidating roles of miRNAs in C. sativa and will provide additional tools to improve this oilseed crop for biofuels and biomaterials.« less

  19. Genome-Wide Identification of miRNAs Responsive to Drought in Peach (Prunus persica) by High-Throughput Deep Sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Eldem, Vahap; Çelikkol Akçay, Ufuk; Ozhuner, Esma; Bakır, Yakup; Uranbey, Serkan; Unver, Turgay

    2012-01-01

    Peach (Prunus persica L.) is one of the most important worldwide fresh fruits. Since fruit growth largely depends on adequate water supply, drought stress is considered as the most important abiotic stress limiting fleshy fruit production and quality in peach. Plant responses to drought stress are regulated both at transcriptional and post-transcriptional level. As post-transcriptional gene regulators, miRNAs (miRNAs) are small (19–25 nucleotides in length), endogenous, non-coding RNAs. Recent studies indicate that miRNAs are involved in plant responses to drought. Therefore, Illumina deep sequencing technology was used for genome-wide identification of miRNAs and their expression profile in response to drought in peach. In this study, four sRNA libraries were constructed from leaf control (LC), leaf stress (LS), root control (RC) and root stress (RS) samples. We identified a total of 531, 471, 535 and 487 known mature miRNAs in LC, LS, RC and RS libraries, respectively. The expression level of 262 (104 up-regulated, 158 down-regulated) of the 453 miRNAs changed significantly in leaf tissue, whereas 368 (221 up-regulated, 147 down-regulated) of the 465 miRNAs had expression levels that changed significantly in root tissue upon drought stress. Additionally, a total of 197, 221, 238 and 265 novel miRNA precursor candidates were identified from LC, LS, RC and RS libraries, respectively. Target transcripts (137 for LC, 133 for LS, 148 for RC and 153 for RS) generated significant Gene Ontology (GO) terms related to DNA binding and catalytic activites. Genome-wide miRNA expression analysis of peach by deep sequencing approach helped to expand our understanding of miRNA function in response to drought stress in peach and Rosaceae. A set of differentially expressed miRNAs could pave the way for developing new strategies to alleviate the adverse effects of drought stress on plant growth and development. PMID:23227166

  20. Predicting backbone Cα angles and dihedrals from protein sequences by stacked sparse auto-encoder deep neural network.

    PubMed

    Lyons, James; Dehzangi, Abdollah; Heffernan, Rhys; Sharma, Alok; Paliwal, Kuldip; Sattar, Abdul; Zhou, Yaoqi; Yang, Yuedong

    2014-10-30

    Because a nearly constant distance between two neighbouring Cα atoms, local backbone structure of proteins can be represented accurately by the angle between C(αi-1)-C(αi)-C(αi+1) (θ) and a dihedral angle rotated about the C(αi)-C(αi+1) bond (τ). θ and τ angles, as the representative of structural properties of three to four amino-acid residues, offer a description of backbone conformations that is complementary to φ and ψ angles (single residue) and secondary structures (>3 residues). Here, we report the first machine-learning technique for sequence-based prediction of θ and τ angles. Predicted angles based on an independent test have a mean absolute error of 9° for θ and 34° for τ with a distribution on the θ-τ plane close to that of native values. The average root-mean-square distance of 10-residue fragment structures constructed from predicted θ and τ angles is only 1.9Å from their corresponding native structures. Predicted θ and τ angles are expected to be complementary to predicted ϕ and ψ angles and secondary structures for using in model validation and template-based as well as template-free structure prediction. The deep neural network learning technique is available as an on-line server called Structural Property prediction with Integrated DEep neuRal network (SPIDER) at http://sparks-lab.org. Copyright © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  1. Analysis of microRNA profile of Anopheles sinensis by deep sequencing and bioinformatic approaches.

    PubMed

    Feng, Xinyu; Zhou, Xiaojian; Zhou, Shuisen; Wang, Jingwen; Hu, Wei

    2018-03-12

    microRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs widely identified in many mosquitoes. They are reported to play important roles in development, differentiation and innate immunity. However, miRNAs in Anopheles sinensis, one of the Chinese malaria mosquitoes, remain largely unknown. We investigated the global miRNA expression profile of An. sinensis using Illumina Hiseq 2000 sequencing. Meanwhile, we applied a bioinformatic approach to identify potential miRNAs in An. sinensis. The identified miRNA profiles were compared and analyzed by two approaches. The selected miRNAs from the sequencing result and the bioinformatic approach were confirmed with qRT-PCR. Moreover, target prediction, GO annotation and pathway analysis were carried out to understand the role of miRNAs in An. sinensis. We identified 49 conserved miRNAs and 12 novel miRNAs by next-generation high-throughput sequencing technology. In contrast, 43 miRNAs were predicted by the bioinformatic approach, of which two were assigned as novel. Comparative analysis of miRNA profiles by two approaches showed that 21 miRNAs were shared between them. Twelve novel miRNAs did not match any known miRNAs of any organism, indicating that they are possibly species-specific. Forty miRNAs were found in many mosquito species, indicating that these miRNAs are evolutionally conserved and may have critical roles in the process of life. Both the selected known and novel miRNAs (asi-miR-281, asi-miR-184, asi-miR-14, asi-miR-nov5, asi-miR-nov4, asi-miR-9383, and asi-miR-2a) could be detected by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) in the sequenced sample, and the expression patterns of these miRNAs measured by qRT-PCR were in concordance with the original miRNA sequencing data. The predicted targets for the known and the novel miRNAs covered many important biological roles and pathways indicating the diversity of miRNA functions. We also found 21 conserved miRNAs and eight counterparts of target immune pathway genes in An. sinensis

  2. Optimization of conditions to sequence long cDNAs from viruses

    USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

    Fourth generation sequencing with the Minion nanopore sequencer provides opportunity to obtain deep coverage and long read for single molecules. This will benefit studies on RNA viruses. In the past, Sanger, Illumina, and Ion Torrent sequencing have been utilized to study RNA viruses. Both technique...

  3. Combining Next Generation Sequencing with Bulked Segregant Analysis to Fine Map a Stem Moisture Locus in Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench).

    PubMed

    Han, Yucui; Lv, Peng; Hou, Shenglin; Li, Suying; Ji, Guisu; Ma, Xue; Du, Ruiheng; Liu, Guoqing

    2015-01-01

    Sorghum is one of the most promising bioenergy crops. Stem juice yield, together with stem sugar concentration, determines sugar yield in sweet sorghum. Bulked segregant analysis (BSA) is a gene mapping technique for identifying genomic regions containing genetic loci affecting a trait of interest that when combined with deep sequencing could effectively accelerate the gene mapping process. In this study, a dry stem sorghum landrace was characterized and the stem water controlling locus, qSW6, was fine mapped using QTL analysis and the combined BSA and deep sequencing technologies. Results showed that: (i) In sorghum variety Jiliang 2, stem water content was around 80% before flowering stage. It dropped to 75% during grain filling with little difference between different internodes. In landrace G21, stem water content keeps dropping after the flag leaf stage. The drop from 71% at flowering time progressed to 60% at grain filling time. Large differences exist between different internodes with the lowest (51%) at the 7th and 8th internodes at dough stage. (ii) A quantitative trait locus (QTL) controlling stem water content mapped on chromosome 6 between SSR markers Ch6-2 and gpsb069 explained about 34.7-56.9% of the phenotypic variation for the 5th to 10th internodes, respectively. (iii) BSA and deep sequencing analysis narrowed the associated region to 339 kb containing 38 putative genes. The results could help reveal molecular mechanisms underlying juice yield of sorghum and thus to improve total sugar yield.

  4. Position-specific automated processing of V3 env ultra-deep pyrosequencing data for predicting HIV-1 tropism

    PubMed Central

    Jeanne, Nicolas; Saliou, Adrien; Carcenac, Romain; Lefebvre, Caroline; Dubois, Martine; Cazabat, Michelle; Nicot, Florence; Loiseau, Claire; Raymond, Stéphanie; Izopet, Jacques; Delobel, Pierre

    2015-01-01

    HIV-1 coreceptor usage must be accurately determined before starting CCR5 antagonist-based treatment as the presence of undetected minor CXCR4-using variants can cause subsequent virological failure. Ultra-deep pyrosequencing of HIV-1 V3 env allows to detect low levels of CXCR4-using variants that current genotypic approaches miss. However, the computation of the mass of sequence data and the need to identify true minor variants while excluding artifactual sequences generated during amplification and ultra-deep pyrosequencing is rate-limiting. Arbitrary fixed cut-offs below which minor variants are discarded are currently used but the errors generated during ultra-deep pyrosequencing are sequence-dependant rather than random. We have developed an automated processing of HIV-1 V3 env ultra-deep pyrosequencing data that uses biological filters to discard artifactual or non-functional V3 sequences followed by statistical filters to determine position-specific sensitivity thresholds, rather than arbitrary fixed cut-offs. It allows to retain authentic sequences with point mutations at V3 positions of interest and discard artifactual ones with accurate sensitivity thresholds. PMID:26585833

  5. Position-specific automated processing of V3 env ultra-deep pyrosequencing data for predicting HIV-1 tropism.

    PubMed

    Jeanne, Nicolas; Saliou, Adrien; Carcenac, Romain; Lefebvre, Caroline; Dubois, Martine; Cazabat, Michelle; Nicot, Florence; Loiseau, Claire; Raymond, Stéphanie; Izopet, Jacques; Delobel, Pierre

    2015-11-20

    HIV-1 coreceptor usage must be accurately determined before starting CCR5 antagonist-based treatment as the presence of undetected minor CXCR4-using variants can cause subsequent virological failure. Ultra-deep pyrosequencing of HIV-1 V3 env allows to detect low levels of CXCR4-using variants that current genotypic approaches miss. However, the computation of the mass of sequence data and the need to identify true minor variants while excluding artifactual sequences generated during amplification and ultra-deep pyrosequencing is rate-limiting. Arbitrary fixed cut-offs below which minor variants are discarded are currently used but the errors generated during ultra-deep pyrosequencing are sequence-dependant rather than random. We have developed an automated processing of HIV-1 V3 env ultra-deep pyrosequencing data that uses biological filters to discard artifactual or non-functional V3 sequences followed by statistical filters to determine position-specific sensitivity thresholds, rather than arbitrary fixed cut-offs. It allows to retain authentic sequences with point mutations at V3 positions of interest and discard artifactual ones with accurate sensitivity thresholds.

  6. Deep-brain-stimulation does not impair deglutition in Parkinson's disease.

    PubMed

    Lengerer, Sabrina; Kipping, Judy; Rommel, Natalie; Weiss, Daniel; Breit, Sorin; Gasser, Thomas; Plewnia, Christian; Krüger, Rejko; Wächter, Tobias

    2012-08-01

    A large proportion of patients with Parkinson's disease develop dysphagia during the course of the disease. Dysphagia in Parkinson's disease affects different phases of deglutition, has a strong impact on quality of life and may cause severe complications, i.e., aspirational pneumonia. So far, little is known on how deep-brain-stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus influences deglutition in PD. Videofluoroscopic swallowing studies on 18 patients with Parkinson's disease, which had been performed preoperatively, and postoperatively with deep-brain-stimulation-on and deep-brain-stimulation-off, were analyzed retrospectively. The patients were examined in each condition with three consistencies (viscous, fluid and solid). The 'New Zealand index for multidisciplinary evaluation of swallowing (NZIMES) Subscale One' for qualitative and 'Logemann-MBS-Parameters' for quantitative evaluation were assessed. Preoperatively, none of the patients presented with clinically relevant signs of dysphagia. While postoperatively, the mean daily levodopa equivalent dosage was reduced by 50% and deep-brain-stimulation led to a 50% improvement in motor symptoms measured by the UPDRS III, no clinically relevant influence of deep-brain-stimulation-on swallowing was observed using qualitative parameters (NZIMES). However quantitative parameters (Logemann scale) found significant changes of pharyngeal parameters with deep-brain-stimulation-on as compared to preoperative condition and deep-brain-stimulation-off mostly with fluid consistency. In Parkinson patients without dysphagia deep-brain-stimulation of the subthalamic nucleus modulates the pharyngeal deglutition phase but has no clinically relevant influence on deglutition. Further studies are needed to test if deep-brain-stimulation is a therapeutic option for patients with swallowing disorders. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  7. Population-wide sampling of retrotransposon insertion polymorphisms using deep sequencing and efficient detection.

    PubMed

    Yu, Qichao; Zhang, Wei; Zhang, Xiaolong; Zeng, Yongli; Wang, Yeming; Wang, Yanhui; Xu, Liqin; Huang, Xiaoyun; Li, Nannan; Zhou, Xinlan; Lu, Jie; Guo, Xiaosen; Li, Guibo; Hou, Yong; Liu, Shiping; Li, Bo

    2017-09-01

    Active retrotransposons play important roles during evolution and continue to shape our genomes today, especially in genetic polymorphisms underlying a diverse set of diseases. However, studies of human retrotransposon insertion polymorphisms (RIPs) based on whole-genome deep sequencing at the population level have not been sufficiently undertaken, despite the obvious need for a thorough characterization of RIPs in the general population. Herein, we present a novel and efficient computational tool called Specific Insertions Detector (SID) for the detection of non-reference RIPs. We demonstrate that SID is suitable for high-depth whole-genome sequencing data using paired-end reads obtained from simulated and real datasets. We construct a comprehensive RIP database using a large population of 90 Han Chinese individuals with a mean ×68 depth per individual. In total, we identify 9342 recent RIPs, and 8433 of these RIPs are novel compared with dbRIP, including 5826 Alu, 2169 long interspersed nuclear element 1 (L1), 383 SVA, and 55 long terminal repeats. Among the 9342 RIPs, 4828 were located in gene regions and 5 were located in protein-coding regions. We demonstrate that RIPs can, in principle, be an informative resource to perform population evolution and phylogenetic analyses. Taking the demographic effects into account, we identify a weak negative selection on SVA and L1 but an approximately neutral selection for Alu elements based on the frequency spectrum of RIPs. SID is a powerful open-source program for the detection of non-reference RIPs. We built a non-reference RIP dataset that greatly enhanced the diversity of RIPs detected in the general population, and it should be invaluable to researchers interested in many aspects of human evolution, genetics, and disease. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate that the RIPs can be used as biomarkers in a similar way as single nucleotide polymorphisms. © The Authors 2017. Published by Oxford University Press.

  8. Deep Sequencing of 71 Candidate Genes to Characterize Variation Associated with Alcohol Dependence.

    PubMed

    Clark, Shaunna L; McClay, Joseph L; Adkins, Daniel E; Kumar, Gaurav; Aberg, Karolina A; Nerella, Srilaxmi; Xie, Linying; Collins, Ann L; Crowley, James J; Quackenbush, Corey R; Hilliard, Christopher E; Shabalin, Andrey A; Vrieze, Scott I; Peterson, Roseann E; Copeland, William E; Silberg, Judy L; McGue, Matt; Maes, Hermine; Iacono, William G; Sullivan, Patrick F; Costello, Elizabeth J; van den Oord, Edwin J

    2017-04-01

    Previous genomewide association studies (GWASs) have identified a number of putative risk loci for alcohol dependence (AD). However, only a few loci have replicated and these replicated variants only explain a small proportion of AD risk. Using an innovative approach, the goal of this study was to generate hypotheses about potentially causal variants for AD that can be explored further through functional studies. We employed targeted capture of 71 candidate loci and flanking regions followed by next-generation deep sequencing (mean coverage 78X) in 806 European Americans. Regions included in our targeted capture library were genes identified through published GWAS of alcohol, all human alcohol and aldehyde dehydrogenases, reward system genes including dopaminergic and opioid receptors, prioritized candidate genes based on previous associations, and genes involved in the absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion of drugs. We performed single-locus tests to determine if any single variant was associated with AD symptom count. Sets of variants that overlapped with biologically meaningful annotations were tested for association in aggregate. No single, common variant was significantly associated with AD in our study. We did, however, find evidence for association with several variant sets. Two variant sets were significant at the q-value <0.10 level: a genic enhancer for ADHFE1 (p = 1.47 × 10 -5 ; q = 0.019), an alcohol dehydrogenase, and ADORA1 (p = 5.29 × 10 -5 ; q = 0.035), an adenosine receptor that belongs to a G-protein-coupled receptor gene family. To our knowledge, this is the first sequencing study of AD to examine variants in entire genes, including flanking and regulatory regions. We found that in addition to protein coding variant sets, regulatory variant sets may play a role in AD. From these findings, we have generated initial functional hypotheses about how these sets may influence AD. Copyright © 2017 by the Research Society on

  9. Construction of a high-density genetic map by specific locus amplified fragment sequencing (SLAF-seq) and its application to Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) analysis for boll weight in upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum.).

    PubMed

    Zhang, Zhen; Shang, Haihong; Shi, Yuzhen; Huang, Long; Li, Junwen; Ge, Qun; Gong, Juwu; Liu, Aiying; Chen, Tingting; Wang, Dan; Wang, Yanling; Palanga, Koffi Kibalou; Muhammad, Jamshed; Li, Weijie; Lu, Quanwei; Deng, Xiaoying; Tan, Yunna; Song, Weiwu; Cai, Juan; Li, Pengtao; Rashid, Harun or; Gong, Wankui; Yuan, Youlu

    2016-04-11

    Upland Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) is one of the most important worldwide crops it provides natural high-quality fiber for the industrial production and everyday use. Next-generation sequencing is a powerful method to identify single nucleotide polymorphism markers on a large scale for the construction of a high-density genetic map for quantitative trait loci mapping. In this research, a recombinant inbred lines population developed from two upland cotton cultivars 0-153 and sGK9708 was used to construct a high-density genetic map through the specific locus amplified fragment sequencing method. The high-density genetic map harbored 5521 single nucleotide polymorphism markers which covered a total distance of 3259.37 cM with an average marker interval of 0.78 cM without gaps larger than 10 cM. In total 18 quantitative trait loci of boll weight were identified as stable quantitative trait loci and were detected in at least three out of 11 environments and explained 4.15-16.70 % of the observed phenotypic variation. In total, 344 candidate genes were identified within the confidence intervals of these stable quantitative trait loci based on the cotton genome sequence. These genes were categorized based on their function through gene ontology analysis, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analysis and eukaryotic orthologous groups analysis. This research reported the first high-density genetic map for Upland Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum) with a recombinant inbred line population using single nucleotide polymorphism markers developed by specific locus amplified fragment sequencing. We also identified quantitative trait loci of boll weight across 11 environments and identified candidate genes within the quantitative trait loci confidence intervals. The results of this research would provide useful information for the next-step work including fine mapping, gene functional analysis, pyramiding breeding of functional genes as well as marker-assisted selection.

  10. Deep Sequencing of Influenza A Virus from a Human Challenge Study Reveals a Selective Bottleneck and Only Limited Intrahost Genetic Diversification.

    PubMed

    Sobel Leonard, Ashley; McClain, Micah T; Smith, Gavin J D; Wentworth, David E; Halpin, Rebecca A; Lin, Xudong; Ransier, Amy; Stockwell, Timothy B; Das, Suman R; Gilbert, Anthony S; Lambkin-Williams, Robert; Ginsburg, Geoffrey S; Woods, Christopher W; Koelle, Katia

    2016-12-15

    Knowledge of influenza virus evolution at the point of transmission and at the intrahost level remains limited, particularly for human hosts. Here, we analyze a unique viral data set of next-generation sequencing (NGS) samples generated from a human influenza challenge study wherein 17 healthy subjects were inoculated with cell- and egg-passaged virus. Nasal wash samples collected from 7 of these subjects were successfully deep sequenced. From these, we characterized changes in the subjects' viral populations during infection and identified differences between the virus in these samples and the viral stock used to inoculate the subjects. We first calculated pairwise genetic distances between the subjects' nasal wash samples, the viral stock, and the influenza virus A/Wisconsin/67/2005 (H3N2) reference strain used to generate the stock virus. These distances revealed that considerable viral evolution occurred at various points in the human challenge study. Further quantitative analyses indicated that (i) the viral stock contained genetic variants that originated and likely were selected for during the passaging process, (ii) direct intranasal inoculation with the viral stock resulted in a selective bottleneck that reduced nonsynonymous genetic diversity in the viral hemagglutinin and nucleoprotein, and (iii) intrahost viral evolution continued over the course of infection. These intrahost evolutionary dynamics were dominated by purifying selection. Our findings indicate that rapid viral evolution can occur during acute influenza infection in otherwise healthy human hosts when the founding population size of the virus is large, as is the case with direct intranasal inoculation. Influenza viruses circulating among humans are known to rapidly evolve over time. However, little is known about how influenza virus evolves across single transmission events and over the course of a single infection. To address these issues, we analyze influenza virus sequences from a human

  11. Event specific qualitative and quantitative polymerase chain reaction detection of genetically modified MON863 maize based on the 5'-transgene integration sequence.

    PubMed

    Yang, Litao; Xu, Songci; Pan, Aihu; Yin, Changsong; Zhang, Kewei; Wang, Zhenying; Zhou, Zhigang; Zhang, Dabing

    2005-11-30

    Because of the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) labeling policies issued in many countries and areas, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) methods were developed for the execution of GMO labeling policies, such as screening, gene specific, construct specific, and event specific PCR detection methods, which have become a mainstay of GMOs detection. The event specific PCR detection method is the primary trend in GMOs detection because of its high specificity based on the flanking sequence of the exogenous integrant. This genetically modified maize, MON863, contains a Cry3Bb1 coding sequence that produces a protein with enhanced insecticidal activity against the coleopteran pest, corn rootworm. In this study, the 5'-integration junction sequence between the host plant DNA and the integrated gene construct of the genetically modified maize MON863 was revealed by means of thermal asymmetric interlaced-PCR, and the specific PCR primers and TaqMan probe were designed based upon the revealed 5'-integration junction sequence; the conventional qualitative PCR and quantitative TaqMan real-time PCR detection methods employing these primers and probes were successfully developed. In conventional qualitative PCR assay, the limit of detection (LOD) was 0.1% for MON863 in 100 ng of maize genomic DNA for one reaction. In the quantitative TaqMan real-time PCR assay, the LOD and the limit of quantification were eight and 80 haploid genome copies, respectively. In addition, three mixed maize samples with known MON863 contents were detected using the established real-time PCR systems, and the ideal results indicated that the established event specific real-time PCR detection systems were reliable, sensitive, and accurate.

  12. Different rates of spontaneous mutation of chloroplastic and nuclear viroids as determined by high-fidelity ultra-deep sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Ballesteros, Cristina; Sentandreu, Vicente; Gago-Zachert, Selma

    2017-01-01

    Mutation rates vary by orders of magnitude across biological systems, being higher for simpler genomes. The simplest known genomes correspond to viroids, subviral plant replicons constituted by circular non-coding RNAs of few hundred bases. Previous work has revealed an extremely high mutation rate for chrysanthemum chlorotic mottle viroid, a chloroplast-replicating viroid. However, whether this is a general feature of viroids remains unclear. Here, we have used high-fidelity ultra-deep sequencing to determine the mutation rate in a common host (eggplant) of two viroids, each representative of one family: the chloroplastic eggplant latent viroid (ELVd, Avsunviroidae) and the nuclear potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTVd, Pospiviroidae). This revealed higher mutation frequencies in ELVd than in PSTVd, as well as marked differences in the types of mutations produced. Rates of spontaneous mutation, quantified in vivo using the lethal mutation method, ranged from 1/1000 to 1/800 for ELVd and from 1/7000 to 1/3800 for PSTVd depending on sequencing run. These results suggest that extremely high mutability is a common feature of chloroplastic viroids, whereas the mutation rates of PSTVd and potentially other nuclear viroids appear significantly lower and closer to those of some RNA viruses. PMID:28910391

  13. Use of sequence-independent-single-primer-amplification (SISPA) for whole genome sequencing using illumina MiSeq platform for avian influenza virus, Newcastle disease virus, and infectious bronchitis virus

    USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

    Over the past decade, Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies, also called deep sequencing, have continued to evolve, increasing capacity and lower the cost necessary for large genome sequencing projects. The one of the advantage of NGS platforms is the possibility to sequence the samples with...

  14. Deep learning for computational chemistry.

    PubMed

    Goh, Garrett B; Hodas, Nathan O; Vishnu, Abhinav

    2017-06-15

    The rise and fall of artificial neural networks is well documented in the scientific literature of both computer science and computational chemistry. Yet almost two decades later, we are now seeing a resurgence of interest in deep learning, a machine learning algorithm based on multilayer neural networks. Within the last few years, we have seen the transformative impact of deep learning in many domains, particularly in speech recognition and computer vision, to the extent that the majority of expert practitioners in those field are now regularly eschewing prior established models in favor of deep learning models. In this review, we provide an introductory overview into the theory of deep neural networks and their unique properties that distinguish them from traditional machine learning algorithms used in cheminformatics. By providing an overview of the variety of emerging applications of deep neural networks, we highlight its ubiquity and broad applicability to a wide range of challenges in the field, including quantitative structure activity relationship, virtual screening, protein structure prediction, quantum chemistry, materials design, and property prediction. In reviewing the performance of deep neural networks, we observed a consistent outperformance against non-neural networks state-of-the-art models across disparate research topics, and deep neural network-based models often exceeded the "glass ceiling" expectations of their respective tasks. Coupled with the maturity of GPU-accelerated computing for training deep neural networks and the exponential growth of chemical data on which to train these networks on, we anticipate that deep learning algorithms will be a valuable tool for computational chemistry. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  15. Deep Packet/Flow Analysis using GPUs

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Gong, Qian; Wu, Wenji; DeMar, Phil

    Deep packet inspection (DPI) faces severe performance challenges in high-speed networks (40/100 GE) as it requires a large amount of raw computing power and high I/O throughputs. Recently, researchers have tentatively used GPUs to address the above issues and boost the performance of DPI. Typically, DPI applications involve highly complex operations in both per-packet and per-flow data level, often in real-time. The parallel architecture of GPUs fits exceptionally well for per-packet network traffic processing. However, for stateful network protocols such as TCP, their data stream need to be reconstructed in a per-flow level to deliver a consistent content analysis. Sincemore » the flow-centric operations are naturally antiparallel and often require large memory space for buffering out-of-sequence packets, they can be problematic for GPUs, whose memory is normally limited to several gigabytes. In this work, we present a highly efficient GPU-based deep packet/flow analysis framework. The proposed design includes a purely GPU-implemented flow tracking and TCP stream reassembly. Instead of buffering and waiting for TCP packets to become in sequence, our framework process the packets in batch and uses a deterministic finite automaton (DFA) with prefix-/suffix- tree method to detect patterns across out-of-sequence packets that happen to be located in different batches. In conclusion, evaluation shows that our code can reassemble and forward tens of millions of packets per second and conduct a stateful signature-based deep packet inspection at 55 Gbit/s using an NVIDIA K40 GPU.« less

  16. Combining real-time PCR and next-generation DNA sequencing to provide quantitative comparisons of fungal aerosol populations

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Dannemiller, Karen C.; Lang-Yona, Naama; Yamamoto, Naomichi; Rudich, Yinon; Peccia, Jordan

    2014-02-01

    We examined fungal communities associated with the PM10 mass of Rehovot, Israel outdoor air samples collected in the spring and fall seasons. Fungal communities were described by 454 pyrosequencing of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of the fungal ribosomal RNA encoding gene. To allow for a more quantitative comparison of fungal exposure in humans, the relative abundance values of specific taxa were transformed to absolute concentrations through multiplying these values by the sample's total fungal spore concentration (derived from universal fungal qPCR). Next, the sequencing-based absolute concentrations for Alternaria alternata, Cladosporium cladosporioides, Epicoccum nigrum, and Penicillium/Aspergillus spp. were compared to taxon-specific qPCR concentrations for A. alternata, C. cladosporioides, E. nigrum, and Penicillium/Aspergillus spp. derived from the same spring and fall aerosol samples. Results of these comparisons showed that the absolute concentration values generated from pyrosequencing were strongly associated with the concentration values derived from taxon-specific qPCR (for all four species, p < 0.005, all R > 0.70). The correlation coefficients were greater for species present in higher concentrations. Our microbial aerosol population analyses demonstrated that fungal diversity (number of fungal operational taxonomic units) was higher in the spring compared to the fall (p = 0.02), and principal coordinate analysis showed distinct seasonal differences in taxa distribution (ANOSIM p = 0.004). Among genera containing allergenic and/or pathogenic species, the absolute concentrations of Alternaria, Aspergillus, Fusarium, and Cladosporium were greater in the fall, while Cryptococcus, Penicillium, and Ulocladium concentrations were greater in the spring. The transformation of pyrosequencing fungal population relative abundance data to absolute concentrations can improve next-generation DNA sequencing-based quantitative aerosol exposure

  17. Deep Sequencing Analysis of RNAs from Citrus Plants Grown in a Citrus Sudden Death-Affected Area Reveals Diverse Known and Putative Novel Viruses.

    PubMed

    Matsumura, Emilyn E; Coletta-Filho, Helvecio D; Nouri, Shahideh; Falk, Bryce W; Nerva, Luca; Oliveira, Tiago S; Dorta, Silvia O; Machado, Marcos A

    2017-04-24

    Citrus sudden death (CSD) has caused the death of approximately four million orange trees in a very important citrus region in Brazil. Although its etiology is still not completely clear, symptoms and distribution of affected plants indicate a viral disease. In a search for viruses associated with CSD, we have performed a comparative high-throughput sequencing analysis of the transcriptome and small RNAs from CSD-symptomatic and -asymptomatic plants using the Illumina platform. The data revealed mixed infections that included Citrus tristeza virus (CTV) as the most predominant virus, followed by the Citrus sudden death-associated virus (CSDaV), Citrus endogenous pararetrovirus (CitPRV) and two putative novel viruses tentatively named Citrus jingmen-like virus (CJLV), and Citrus virga-like virus (CVLV). The deep sequencing analyses were sensitive enough to differentiate two genotypes of both viruses previously associated with CSD-affected plants: CTV and CSDaV. Our data also showed a putative association of the CSD-symptomatic plants with a specific CSDaV genotype and a likely association with CitPRV as well, whereas the two putative novel viruses showed to be more associated with CSD-asymptomatic plants. This is the first high-throughput sequencing-based study of the viral sequences present in CSD-affected citrus plants, and generated valuable information for further CSD studies.

  18. From clinical sample to complete genome: Comparing methods for the extraction of HIV-1 RNA for high-throughput deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Cornelissen, Marion; Gall, Astrid; Vink, Monique; Zorgdrager, Fokla; Binter, Špela; Edwards, Stephanie; Jurriaans, Suzanne; Bakker, Margreet; Ong, Swee Hoe; Gras, Luuk; van Sighem, Ard; Bezemer, Daniela; de Wolf, Frank; Reiss, Peter; Kellam, Paul; Berkhout, Ben; Fraser, Christophe; van der Kuyl, Antoinette C

    2017-07-15

    The BEEHIVE (Bridging the Evolution and Epidemiology of HIV in Europe) project aims to analyse nearly-complete viral genomes from >3000 HIV-1 infected Europeans using high-throughput deep sequencing techniques to investigate the virus genetic contribution to virulence. Following the development of a computational pipeline, including a new de novo assembler for RNA virus genomes, to generate larger contiguous sequences (contigs) from the abundance of short sequence reads that characterise the data, another area that determines genome sequencing success is the quality and quantity of the input RNA. A pilot experiment with 125 patient plasma samples was performed to investigate the optimal method for isolation of HIV-1 viral RNA for long amplicon genome sequencing. Manual isolation with the QIAamp Viral RNA Mini Kit (Qiagen) was superior over robotically extracted RNA using either the QIAcube robotic system, the mSample Preparation Systems RNA kit with automated extraction by the m2000sp system (Abbott Molecular), or the MagNA Pure 96 System in combination with the MagNA Pure 96 Instrument (Roche Diagnostics). We scored amplification of a set of four HIV-1 amplicons of ∼1.9, 3.6, 3.0 and 3.5kb, and subsequent recovery of near-complete viral genomes. Subsequently, 616 BEEHIVE patient samples were analysed to determine factors that influence successful amplification of the genome in four overlapping amplicons using the QIAamp Viral RNA Kit for viral RNA isolation. Both low plasma viral load and high sample age (stored before 1999) negatively influenced the amplification of viral amplicons >3kb. A plasma viral load of >100,000 copies/ml resulted in successful amplification of all four amplicons for 86% of the samples, this value dropped to only 46% for samples with viral loads of <20,000 copies/ml. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  19. Uniform, optimal signal processing of mapped deep-sequencing data.

    PubMed

    Kumar, Vibhor; Muratani, Masafumi; Rayan, Nirmala Arul; Kraus, Petra; Lufkin, Thomas; Ng, Huck Hui; Prabhakar, Shyam

    2013-07-01

    Despite their apparent diversity, many problems in the analysis of high-throughput sequencing data are merely special cases of two general problems, signal detection and signal estimation. Here we adapt formally optimal solutions from signal processing theory to analyze signals of DNA sequence reads mapped to a genome. We describe DFilter, a detection algorithm that identifies regulatory features in ChIP-seq, DNase-seq and FAIRE-seq data more accurately than assay-specific algorithms. We also describe EFilter, an estimation algorithm that accurately predicts mRNA levels from as few as 1-2 histone profiles (R ∼0.9). Notably, the presence of regulatory motifs in promoters correlates more with histone modifications than with mRNA levels, suggesting that histone profiles are more predictive of cis-regulatory mechanisms. We show by applying DFilter and EFilter to embryonic forebrain ChIP-seq data that regulatory protein identification and functional annotation are feasible despite tissue heterogeneity. The mathematical formalism underlying our tools facilitates integrative analysis of data from virtually any sequencing-based functional profile.

  20. mRNA deep sequencing reveals 75 new genes and a complex transcriptional landscape in Mimivirus

    PubMed Central

    Legendre, Matthieu; Audic, Stéphane; Poirot, Olivier; Hingamp, Pascal; Seltzer, Virginie; Byrne, Deborah; Lartigue, Audrey; Lescot, Magali; Bernadac, Alain; Poulain, Julie; Abergel, Chantal; Claverie, Jean-Michel

    2010-01-01

    Mimivirus, a virus infecting Acanthamoeba, is the prototype of the Mimiviridae, the latest addition to the nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses. The Mimivirus genome encodes close to 1000 proteins, many of them never before encountered in a virus, such as four amino-acyl tRNA synthetases. To explore the physiology of this exceptional virus and identify the genes involved in the building of its characteristic intracytoplasmic “virion factory,” we coupled electron microscopy observations with the massively parallel pyrosequencing of the polyadenylated RNA fractions of Acanthamoeba castellanii cells at various time post-infection. We generated 633,346 reads, of which 322,904 correspond to Mimivirus transcripts. This first application of deep mRNA sequencing (454 Life Sciences [Roche] FLX) to a large DNA virus allowed the precise delineation of the 5′ and 3′ extremities of Mimivirus mRNAs and revealed 75 new transcripts including several noncoding RNAs. Mimivirus genes are expressed across a wide dynamic range, in a finely regulated manner broadly described by three main temporal classes: early, intermediate, and late. This RNA-seq study confirmed the AAAATTGA sequence as an early promoter element, as well as the presence of palindromes at most of the polyadenylation sites. It also revealed a new promoter element correlating with late gene expression, which is also prominent in Sputnik, the recently described Mimivirus “virophage.” These results—validated genome-wide by the hybridization of total RNA extracted from infected Acanthamoeba cells on a tiling array (Agilent)—will constitute the foundation on which to build subsequent functional studies of the Mimivirus/Acanthamoeba system. PMID:20360389

  1. MUFOLD-SS: New deep inception-inside-inception networks for protein secondary structure prediction.

    PubMed

    Fang, Chao; Shang, Yi; Xu, Dong

    2018-05-01

    Protein secondary structure prediction can provide important information for protein 3D structure prediction and protein functions. Deep learning offers a new opportunity to significantly improve prediction accuracy. In this article, a new deep neural network architecture, named the Deep inception-inside-inception (Deep3I) network, is proposed for protein secondary structure prediction and implemented as a software tool MUFOLD-SS. The input to MUFOLD-SS is a carefully designed feature matrix corresponding to the primary amino acid sequence of a protein, which consists of a rich set of information derived from individual amino acid, as well as the context of the protein sequence. Specifically, the feature matrix is a composition of physio-chemical properties of amino acids, PSI-BLAST profile, and HHBlits profile. MUFOLD-SS is composed of a sequence of nested inception modules and maps the input matrix to either eight states or three states of secondary structures. The architecture of MUFOLD-SS enables effective processing of local and global interactions between amino acids in making accurate prediction. In extensive experiments on multiple datasets, MUFOLD-SS outperformed the best existing methods and other deep neural networks significantly. MUFold-SS can be downloaded from http://dslsrv8.cs.missouri.edu/~cf797/MUFoldSS/download.html. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  2. Quantitative analysis of a deeply sequenced marine microbial metatranscriptome.

    PubMed

    Gifford, Scott M; Sharma, Shalabh; Rinta-Kanto, Johanna M; Moran, Mary Ann

    2011-03-01

    The potential of metatranscriptomic sequencing to provide insights into the environmental factors that regulate microbial activities depends on how fully the sequence libraries capture community expression (that is, sample-sequencing depth and coverage depth), and the sensitivity with which expression differences between communities can be detected (that is, statistical power for hypothesis testing). In this study, we use an internal standard approach to make absolute (per liter) estimates of transcript numbers, a significant advantage over proportional estimates that can be biased by expression changes in unrelated genes. Coastal waters of the southeastern United States contain 1 × 10(12) bacterioplankton mRNA molecules per liter of seawater (~200 mRNA molecules per bacterial cell). Even for the large bacterioplankton libraries obtained in this study (~500,000 possible protein-encoding sequences in each of two libraries after discarding rRNAs and small RNAs from >1 million 454 FLX pyrosequencing reads), sample-sequencing depth was only 0.00001%. Expression levels of 82 genes diagnostic for transformations in the marine nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur cycles ranged from below detection (<1 × 10(6) transcripts per liter) for 36 genes (for example, phosphonate metabolism gene phnH, dissimilatory nitrate reductase subunit napA) to >2.7 × 10(9) transcripts per liter (ammonia transporter amt and ammonia monooxygenase subunit amoC). Half of the categories for which expression was detected, however, had too few copy numbers for robust statistical resolution, as would be required for comparative (experimental or time-series) expression studies. By representing whole community gene abundance and expression in absolute units (per volume or mass of environment), 'omics' data can be better leveraged to improve understanding of microbially mediated processes in the ocean.

  3. Deep Sequencing of Plant and Animal DNA Contained within Traditional Chinese Medicines Reveals Legality Issues and Health Safety Concerns

    PubMed Central

    Coghlan, Megan L.; Haile, James; Houston, Jayne; Murray, Dáithí C.; White, Nicole E.; Moolhuijzen, Paula; Bellgard, Matthew I.; Bunce, Michael

    2012-01-01

    Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been practiced for thousands of years, but only within the last few decades has its use become more widespread outside of Asia. Concerns continue to be raised about the efficacy, legality, and safety of many popular complementary alternative medicines, including TCMs. Ingredients of some TCMs are known to include derivatives of endangered, trade-restricted species of plants and animals, and therefore contravene the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) legislation. Chromatographic studies have detected the presence of heavy metals and plant toxins within some TCMs, and there are numerous cases of adverse reactions. It is in the interests of both biodiversity conservation and public safety that techniques are developed to screen medicinals like TCMs. Targeting both the p-loop region of the plastid trnL gene and the mitochondrial 16S ribosomal RNA gene, over 49,000 amplicon sequence reads were generated from 15 TCM samples presented in the form of powders, tablets, capsules, bile flakes, and herbal teas. Here we show that second-generation, high-throughput sequencing (HTS) of DNA represents an effective means to genetically audit organic ingredients within complex TCMs. Comparison of DNA sequence data to reference databases revealed the presence of 68 different plant families and included genera, such as Ephedra and Asarum, that are potentially toxic. Similarly, animal families were identified that include genera that are classified as vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered, including Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus) and Saiga antelope (Saiga tatarica). Bovidae, Cervidae, and Bufonidae DNA were also detected in many of the TCM samples and were rarely declared on the product packaging. This study demonstrates that deep sequencing via HTS is an efficient and cost-effective way to audit highly processed TCM products and will assist in monitoring their legality and safety especially when

  4. Meta-analysis of quantitative pleiotropic traits for next-generation sequencing with multivariate functional linear models

    PubMed Central

    Chiu, Chi-yang; Jung, Jeesun; Chen, Wei; Weeks, Daniel E; Ren, Haobo; Boehnke, Michael; Amos, Christopher I; Liu, Aiyi; Mills, James L; Ting Lee, Mei-ling; Xiong, Momiao; Fan, Ruzong

    2017-01-01

    To analyze next-generation sequencing data, multivariate functional linear models are developed for a meta-analysis of multiple studies to connect genetic variant data to multiple quantitative traits adjusting for covariates. The goal is to take the advantage of both meta-analysis and pleiotropic analysis in order to improve power and to carry out a unified association analysis of multiple studies and multiple traits of complex disorders. Three types of approximate F -distributions based on Pillai–Bartlett trace, Hotelling–Lawley trace, and Wilks's Lambda are introduced to test for association between multiple quantitative traits and multiple genetic variants. Simulation analysis is performed to evaluate false-positive rates and power of the proposed tests. The proposed methods are applied to analyze lipid traits in eight European cohorts. It is shown that it is more advantageous to perform multivariate analysis than univariate analysis in general, and it is more advantageous to perform meta-analysis of multiple studies instead of analyzing the individual studies separately. The proposed models require individual observations. The value of the current paper can be seen at least for two reasons: (a) the proposed methods can be applied to studies that have individual genotype data; (b) the proposed methods can be used as a criterion for future work that uses summary statistics to build test statistics to meta-analyze the data. PMID:28000696

  5. Meta-analysis of quantitative pleiotropic traits for next-generation sequencing with multivariate functional linear models.

    PubMed

    Chiu, Chi-Yang; Jung, Jeesun; Chen, Wei; Weeks, Daniel E; Ren, Haobo; Boehnke, Michael; Amos, Christopher I; Liu, Aiyi; Mills, James L; Ting Lee, Mei-Ling; Xiong, Momiao; Fan, Ruzong

    2017-02-01

    To analyze next-generation sequencing data, multivariate functional linear models are developed for a meta-analysis of multiple studies to connect genetic variant data to multiple quantitative traits adjusting for covariates. The goal is to take the advantage of both meta-analysis and pleiotropic analysis in order to improve power and to carry out a unified association analysis of multiple studies and multiple traits of complex disorders. Three types of approximate F -distributions based on Pillai-Bartlett trace, Hotelling-Lawley trace, and Wilks's Lambda are introduced to test for association between multiple quantitative traits and multiple genetic variants. Simulation analysis is performed to evaluate false-positive rates and power of the proposed tests. The proposed methods are applied to analyze lipid traits in eight European cohorts. It is shown that it is more advantageous to perform multivariate analysis than univariate analysis in general, and it is more advantageous to perform meta-analysis of multiple studies instead of analyzing the individual studies separately. The proposed models require individual observations. The value of the current paper can be seen at least for two reasons: (a) the proposed methods can be applied to studies that have individual genotype data; (b) the proposed methods can be used as a criterion for future work that uses summary statistics to build test statistics to meta-analyze the data.

  6. Principles of Quantitative MR Imaging with Illustrated Review of Applicable Modular Pulse Diagrams.

    PubMed

    Mills, Andrew F; Sakai, Osamu; Anderson, Stephan W; Jara, Hernan

    2017-01-01

    Continued improvements in diagnostic accuracy using magnetic resonance (MR) imaging will require development of methods for tissue analysis that complement traditional qualitative MR imaging studies. Quantitative MR imaging is based on measurement and interpretation of tissue-specific parameters independent of experimental design, compared with qualitative MR imaging, which relies on interpretation of tissue contrast that results from experimental pulse sequence parameters. Quantitative MR imaging represents a natural next step in the evolution of MR imaging practice, since quantitative MR imaging data can be acquired using currently available qualitative imaging pulse sequences without modifications to imaging equipment. The article presents a review of the basic physical concepts used in MR imaging and how quantitative MR imaging is distinct from qualitative MR imaging. Subsequently, the article reviews the hierarchical organization of major applicable pulse sequences used in this article, with the sequences organized into conventional, hybrid, and multispectral sequences capable of calculating the main tissue parameters of T1, T2, and proton density. While this new concept offers the potential for improved diagnostic accuracy and workflow, awareness of this extension to qualitative imaging is generally low. This article reviews the basic physical concepts in MR imaging, describes commonly measured tissue parameters in quantitative MR imaging, and presents the major available pulse sequences used for quantitative MR imaging, with a focus on the hierarchical organization of these sequences. © RSNA, 2017.

  7. Deep sequencing of the viral phoH gene reveals temporal variation, depth-specific composition, and persistent dominance of the same viral phoH genes in the Sargasso Sea

    PubMed Central

    Goldsmith, Dawn B.; Parsons, Rachel J.; Beyene, Damitu; Salamon, Peter

    2015-01-01

    Deep sequencing of the viral phoH gene, a host-derived auxiliary metabolic gene, was used to track viral diversity throughout the water column at the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) site in the summer (September) and winter (March) of three years. Viral phoH sequences reveal differences in the viral communities throughout a depth profile and between seasons in the same year. Variation was also detected between the same seasons in subsequent years, though these differences were not as great as the summer/winter distinctions. Over 3,600 phoH operational taxonomic units (OTUs; 97% sequence identity) were identified. Despite high richness, most phoH sequences belong to a few large, common OTUs whereas the majority of the OTUs are small and rare. While many OTUs make sporadic appearances at just a few times or depths, a small number of OTUs dominate the community throughout the seasons, depths, and years. PMID:26157645

  8. Sequence2Vec: a novel embedding approach for modeling transcription factor binding affinity landscape.

    PubMed

    Dai, Hanjun; Umarov, Ramzan; Kuwahara, Hiroyuki; Li, Yu; Song, Le; Gao, Xin

    2017-11-15

    An accurate characterization of transcription factor (TF)-DNA affinity landscape is crucial to a quantitative understanding of the molecular mechanisms underpinning endogenous gene regulation. While recent advances in biotechnology have brought the opportunity for building binding affinity prediction methods, the accurate characterization of TF-DNA binding affinity landscape still remains a challenging problem. Here we propose a novel sequence embedding approach for modeling the transcription factor binding affinity landscape. Our method represents DNA binding sequences as a hidden Markov model which captures both position specific information and long-range dependency in the sequence. A cornerstone of our method is a novel message passing-like embedding algorithm, called Sequence2Vec, which maps these hidden Markov models into a common nonlinear feature space and uses these embedded features to build a predictive model. Our method is a novel combination of the strength of probabilistic graphical models, feature space embedding and deep learning. We conducted comprehensive experiments on over 90 large-scale TF-DNA datasets which were measured by different high-throughput experimental technologies. Sequence2Vec outperforms alternative machine learning methods as well as the state-of-the-art binding affinity prediction methods. Our program is freely available at https://github.com/ramzan1990/sequence2vec. xin.gao@kaust.edu.sa or lsong@cc.gatech.edu. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press.

  9. Deep sequencing of Salmonella RNA associated with heterologous Hfq proteins in vivo reveals small RNAs as a major target class and identifies RNA processing phenotypes.

    PubMed

    Sittka, Alexandra; Sharma, Cynthia M; Rolle, Katarzyna; Vogel, Jörg

    2009-01-01

    The bacterial Sm-like protein, Hfq, is a key factor for the stability and function of small non-coding RNAs (sRNAs) in Escherichia coli. Homologues of this protein have been predicted in many distantly related organisms yet their functional conservation as sRNA-binding proteins has not entirely been clear. To address this, we expressed in Salmonella the Hfq proteins of two eubacteria (Neisseria meningitides, Aquifex aeolicus) and an archaeon (Methanocaldococcus jannaschii), and analyzed the associated RNA by deep sequencing. This in vivo approach identified endogenous Salmonella sRNAs as a major target of the foreign Hfq proteins. New Salmonella sRNA species were also identified, and some of these accumulated specifically in the presence of a foreign Hfq protein. In addition, we observed specific RNA processing defects, e.g., suppression of precursor processing of SraH sRNA by Methanocaldococcus Hfq, or aberrant accumulation of extracytoplasmic target mRNAs of the Salmonella GcvB, MicA or RybB sRNAs. Taken together, our study provides evidence of a conserved inherent sRNA-binding property of Hfq, which may facilitate the lateral transmission of regulatory sRNAs among distantly related species. It also suggests that the expression of heterologous RNA-binding proteins combined with deep sequencing analysis of RNA ligands can be used as a molecular tool to dissect individual steps of RNA metabolism in vivo.

  10. Digital RNA sequencing minimizes sequence-dependent bias and amplification noise with optimized single-molecule barcodes

    PubMed Central

    Shiroguchi, Katsuyuki; Jia, Tony Z.; Sims, Peter A.; Xie, X. Sunney

    2012-01-01

    RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) is a powerful tool for transcriptome profiling, but is hampered by sequence-dependent bias and inaccuracy at low copy numbers intrinsic to exponential PCR amplification. We developed a simple strategy for mitigating these complications, allowing truly digital RNA-Seq. Following reverse transcription, a large set of barcode sequences is added in excess, and nearly every cDNA molecule is uniquely labeled by random attachment of barcode sequences to both ends. After PCR, we applied paired-end deep sequencing to read the two barcodes and cDNA sequences. Rather than counting the number of reads, RNA abundance is measured based on the number of unique barcode sequences observed for a given cDNA sequence. We optimized the barcodes to be unambiguously identifiable, even in the presence of multiple sequencing errors. This method allows counting with single-copy resolution despite sequence-dependent bias and PCR-amplification noise, and is analogous to digital PCR but amendable to quantifying a whole transcriptome. We demonstrated transcriptome profiling of Escherichia coli with more accurate and reproducible quantification than conventional RNA-Seq. PMID:22232676

  11. Congruent Deep Relationships in the Grape Family (Vitaceae) Based on Sequences of Chloroplast Genomes and Mitochondrial Genes via Genome Skimming

    PubMed Central

    Zhang, Ning; Wen, Jun; Zimmer, Elizabeth A.

    2015-01-01

    Vitaceae is well-known for having one of the most economically important fruits, i.e., the grape (Vitis vinifera). The deep phylogeny of the grape family was not resolved until a recent phylogenomic analysis of 417 nuclear genes from transcriptome data. However, it has been reported extensively that topologies based on nuclear and organellar genes may be incongruent due to differences in their evolutionary histories. Therefore, it is important to reconstruct a backbone phylogeny of the grape family using plastomes and mitochondrial genes. In this study, next-generation sequencing data sets of 27 species were obtained using genome skimming with total DNAs from silica-gel preserved tissue samples on an Illumina HiSeq 2500 instrument. Plastomes were assembled using the combination of de novo and reference genome (of V. vinifera) methods. Sixteen mitochondrial genes were also obtained via genome skimming using the reference genome of V. vinifera. Extensive phylogenetic analyses were performed using maximum likelihood and Bayesian methods. The topology based on either plastome data or mitochondrial genes is congruent with the one using hundreds of nuclear genes, indicating that the grape family did not exhibit significant reticulation at the deep level. The results showcase the power of genome skimming in capturing extensive phylogenetic data: especially from chloroplast and mitochondrial DNAs. PMID:26656830

  12. Congruent Deep Relationships in the Grape Family (Vitaceae) Based on Sequences of Chloroplast Genomes and Mitochondrial Genes via Genome Skimming.

    PubMed

    Zhang, Ning; Wen, Jun; Zimmer, Elizabeth A

    2015-01-01

    Vitaceae is well-known for having one of the most economically important fruits, i.e., the grape (Vitis vinifera). The deep phylogeny of the grape family was not resolved until a recent phylogenomic analysis of 417 nuclear genes from transcriptome data. However, it has been reported extensively that topologies based on nuclear and organellar genes may be incongruent due to differences in their evolutionary histories. Therefore, it is important to reconstruct a backbone phylogeny of the grape family using plastomes and mitochondrial genes. In this study,next-generation sequencing data sets of 27 species were obtained using genome skimming with total DNAs from silica-gel preserved tissue samples on an Illumina NextSeq 500 instrument [corrected]. Plastomes were assembled using the combination of de novo and reference genome (of V. vinifera) methods. Sixteen mitochondrial genes were also obtained via genome skimming using the reference genome of V. vinifera. Extensive phylogenetic analyses were performed using maximum likelihood and Bayesian methods. The topology based on either plastome data or mitochondrial genes is congruent with the one using hundreds of nuclear genes, indicating that the grape family did not exhibit significant reticulation at the deep level. The results showcase the power of genome skimming in capturing extensive phylogenetic data: especially from chloroplast and mitochondrial DNAs.

  13. COTS-Based Fault Tolerance in Deep Space: Qualitative and Quantitative Analyses of a Bus Network Architecture

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Tai, Ann T.; Chau, Savio N.; Alkalai, Leon

    2000-01-01

    Using COTS products, standards and intellectual properties (IPs) for all the system and component interfaces is a crucial step toward significant reduction of both system cost and development cost as the COTS interfaces enable other COTS products and IPs to be readily accommodated by the target system architecture. With respect to the long-term survivable systems for deep-space missions, the major challenge for us is, under stringent power and mass constraints, to achieve ultra-high reliability of the system comprising COTS products and standards that are not developed for mission-critical applications. The spirit of our solution is to exploit the pertinent standard features of a COTS product to circumvent its shortcomings, though these standard features may not be originally designed for highly reliable systems. In this paper, we discuss our experiences and findings on the design of an IEEE 1394 compliant fault-tolerant COTS-based bus architecture. We first derive and qualitatively analyze a -'stacktree topology" that not only complies with IEEE 1394 but also enables the implementation of a fault-tolerant bus architecture without node redundancy. We then present a quantitative evaluation that demonstrates significant reliability improvement from the COTS-based fault tolerance.

  14. Quantitative trait loci mapping of heat tolerance in broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. italica) using genotyping-by-sequencing.

    PubMed

    Branham, Sandra E; Stansell, Zachary J; Couillard, David M; Farnham, Mark W

    2017-03-01

    Five quantitative trait loci and one epistatic interaction were associated with heat tolerance in a doubled haploid population of broccoli evaluated in three summer field trials. Predicted rising global temperatures due to climate change have generated a demand for crops that are resistant to yield and quality losses from heat stress. Broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. italica) is a cool weather crop with high temperatures during production decreasing both head quality and yield. Breeding for heat tolerance in broccoli has potential to both expand viable production areas and extend the growing season but breeding efficiency is constrained by limited genetic information. A doubled haploid (DH) broccoli population segregating for heat tolerance was evaluated for head quality in three summer fields in Charleston, SC, USA. Multiple quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping of 1,423 single nucleotide polymorphisms developed through genotyping-by-sequencing identified five QTL and one positive epistatic interaction that explained 62.1% of variation in heat tolerance. The QTL identified here can be used to develop markers for marker-assisted selection and to increase our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying plant response to heat stress.

  15. Deep Sequencing Reveals Spatially Distributed Distinct Hot Spot Mutations in DICER1-Related Multinodular Goiter.

    PubMed

    de Kock, Leanne; Bah, Ismaël; Revil, Timothée; Bérubé, Pierre; Wu, Mona K; Sabbaghian, Nelly; Priest, John R; Ragoussis, Jiannis; Foulkes, William D

    2016-10-01

    Nontoxic multinodular goiter (MNG) occurs frequently, but its genetic etiology is not well established. Familial MNG and MNG occurring with ovarian Sertoli-Leydig cell tumor are associated with germline DICER1 mutations. We recently identified second somatic DICER1 ribonuclease (RNase) IIIb mutations in two MNGs. The objective of the study was to investigate the occurrence of somatic DICER1 mutations and mutational clonality in MNG. MNGs from 15 patients (10 with and five without germline DICER1 mutations) were selected based on tissue availability. Core biopsies/scrapings (n = 70) were obtained, sampling areas of follicular hyperplasia, hyperplasia within colloid pools, unremarkable thyroid parenchyma, and areas of thyroid parenchyma, not classified. After capture with a Fluidigm access array, the coding sequence of DICER1 was deep sequenced using DNA from each core/scraping. All germline DICER1-mutated cases were found to harbor at least one RNase III mutation. Specifically, we identified 12 individually distinct DICER1 RNase IIIb hot spot mutations in 32 of the follicular hyperplasia or hyperplasia within colloid pools cores/scrapings. These mutations are predicted to affect the metal-ion binding residues at positions p.Glu1705, p.Asp1709, p.Gly1809, p.Asp1810, and p.Glu1813. Somatic RNase IIIb mutations were identified in the 10 DICER1 germline mutated MNGs as follows: two cases contained one somatic mutation, five cases contained two mutations, and three cases contained three distinct somatic hot spot mutations. No RNase IIIb mutations were identified in the MNGs from individuals without germline DICER1 mutations. This study demonstrates that nodules within MNG occurring in DICER1 syndrome are associated with spatially distributed somatic DICER1 RNase IIIb mutations.

  16. De novo transcriptome assembly and positive selection analysis of an individual deep-sea fish.

    PubMed

    Lan, Yi; Sun, Jin; Xu, Ting; Chen, Chong; Tian, Renmao; Qiu, Jian-Wen; Qian, Pei-Yuan

    2018-05-24

    High hydrostatic pressure and low temperatures make the deep sea a harsh environment for life forms. Actin organization and microtubules assembly, which are essential for intracellular transport and cell motility, can be disrupted by high hydrostatic pressure. High hydrostatic pressure can also damage DNA. Nucleic acids exposed to low temperatures can form secondary structures that hinder genetic information processing. To study how deep-sea creatures adapt to such a hostile environment, one of the most straightforward ways is to sequence and compare their genes with those of their shallow-water relatives. We captured an individual of the fish species Aldrovandia affinis, which is a typical deep-sea inhabitant, from the Okinawa Trough at a depth of 1550 m using a remotely operated vehicle (ROV). We sequenced its transcriptome and analyzed its molecular adaptation. We obtained 27,633 protein coding sequences using an Illumina platform and compared them with those of several shallow-water fish species. Analysis of 4918 single-copy orthologs identified 138 positively selected genes in A. affinis, including genes involved in microtubule regulation. Particularly, functional domains related to cold shock as well as DNA repair are exposed to positive selection pressure in both deep-sea fish and hadal amphipod. Overall, we have identified a set of positively selected genes related to cytoskeleton structures, DNA repair and genetic information processing, which shed light on molecular adaptation to the deep sea. These results suggest that amino acid substitutions of these positively selected genes may contribute crucially to the adaptation of deep-sea animals. Additionally, we provide a high-quality transcriptome of a deep-sea fish for future deep-sea studies.

  17. Deep Sequence Analysis of AgoshRNA Processing Reveals 3' A Addition and Trimming.

    PubMed

    Harwig, Alex; Herrera-Carrillo, Elena; Jongejan, Aldo; van Kampen, Antonius Hubertus; Berkhout, Ben

    2015-07-14

    The RNA interference (RNAi) pathway, in which microprocessor and Dicer collaborate to process microRNAs (miRNA), was recently expanded by the description of alternative processing routes. In one of these noncanonical pathways, Dicer action is replaced by the Argonaute2 (Ago2) slicer function. It was recently shown that the stem-length of precursor-miRNA or short hairpin RNA (shRNA) molecules is a major determinant for Dicer versus Ago2 processing. Here we present the results of a deep sequence study on the processing of shRNAs with different stem length and a top G·U wobble base pair (bp). This analysis revealed some unexpected properties of these so-called AgoshRNA molecules that are processed by Ago2 instead of Dicer. First, we confirmed the gradual shift from Dicer to Ago2 processing upon shortening of the hairpin length. Second, hairpins with a stem larger than 19 base pair are inefficiently cleaved by Ago2 and we noticed a shift in the cleavage site. Third, the introduction of a top G·U bp in a regular shRNA can promote Ago2-cleavage, which coincides with a loss of Ago2-loading of the Dicer-cleaved 3' strand. Fourth, the Ago2-processed AgoshRNAs acquire a short 3' tail of 1-3 A-nucleotides (nt) and we present evidence that this product is subsequently trimmed by the poly(A)-specific ribonuclease (PARN).

  18. Deep Sequence Analysis of AgoshRNA Processing Reveals 3' A Addition and Trimming

    PubMed Central

    Harwig, Alex; Herrera-Carrillo, Elena; Jongejan, Aldo; van Kampen, Antonius Hubertus; Berkhout, Ben

    2015-01-01

    The RNA interference (RNAi) pathway, in which microprocessor and Dicer collaborate to process microRNAs (miRNA), was recently expanded by the description of alternative processing routes. In one of these noncanonical pathways, Dicer action is replaced by the Argonaute2 (Ago2) slicer function. It was recently shown that the stem-length of precursor-miRNA or short hairpin RNA (shRNA) molecules is a major determinant for Dicer versus Ago2 processing. Here we present the results of a deep sequence study on the processing of shRNAs with different stem length and a top G·U wobble base pair (bp). This analysis revealed some unexpected properties of these so-called AgoshRNA molecules that are processed by Ago2 instead of Dicer. First, we confirmed the gradual shift from Dicer to Ago2 processing upon shortening of the hairpin length. Second, hairpins with a stem larger than 19 base pair are inefficiently cleaved by Ago2 and we noticed a shift in the cleavage site. Third, the introduction of a top G·U bp in a regular shRNA can promote Ago2-cleavage, which coincides with a loss of Ago2-loading of the Dicer-cleaved 3' strand. Fourth, the Ago2-processed AgoshRNAs acquire a short 3' tail of 1–3 A-nucleotides (nt) and we present evidence that this product is subsequently trimmed by the poly(A)-specific ribonuclease (PARN). PMID:26172504

  19. Toward an Understanding of Changes in Diversity Associated with Fecal Microbiome Transplantation Based on 16S rRNA Gene Deep Sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Shahinas, Dea; Silverman, Michael; Sittler, Taylor; Chiu, Charles; Kim, Peter; Allen-Vercoe, Emma; Weese, Scott; Wong, Andrew; Low, Donald E.; Pillai, Dylan R.

    2012-01-01

    ABSTRACT Fecal microbiome transplantation by low-volume enema is an effective, safe, and inexpensive alternative to antibiotic therapy for patients with chronic relapsing Clostridium difficile infection (CDI). We explored the microbial diversity of pre- and posttransplant stool specimens from CDI patients (n = 6) using deep sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. While interindividual variability in microbiota change occurs with fecal transplantation and vancomycin exposure, in this pilot study we note that clinical cure of CDI is associated with an increase in diversity and richness. Genus- and species-level analysis may reveal a cocktail of microorganisms or products thereof that will ultimately be used as a probiotic to treat CDI. PMID:23093385

  20. Modeling and prediction of peptide drift times in ion mobility spectrometry using sequence-based and structure-based approaches.

    PubMed

    Zhang, Yiming; Jin, Quan; Wang, Shuting; Ren, Ren

    2011-05-01

    The mobile behavior of 1481 peptides in ion mobility spectrometry (IMS), which are generated by protease digestion of the Drosophila melanogaster proteome, is modeled and predicted based on two different types of characterization methods, i.e. sequence-based approach and structure-based approach. In this procedure, the sequence-based approach considers both the amino acid composition of a peptide and the local environment profile of each amino acid in the peptide; the structure-based approach is performed with the CODESSA protocol, which regards a peptide as a common organic compound and generates more than 200 statistically significant variables to characterize the whole structure profile of a peptide molecule. Subsequently, the nonlinear support vector machine (SVM) and Gaussian process (GP) as well as linear partial least squares (PLS) regression is employed to correlate the structural parameters of the characterizations with the IMS drift times of these peptides. The obtained quantitative structure-spectrum relationship (QSSR) models are evaluated rigorously and investigated systematically via both one-deep and two-deep cross-validations as well as the rigorous Monte Carlo cross-validation (MCCV). We also give a comprehensive comparison on the resulting statistics arising from the different combinations of variable types with modeling methods and find that the sequence-based approach can give the QSSR models with better fitting ability and predictive power but worse interpretability than the structure-based approach. In addition, though the QSSR modeling using sequence-based approach is not needed for the preparation of the minimization structures of peptides before the modeling, it would be considerably efficient as compared to that using structure-based approach. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. Culturable prokaryotic diversity of deep, gas hydrate sediments: first use of a continuous high-pressure, anaerobic, enrichment and isolation system for subseafloor sediments (DeepIsoBUG)

    PubMed Central

    Parkes, R John; Sellek, Gerard; Webster, Gordon; Martin, Derek; Anders, Erik; Weightman, Andrew J; Sass, Henrik

    2009-01-01

    Deep subseafloor sediments may contain depressurization-sensitive, anaerobic, piezophilic prokaryotes. To test this we developed the DeepIsoBUG system, which when coupled with the HYACINTH pressure-retaining drilling and core storage system and the PRESS core cutting and processing system, enables deep sediments to be handled without depressurization (up to 25 MPa) and anaerobic prokaryotic enrichments and isolation to be conducted up to 100 MPa. Here, we describe the system and its first use with subsurface gas hydrate sediments from the Indian Continental Shelf, Cascadia Margin and Gulf of Mexico. Generally, highest cell concentrations in enrichments occurred close to in situ pressures (14 MPa) in a variety of media, although growth continued up to at least 80 MPa. Predominant sequences in enrichments were Carnobacterium, Clostridium, Marinilactibacillus and Pseudomonas, plus Acetobacterium and Bacteroidetes in Indian samples, largely independent of media and pressures. Related 16S rRNA gene sequences for all of these Bacteria have been detected in deep, subsurface environments, although isolated strains were piezotolerant, being able to grow at atmospheric pressure. Only the Clostridium and Acetobacterium were obligate anaerobes. No Archaea were enriched. It may be that these sediment samples were not deep enough (total depth 1126–1527 m) to obtain obligate piezophiles. PMID:19694787

  2. Sequence and Structure Dependent DNA-DNA Interactions

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kopchick, Benjamin; Qiu, Xiangyun

    Molecular forces between dsDNA strands are largely dominated by electrostatics and have been extensively studied. Quantitative knowledge has been accumulated on how DNA-DNA interactions are modulated by varied biological constituents such as ions, cationic ligands, and proteins. Despite its central role in biology, the sequence of DNA has not received substantial attention and ``random'' DNA sequences are typically used in biophysical studies. However, ~50% of human genome is composed of non-random-sequence DNAs, particularly repetitive sequences. Furthermore, covalent modifications of DNA such as methylation play key roles in gene functions. Such DNAs with specific sequences or modifications often take on structures other than the canonical B-form. Here we present series of quantitative measurements of the DNA-DNA forces with the osmotic stress method on different DNA sequences, from short repeats to the most frequent sequences in genome, and to modifications such as bromination and methylation. We observe peculiar behaviors that appear to be strongly correlated with the incurred structural changes. We speculate the causalities in terms of the differences in hydration shell and DNA surface structures.

  3. Deep sequencing of the Trypanosoma cruzi GP63 surface proteases reveals diversity and diversifying selection among chronic and congenital Chagas disease patients.

    PubMed

    Llewellyn, Martin S; Messenger, Louisa A; Luquetti, Alejandro O; Garcia, Lineth; Torrico, Faustino; Tavares, Suelene B N; Cheaib, Bachar; Derome, Nicolas; Delepine, Marc; Baulard, Céline; Deleuze, Jean-Francois; Sauer, Sascha; Miles, Michael A

    2015-04-01

    Chagas disease results from infection with the diploid protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. T. cruzi is highly genetically diverse, and multiclonal infections in individual hosts are common, but little studied. In this study, we explore T. cruzi infection multiclonality in the context of age, sex and clinical profile among a cohort of chronic patients, as well as paired congenital cases from Cochabamba, Bolivia and Goias, Brazil using amplicon deep sequencing technology. A 450bp fragment of the trypomastigote TcGP63I surface protease gene was amplified and sequenced across 70 chronic and 22 congenital cases on the Illumina MiSeq platform. In addition, a second, mitochondrial target--ND5--was sequenced across the same cohort of cases. Several million reads were generated, and sequencing read depths were normalized within patient cohorts (Goias chronic, n = 43, Goias congenital n = 2, Bolivia chronic, n = 27; Bolivia congenital, n = 20), Among chronic cases, analyses of variance indicated no clear correlation between intra-host sequence diversity and age, sex or symptoms, while principal coordinate analyses showed no clustering by symptoms between patients. Between congenital pairs, we found evidence for the transmission of multiple sequence types from mother to infant, as well as widespread instances of novel genotypes in infants. Finally, non-synonymous to synonymous (dn:ds) nucleotide substitution ratios among sequences of TcGP63Ia and TcGP63Ib subfamilies within each cohort provided powerful evidence of strong diversifying selection at this locus. Our results shed light on the diversity of parasite DTUs within each patient, as well as the extent to which parasite strains pass between mother and foetus in congenital cases. Although we were unable to find any evidence that parasite diversity accumulates with age in our study cohorts, putative diversifying selection within members of the TcGP63I gene family suggests a link between genetic diversity within this gene

  4. Deep Sequencing of the Trypanosoma cruzi GP63 Surface Proteases Reveals Diversity and Diversifying Selection among Chronic and Congenital Chagas Disease Patients

    PubMed Central

    Llewellyn, Martin S.; Messenger, Louisa A.; Luquetti, Alejandro O.; Garcia, Lineth; Torrico, Faustino; Tavares, Suelene B. N.; Cheaib, Bachar; Derome, Nicolas; Delepine, Marc; Baulard, Céline; Deleuze, Jean-Francois; Sauer, Sascha; Miles, Michael A.

    2015-01-01

    Background Chagas disease results from infection with the diploid protozoan parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. T. cruzi is highly genetically diverse, and multiclonal infections in individual hosts are common, but little studied. In this study, we explore T. cruzi infection multiclonality in the context of age, sex and clinical profile among a cohort of chronic patients, as well as paired congenital cases from Cochabamba, Bolivia and Goias, Brazil using amplicon deep sequencing technology. Methodology/ Principal Findings A 450bp fragment of the trypomastigote TcGP63I surface protease gene was amplified and sequenced across 70 chronic and 22 congenital cases on the Illumina MiSeq platform. In addition, a second, mitochondrial target—ND5—was sequenced across the same cohort of cases. Several million reads were generated, and sequencing read depths were normalized within patient cohorts (Goias chronic, n = 43, Goias congenital n = 2, Bolivia chronic, n = 27; Bolivia congenital, n = 20), Among chronic cases, analyses of variance indicated no clear correlation between intra-host sequence diversity and age, sex or symptoms, while principal coordinate analyses showed no clustering by symptoms between patients. Between congenital pairs, we found evidence for the transmission of multiple sequence types from mother to infant, as well as widespread instances of novel genotypes in infants. Finally, non-synonymous to synonymous (dn:ds) nucleotide substitution ratios among sequences of TcGP63Ia and TcGP63Ib subfamilies within each cohort provided powerful evidence of strong diversifying selection at this locus. Conclusions/Significance Our results shed light on the diversity of parasite DTUs within each patient, as well as the extent to which parasite strains pass between mother and foetus in congenital cases. Although we were unable to find any evidence that parasite diversity accumulates with age in our study cohorts, putative diversifying selection within members of the TcGP63I

  5. Deep machine learning provides state-of-the-art performance in image-based plant phenotyping.

    PubMed

    Pound, Michael P; Atkinson, Jonathan A; Townsend, Alexandra J; Wilson, Michael H; Griffiths, Marcus; Jackson, Aaron S; Bulat, Adrian; Tzimiropoulos, Georgios; Wells, Darren M; Murchie, Erik H; Pridmore, Tony P; French, Andrew P

    2017-10-01

    In plant phenotyping, it has become important to be able to measure many features on large image sets in order to aid genetic discovery. The size of the datasets, now often captured robotically, often precludes manual inspection, hence the motivation for finding a fully automated approach. Deep learning is an emerging field that promises unparalleled results on many data analysis problems. Building on artificial neural networks, deep approaches have many more hidden layers in the network, and hence have greater discriminative and predictive power. We demonstrate the use of such approaches as part of a plant phenotyping pipeline. We show the success offered by such techniques when applied to the challenging problem of image-based plant phenotyping and demonstrate state-of-the-art results (>97% accuracy) for root and shoot feature identification and localization. We use fully automated trait identification using deep learning to identify quantitative trait loci in root architecture datasets. The majority (12 out of 14) of manually identified quantitative trait loci were also discovered using our automated approach based on deep learning detection to locate plant features. We have shown deep learning-based phenotyping to have very good detection and localization accuracy in validation and testing image sets. We have shown that such features can be used to derive meaningful biological traits, which in turn can be used in quantitative trait loci discovery pipelines. This process can be completely automated. We predict a paradigm shift in image-based phenotyping bought about by such deep learning approaches, given sufficient training sets. © The Authors 2017. Published by Oxford University Press.

  6. Highly sensitive fluorescence quantitative detection of specific DNA sequences with molecular beacons and nucleic acid dye SYBR Green I.

    PubMed

    Xiang, Dongshan; Zhai, Kun; Xiang, Wenjun; Wang, Lianzhi

    2014-11-01

    A highly sensitive fluorescence method of quantitative detection for specific DNA sequence is developed based on molecular beacon (MB) and nucleic acid dye SYBR Green I by synchronous fluorescence analysis. It is demonstrated by an oligonucleotide sequence of wild-type HBV (target DNA) as a model system. In this strategy, the fluorophore of MB is designed to be 6-carboxyfluorescein group (FAM), and the maximum excitation wavelength and maximum emission wavelength are both very close to that of SYBR Green I. In the presence of targets DNA, the MBs hybridize with the targets DNA and form double-strand DNA (dsDNA), the fluorophore FAM is separated from the quencher BHQ-1, thus the fluorophore emit fluorescence. At the same time, SYBR Green I binds to dsDNA, the fluorescence intensity of SYBR Green I is significantly enhanced. When targets DNA are detected by synchronous fluorescence analysis, the fluorescence peaks of FAM and SYBR Green I overlap completely, so the fluorescence signal of system will be significantly enhanced. Thus, highly sensitive fluorescence quantitative detection for DNA can be realized. Under the optimum conditions, the total fluorescence intensity of FAM and SYBR Green I exhibits good linear dependence on concentration of targets DNA in the range from 2×10(-11) to 2.5×10(-9)M. The detection limit of target DNA is estimated to be 9×10(-12)M (3σ). Compared with previously reported methods of detection DNA with MB, the proposed method can significantly enhance the detection sensitivity. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  7. The bias associated with amplicon sequencing does not affect the quantitative assessment of bacterial community dynamics.

    PubMed

    Ibarbalz, Federico M; Pérez, María Victoria; Figuerola, Eva L M; Erijman, Leonardo

    2014-01-01

    The performance of two sets of primers targeting variable regions of the 16S rRNA gene V1-V3 and V4 was compared in their ability to describe changes of bacterial diversity and temporal turnover in full-scale activated sludge. Duplicate sets of high-throughput amplicon sequencing data of the two 16S rRNA regions shared a collection of core taxa that were observed across a series of twelve monthly samples, although the relative abundance of each taxon was substantially different between regions. A case in point was the changes in the relative abundance of filamentous bacteria Thiothrix, which caused a large effect on diversity indices, but only in the V1-V3 data set. Yet the relative abundance of Thiothrix in the amplicon sequencing data from both regions correlated with the estimation of its abundance determined using fluorescence in situ hybridization. In nonmetric multidimensional analysis samples were distributed along the first ordination axis according to the sequenced region rather than according to sample identities. The dynamics of microbial communities indicated that V1-V3 and the V4 regions of the 16S rRNA gene yielded comparable patterns of: 1) the changes occurring within the communities along fixed time intervals, 2) the slow turnover of activated sludge communities and 3) the rate of species replacement calculated from the taxa-time relationships. The temperature was the only operational variable that showed significant correlation with the composition of bacterial communities over time for the sets of data obtained with both pairs of primers. In conclusion, we show that despite the bias introduced by amplicon sequencing, the variable regions V1-V3 and V4 can be confidently used for the quantitative assessment of bacterial community dynamics, and provide a proper qualitative account of general taxa in the community, especially when the data are obtained over a convenient time window rather than at a single time point.

  8. The Bias Associated with Amplicon Sequencing Does Not Affect the Quantitative Assessment of Bacterial Community Dynamics

    PubMed Central

    Figuerola, Eva L. M.; Erijman, Leonardo

    2014-01-01

    The performance of two sets of primers targeting variable regions of the 16S rRNA gene V1–V3 and V4 was compared in their ability to describe changes of bacterial diversity and temporal turnover in full-scale activated sludge. Duplicate sets of high-throughput amplicon sequencing data of the two 16S rRNA regions shared a collection of core taxa that were observed across a series of twelve monthly samples, although the relative abundance of each taxon was substantially different between regions. A case in point was the changes in the relative abundance of filamentous bacteria Thiothrix, which caused a large effect on diversity indices, but only in the V1–V3 data set. Yet the relative abundance of Thiothrix in the amplicon sequencing data from both regions correlated with the estimation of its abundance determined using fluorescence in situ hybridization. In nonmetric multidimensional analysis samples were distributed along the first ordination axis according to the sequenced region rather than according to sample identities. The dynamics of microbial communities indicated that V1–V3 and the V4 regions of the 16S rRNA gene yielded comparable patterns of: 1) the changes occurring within the communities along fixed time intervals, 2) the slow turnover of activated sludge communities and 3) the rate of species replacement calculated from the taxa–time relationships. The temperature was the only operational variable that showed significant correlation with the composition of bacterial communities over time for the sets of data obtained with both pairs of primers. In conclusion, we show that despite the bias introduced by amplicon sequencing, the variable regions V1–V3 and V4 can be confidently used for the quantitative assessment of bacterial community dynamics, and provide a proper qualitative account of general taxa in the community, especially when the data are obtained over a convenient time window rather than at a single time point. PMID:24923665

  9. Deep Illumina-Based Shotgun Sequencing Reveals Dietary Effects on the Structure and Function of the Fecal Microbiome of Growing Kittens

    PubMed Central

    Deusch, Oliver; O’Flynn, Ciaran; Colyer, Alison; Morris, Penelope; Allaway, David; Jones, Paul G.; Swanson, Kelly S.

    2014-01-01

    Background Previously, we demonstrated that dietary protein:carbohydrate ratio dramatically affects the fecal microbial taxonomic structure of kittens using targeted 16S gene sequencing. The present study, using the same fecal samples, applied deep Illumina shotgun sequencing to identify the diet-associated functional potential and analyze taxonomic changes of the feline fecal microbiome. Methodology & Principal Findings Fecal samples from kittens fed one of two diets differing in protein and carbohydrate content (high–protein, low–carbohydrate, HPLC; and moderate-protein, moderate-carbohydrate, MPMC) were collected at 8, 12 and 16 weeks of age (n = 6 per group). A total of 345.3 gigabases of sequence were generated from 36 samples, with 99.75% of annotated sequences identified as bacterial. At the genus level, 26% and 39% of reads were annotated for HPLC- and MPMC-fed kittens, with HPLC-fed cats showing greater species richness and microbial diversity. Two phyla, ten families and fifteen genera were responsible for more than 80% of the sequences at each taxonomic level for both diet groups, consistent with the previous taxonomic study. Significantly different abundances between diet groups were observed for 324 genera (56% of all genera identified) demonstrating widespread diet-induced changes in microbial taxonomic structure. Diversity was not affected over time. Functional analysis identified 2,013 putative enzyme function groups were different (p<0.000007) between the two dietary groups and were associated to 194 pathways, which formed five discrete clusters based on average relative abundance. Of those, ten contained more (p<0.022) enzyme functions with significant diet effects than expected by chance. Six pathways were related to amino acid biosynthesis and metabolism linking changes in dietary protein with functional differences of the gut microbiome. Conclusions These data indicate that feline feces-derived microbiomes have large structural and

  10. Phylogenetic and enzymatic diversity of deep subseafloor aerobic microorganisms in organics- and methane-rich sediments off Shimokita Peninsula.

    PubMed

    Kobayashi, Tohru; Koide, Osamu; Mori, Kozue; Shimamura, Shigeru; Matsuura, Takae; Miura, Takeshi; Takaki, Yoshihiro; Morono, Yuki; Nunoura, Takuro; Imachi, Hiroyuki; Inagaki, Fumio; Takai, Ken; Horikoshi, Koki

    2008-07-01

    "A meta-enzyme approach" is proposed as an ecological enzymatic method to explore the potential functions of microbial communities in extreme environments such as the deep marine subsurface. We evaluated a variety of extra-cellular enzyme activities of sediment slurries and isolates from a deep subseafloor sediment core. Using the new deep-sea drilling vessel "Chikyu", we obtained 365 m of core sediments that contained approximately 2% organic matter and considerable amounts of methane from offshore the Shimokita Peninsula in Japan at a water depth of 1,180 m. In the extra-sediment fraction of the slurry samples, phosphatase, esterase, and catalase activities were detected consistently throughout the core sediments down to the deepest slurry sample from 342.5 m below seafloor (mbsf). Detectable enzyme activities predicted the existence of a sizable population of viable aerobic microorganisms even in deep subseafloor habitats. The subsequent quantitative cultivation using solid media represented remarkably high numbers of aerobic, heterotrophic microbial populations (e.g., maximally 4.4x10(7) cells cm(-3) at 342.5 mbsf). Analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences revealed that the predominant cultivated microbial components were affiliated with the genera Bacillus, Shewanella, Pseudoalteromonas, Halomonas, Pseudomonas, Paracoccus, Rhodococcus, Microbacterium, and Flexibacteracea. Many of the predominant and scarce isolates produced a variety of extra-cellular enzymes such as proteases, amylases, lipases, chitinases, phosphatases, and deoxyribonucleases. Our results indicate that microbes in the deep subseafloor environment off Shimokita are metabolically active and that the cultivable populations may have a great potential in biotechnology.

  11. Medical Sequencing at the extremes of Human Body Mass

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Ahituv, Nadav; Kavaslar, Nihan; Schackwitz, Wendy

    2006-09-01

    Body weight is a quantitative trait with significantheritability in humans. To identify potential genetic contributors tothis phenotype, we resequenced the coding exons and splice junctions of58 genes in 379 obese and 378 lean individuals. Our 96Mb survey included21 genes associated with monogenic forms of obesity in humans or mice, aswell as 37 genes that function in body weight-related pathways. We foundthat the monogenic obesity-associated gene group was enriched for rarenonsynonymous variants unique to the obese (n=46) versus lean (n=26)populations. Computational analysis further predicted a significantlygreater fraction of deleterious variants within the obese cohort.Consistent with the complex inheritance of body weight,more » we did notobserve obvious familial segregation in the majority of the 28 availablekindreds. Taken together, these data suggest that multiple rare alleleswith variable penetrance contribute to obesity in the population andprovide a deep medical sequencing based approach to detectthem.« less

  12. Deep learning improves prediction of CRISPR-Cpf1 guide RNA activity.

    PubMed

    Kim, Hui Kwon; Min, Seonwoo; Song, Myungjae; Jung, Soobin; Choi, Jae Woo; Kim, Younggwang; Lee, Sangeun; Yoon, Sungroh; Kim, Hyongbum Henry

    2018-03-01

    We present two algorithms to predict the activity of AsCpf1 guide RNAs. Indel frequencies for 15,000 target sequences were used in a deep-learning framework based on a convolutional neural network to train Seq-deepCpf1. We then incorporated chromatin accessibility information to create the better-performing DeepCpf1 algorithm for cell lines for which such information is available and show that both algorithms outperform previous machine learning algorithms on our own and published data sets.

  13. Protein sequences bound to mineral surfaces persist into deep time

    PubMed Central

    Demarchi, Beatrice; Hall, Shaun; Roncal-Herrero, Teresa; Freeman, Colin L; Woolley, Jos; Crisp, Molly K; Wilson, Julie; Fotakis, Anna; Fischer, Roman; Kessler, Benedikt M; Rakownikow Jersie-Christensen, Rosa; Olsen, Jesper V; Haile, James; Thomas, Jessica; Marean, Curtis W; Parkington, John; Presslee, Samantha; Lee-Thorp, Julia; Ditchfield, Peter; Hamilton, Jacqueline F; Ward, Martyn W; Wang, Chunting Michelle; Shaw, Marvin D; Harrison, Terry; Domínguez-Rodrigo, Manuel; MacPhee, Ross DE; Kwekason, Amandus; Ecker, Michaela; Kolska Horwitz, Liora; Chazan, Michael; Kröger, Roland; Thomas-Oates, Jane; Harding, John H; Cappellini, Enrico; Penkman, Kirsty; Collins, Matthew J

    2016-01-01

    Proteins persist longer in the fossil record than DNA, but the longevity, survival mechanisms and substrates remain contested. Here, we demonstrate the role of mineral binding in preserving the protein sequence in ostrich (Struthionidae) eggshell, including from the palaeontological sites of Laetoli (3.8 Ma) and Olduvai Gorge (1.3 Ma) in Tanzania. By tracking protein diagenesis back in time we find consistent patterns of preservation, demonstrating authenticity of the surviving sequences. Molecular dynamics simulations of struthiocalcin-1 and -2, the dominant proteins within the eggshell, reveal that distinct domains bind to the mineral surface. It is the domain with the strongest calculated binding energy to the calcite surface that is selectively preserved. Thermal age calculations demonstrate that the Laetoli and Olduvai peptides are 50 times older than any previously authenticated sequence (equivalent to ~16 Ma at a constant 10°C). DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.17092.001 PMID:27668515

  14. Application of Stochastic Labeling with Random-Sequence Barcodes for Simultaneous Quantification and Sequencing of Environmental 16S rRNA Genes.

    PubMed

    Hoshino, Tatsuhiko; Inagaki, Fumio

    2017-01-01

    Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is a powerful tool for analyzing environmental DNA and provides the comprehensive molecular view of microbial communities. For obtaining the copy number of particular sequences in the NGS library, however, additional quantitative analysis as quantitative PCR (qPCR) or digital PCR (dPCR) is required. Furthermore, number of sequences in a sequence library does not always reflect the original copy number of a target gene because of biases caused by PCR amplification, making it difficult to convert the proportion of particular sequences in the NGS library to the copy number using the mass of input DNA. To address this issue, we applied stochastic labeling approach with random-tag sequences and developed a NGS-based quantification protocol, which enables simultaneous sequencing and quantification of the targeted DNA. This quantitative sequencing (qSeq) is initiated from single-primer extension (SPE) using a primer with random tag adjacent to the 5' end of target-specific sequence. During SPE, each DNA molecule is stochastically labeled with the random tag. Subsequently, first-round PCR is conducted, specifically targeting the SPE product, followed by second-round PCR to index for NGS. The number of random tags is only determined during the SPE step and is therefore not affected by the two rounds of PCR that may introduce amplification biases. In the case of 16S rRNA genes, after NGS sequencing and taxonomic classification, the absolute number of target phylotypes 16S rRNA gene can be estimated by Poisson statistics by counting random tags incorporated at the end of sequence. To test the feasibility of this approach, the 16S rRNA gene of Sulfolobus tokodaii was subjected to qSeq, which resulted in accurate quantification of 5.0 × 103 to 5.0 × 104 copies of the 16S rRNA gene. Furthermore, qSeq was applied to mock microbial communities and environmental samples, and the results were comparable to those obtained using digital PCR and

  15. The 2007 Nazko, British Columbia, earthquake sequence: Injection of magma deep in the crust beneath the Anahim volcanic belt

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Cassidy, J.F.; Balfour, N.; Hickson, C.; Kao, H.; White, Rickie; Caplan-Auerbach, J.; Mazzotti, S.; Rogers, Gary C.; Al-Khoubbi, I.; Bird, A.L.; Esteban, L.; Kelman, M.; Hutchinson, J.; McCormack, D.

    2011-01-01

    On 9 October 2007, an unusual sequence of earthquakes began in central British Columbia about 20 km west of the Nazko cone, the most recent (circa 7200 yr) volcanic center in the Anahim volcanic belt. Within 25 hr, eight earthquakes of magnitude 2.3-2.9 occurred in a region where no earthquakes had previously been recorded. During the next three weeks, more than 800 microearthquakes were located (and many more detected), most at a depth of 25-31 km and within a radius of about 5 km. After about two months, almost all activity ceased. The clear P- and S-wave arrivals indicated that these were high-frequency (volcanic-tectonic) earthquakes and the b value of 1.9 that we calculated is anomalous for crustal earthquakes but consistent with volcanic-related events. Analysis of receiver functions at a station immediately above the seismicity indicated a Moho near 30 km depth. Precise relocation of the seismicity using a double-difference method suggested a horizontal migration at the rate of about 0:5 km=d, with almost all events within the lowermost crust. Neither harmonic tremor nor long-period events were observed; however, some spasmodic bursts were recorded and determined to be colocated with the earthquake hypocenters. These observations are all very similar to a deep earthquake sequence recorded beneath Lake Tahoe, California, in 2003-2004. Based on these remarkable similarities, we interpret the Nazko sequence as an indication of an injection of magma into the lower crust beneath the Anahim volcanic belt. This magma injection fractures rock, producing high-frequency, volcanic-tectonic earthquakes and spasmodic bursts.

  16. Complete genome sequence of a novel genotype of squash mosaic virus

    USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

    Complete genome sequence of a novel genotype of Squash mosaic virus (SqMV) infecting squash plants in Spain was obtained using deep sequencing of small ribonucleic acids and assembly. The low nucleotide sequence identities, with 87-88% on RNA1 and 84-86% on RNA2 to known SqMV isolates, suggest a new...

  17. Generic Amplicon Deep Sequencing to Determine Ilarvirus Species Diversity in Australian Prunus

    PubMed Central

    Kinoti, Wycliff M.; Constable, Fiona E.; Nancarrow, Narelle; Plummer, Kim M.; Rodoni, Brendan

    2017-01-01

    The distribution of Ilarvirus species populations amongst 61 Australian Prunus trees was determined by next generation sequencing (NGS) of amplicons generated using a genus-based generic RT-PCR targeting a conserved region of the Ilarvirus RNA2 component that encodes the RNA dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) gene. Presence of Ilarvirus sequences in each positive sample was further validated by Sanger sequencing of cloned amplicons of regions of each of RNA1, RNA2 and/or RNA3 that were generated by species specific PCRs and by metagenomic NGS. Prunus necrotic ringspot virus (PNRSV) was the most frequently detected Ilarvirus, occurring in 48 of the 61 Ilarvirus-positive trees and Prune dwarf virus (PDV) and Apple mosaic virus (ApMV) were detected in three trees and one tree, respectively. American plum line pattern virus (APLPV) was detected in three trees and represents the first report of APLPV detection in Australia. Two novel and distinct groups of Ilarvirus-like RNA2 amplicon sequences were also identified in several trees by the generic amplicon NGS approach. The high read depth from the amplicon NGS of the generic PCR products allowed the detection of distinct RNA2 RdRp sequence variant populations of PNRSV, PDV, ApMV, APLPV and the two novel Ilarvirus-like sequences. Mixed infections of ilarviruses were also detected in seven Prunus trees. Sanger sequencing of specific RNA1, RNA2, and/or RNA3 genome segments of each virus and total nucleic acid metagenomics NGS confirmed the presence of PNRSV, PDV, ApMV and APLPV detected by RNA2 generic amplicon NGS. However, the two novel groups of Ilarvirus-like RNA2 amplicon sequences detected by the generic amplicon NGS could not be associated to the presence of sequence from RNA1 or RNA3 genome segments or full Ilarvirus genomes, and their origin is unclear. This work highlights the sensitivity of genus-specific amplicon NGS in detection of virus sequences and their distinct populations in multiple samples, and the need

  18. Generic Amplicon Deep Sequencing to Determine Ilarvirus Species Diversity in Australian Prunus.

    PubMed

    Kinoti, Wycliff M; Constable, Fiona E; Nancarrow, Narelle; Plummer, Kim M; Rodoni, Brendan

    2017-01-01

    The distribution of Ilarvirus species populations amongst 61 Australian Prunus trees was determined by next generation sequencing (NGS) of amplicons generated using a genus-based generic RT-PCR targeting a conserved region of the Ilarvirus RNA2 component that encodes the RNA dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) gene. Presence of Ilarvirus sequences in each positive sample was further validated by Sanger sequencing of cloned amplicons of regions of each of RNA1, RNA2 and/or RNA3 that were generated by species specific PCRs and by metagenomic NGS. Prunus necrotic ringspot virus (PNRSV) was the most frequently detected Ilarvirus , occurring in 48 of the 61 Ilarvirus -positive trees and Prune dwarf virus (PDV) and Apple mosaic virus (ApMV) were detected in three trees and one tree, respectively. American plum line pattern virus (APLPV) was detected in three trees and represents the first report of APLPV detection in Australia. Two novel and distinct groups of Ilarvirus -like RNA2 amplicon sequences were also identified in several trees by the generic amplicon NGS approach. The high read depth from the amplicon NGS of the generic PCR products allowed the detection of distinct RNA2 RdRp sequence variant populations of PNRSV, PDV, ApMV, APLPV and the two novel Ilarvirus -like sequences. Mixed infections of ilarviruses were also detected in seven Prunus trees. Sanger sequencing of specific RNA1, RNA2, and/or RNA3 genome segments of each virus and total nucleic acid metagenomics NGS confirmed the presence of PNRSV, PDV, ApMV and APLPV detected by RNA2 generic amplicon NGS. However, the two novel groups of Ilarvirus -like RNA2 amplicon sequences detected by the generic amplicon NGS could not be associated to the presence of sequence from RNA1 or RNA3 genome segments or full Ilarvirus genomes, and their origin is unclear. This work highlights the sensitivity of genus-specific amplicon NGS in detection of virus sequences and their distinct populations in multiple samples, and the

  19. High abundance of JS-1- and Chloroflexi-related Bacteria in deeply buried marine sediments revealed by quantitative, real-time PCR.

    PubMed

    Blazejak, Anna; Schippers, Axel

    2010-05-01

    Sequences of members of the bacterial candidate division JS-1 and the classes Anaerolineae and Caldilineae of the phylum Chloroflexi are frequently found in 16S rRNA gene clone libraries obtained from marine sediments. Using a newly designed quantitative, real-time PCR assay, these bacterial groups were jointly quantified in samples from near-surface and deeply buried marine sediments from the Peru margin, the Black Sea, and a forearc basin off the island of Sumatra. In near-surface sediments, sequences of the JS-1 as well as Anaerolineae- and Caldilineae-related Bacteria were quantified with significantly lower 16S rRNA gene copy numbers than the sequences of total Bacteria. In contrast, in deeply buried sediments below approximately 1 m depth, similar quantities of the 16S rRNA gene copies of these specific groups and Bacteria were found. This finding indicates that JS-1 and Anaerolineae- and Caldilineae-related Bacteria might dominate the bacterial community in deeply buried marine sediments and thus seem to play an important ecological role in the deep biosphere.

  20. Deep sequencing and genome-wide analysis reveals the expansion of MicroRNA genes in the gall midge Mayetiola destructor

    PubMed Central

    2013-01-01

    Background MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that play critical roles in regulating post transcriptional gene expression. Gall midges encompass a large group of insects that are of economic importance and also possess fascinating biological traits. The gall midge Mayetiola destructor, commonly known as the Hessian fly, is a destructive pest of wheat and model organism for studying gall midge biology and insect – host plant interactions. Results In this study, we systematically analyzed miRNAs from the Hessian fly. Deep-sequencing a Hessian fly larval transcriptome led to the identification of 89 miRNA species that are either identical or very similar to known miRNAs from other insects, and 184 novel miRNAs that have not been reported from other species. A genome-wide search through a draft Hessian fly genome sequence identified a total of 611 putative miRNA-encoding genes based on sequence similarity and the existence of a stem-loop structure for miRNA precursors. Analysis of the 611 putative genes revealed a striking feature: the dramatic expansion of several miRNA gene families. The largest family contained 91 genes that encoded 20 different miRNAs. Microarray analyses revealed the expression of miRNA genes was strictly regulated during Hessian fly larval development and abundance of many miRNA genes were affected by host genotypes. Conclusion The identification of a large number of miRNAs for the first time from a gall midge provides a foundation for further studies of miRNA functions in gall midge biology and behavior. The dramatic expansion of identical or similar miRNAs provides a unique system to study functional relations among miRNA iso-genes as well as changes in sequence specificity due to small changes in miRNAs and in their mRNA targets. These results may also facilitate the identification of miRNA genes for potential pest control through transgenic approaches. PMID:23496979

  1. Mass extinctions in the deep sea

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Thomas, E.

    1988-01-01

    The character of mass extinctions can be assessed by studying extinction patterns of organisms, the fabric of the extinction, and assessing the environmental niche and mode of life of survivors. Deep-sea benthic foraminifera have been listed as little affected by the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) mass extinction, but very few quantitative data are available. New data on deep-sea Late Maestrichtian-Eocene benthic foraminifera from Maud Rise (Antractica) indicate that about 10 percent of the species living at depths of 2000 to 2500 m had last appearances within 1 my of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary, versus about 25 percent of species at 1000 to 1500 m. Many survivors from the Cretaceous became extinct in a period of global deep-sea benthic foraminiferal extinction at the end of the Paleocene, a time otherwise marked by very few extinctions. Preliminary conclusions suggest that the deep oceanic environment is essentially decoupled from the shallow marine and terrestrial environment, and that even major disturbances of one of these will not greatly affect the other. This gives deep-sea benthic faunas a good opportunity to recolonize shallow environments from greater depths and vice versa after massive extinctions. The decoupling means that data on deep-sea benthic boundary was caused by the environmental effects of asteriod impact or excessive volcanism. The benthic foraminiferal data strongly suggest, however, that the environmental results were strongest at the Earth's surface, and that there was no major disturbance of the deep ocean; this pattern might result both from excessive volcanism and from an impact on land.

  2. Compositional Bias in Naïve and Chemically-modified Phage-Displayed Libraries uncovered by Paired-end Deep Sequencing.

    PubMed

    He, Bifang; Tjhung, Katrina F; Bennett, Nicholas J; Chou, Ying; Rau, Andrea; Huang, Jian; Derda, Ratmir

    2018-01-19

    Understanding the composition of a genetically-encoded (GE) library is instrumental to the success of ligand discovery. In this manuscript, we investigate the bias in GE-libraries of linear, macrocyclic and chemically post-translationally modified (cPTM) tetrapeptides displayed on the M13KE platform, which are produced via trinucleotide cassette synthesis (19 codons) and NNK-randomized codon. Differential enrichment of synthetic DNA {S}, ligated vector {L} (extension and ligation of synthetic DNA into the vector), naïve libraries {N} (transformation of the ligated vector into the bacteria followed by expression of the library for 4.5 hours to yield a "naïve" library), and libraries chemically modified by aldehyde ligation and cysteine macrocyclization {M} characterized by paired-end deep sequencing, detected a significant drop in diversity in {L} → {N}, but only a minor compositional difference in {S} → {L} and {N} → {M}. Libraries expressed at the N-terminus of phage protein pIII censored positively charged amino acids Arg and Lys; libraries expressed between pIII domains N1 and N2 overcame Arg/Lys-censorship but introduced new bias towards Gly and Ser. Interrogation of biases arising from cPTM by aldehyde ligation and cysteine macrocyclization unveiled censorship of sequences with Ser/Phe. Analogous analysis can be used to explore library diversity in new display platforms and optimize cPTM of these libraries.

  3. MRI markers of small vessel disease in lobar and deep hemispheric intracerebral hemorrhage.

    PubMed

    Smith, Eric E; Nandigam, Kaveer R N; Chen, Yu-Wei; Jeng, Jed; Salat, David; Halpin, Amy; Frosch, Matthew; Wendell, Lauren; Fazen, Louis; Rosand, Jonathan; Viswanathan, Anand; Greenberg, Steven M

    2010-09-01

    MRI evidence of small vessel disease is common in intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). We hypothesized that ICH caused by cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) or hypertensive vasculopathy would have different distributions of MRI T2 white matter hyperintensity (WMH) and microbleeds. Data were analyzed from 133 consecutive patients with primary supratentorial ICH and adequate MRI sequences. CAA was diagnosed using the Boston criteria. WMH segmentation was performed using a validated semiautomated method. WMH and microbleeds were compared according to site of symptomatic hematoma origin (lobar versus deep) or by pattern of hemorrhages, including both hematomas and microbleeds, on MRI gradient recalled echo sequence (grouped as lobar only-probable CAA, lobar only-possible CAA, deep hemispheric only, or mixed lobar and deep hemorrhages). Patients with lobar and deep hemispheric hematoma had similar median normalized WMH volumes (19.5 cm versus 19.9 cm(3), P=0.74) and prevalence of >or=1 microbleed (54% versus 52%, P=0.99). The supratentorial WMH distribution was similar according to hemorrhage location category; however, the prevalence of brain stem T2 hyperintensity was lower in lobar hematoma versus deep hematoma (54% versus 70%, P=0.004). Mixed ICH was common (23%). Patients with mixed ICH had large normalized WMH volumes and a posterior distribution of cortical hemorrhages similar to that seen in CAA. WMH distribution is largely similar between CAA-related and non-CAA-related ICH. Mixed lobar and deep hemorrhages are seen on MRI gradient recalled echo sequence in up to one fourth of patients; in these patients, both hypertension and CAA may be contributing to the burden of WMH.

  4. Targeted Quantitation of Proteins by Mass Spectrometry

    PubMed Central

    2013-01-01

    Quantitative measurement of proteins is one of the most fundamental analytical tasks in a biochemistry laboratory, but widely used immunochemical methods often have limited specificity and high measurement variation. In this review, we discuss applications of multiple-reaction monitoring (MRM) mass spectrometry, which allows sensitive, precise quantitative analyses of peptides and the proteins from which they are derived. Systematic development of MRM assays is permitted by databases of peptide mass spectra and sequences, software tools for analysis design and data analysis, and rapid evolution of tandem mass spectrometer technology. Key advantages of MRM assays are the ability to target specific peptide sequences, including variants and modified forms, and the capacity for multiplexing that allows analysis of dozens to hundreds of peptides. Different quantitative standardization methods provide options that balance precision, sensitivity, and assay cost. Targeted protein quantitation by MRM and related mass spectrometry methods can advance biochemistry by transforming approaches to protein measurement. PMID:23517332

  5. Targeted quantitation of proteins by mass spectrometry.

    PubMed

    Liebler, Daniel C; Zimmerman, Lisa J

    2013-06-04

    Quantitative measurement of proteins is one of the most fundamental analytical tasks in a biochemistry laboratory, but widely used immunochemical methods often have limited specificity and high measurement variation. In this review, we discuss applications of multiple-reaction monitoring (MRM) mass spectrometry, which allows sensitive, precise quantitative analyses of peptides and the proteins from which they are derived. Systematic development of MRM assays is permitted by databases of peptide mass spectra and sequences, software tools for analysis design and data analysis, and rapid evolution of tandem mass spectrometer technology. Key advantages of MRM assays are the ability to target specific peptide sequences, including variants and modified forms, and the capacity for multiplexing that allows analysis of dozens to hundreds of peptides. Different quantitative standardization methods provide options that balance precision, sensitivity, and assay cost. Targeted protein quantitation by MRM and related mass spectrometry methods can advance biochemistry by transforming approaches to protein measurement.

  6. Strain diversity and host specificity in bee gut symbionts revealed by deep sampling of single copy protein-coding sequences

    PubMed Central

    Powell, J. Elijah; Ratnayeke, Nalin; Moran, Nancy A.

    2017-01-01

    High throughput rRNA amplicon surveys of bacterial communities provide a rapid snapshot of taxonomic composition. But strains with nearly identical rRNA sequences often differ in gene repertoires and metabolic capabilities. To assess strain-level variation within Snodgrassella alvi, a gut symbiont of corbiculate bees, we performed deep sequencing on amplicons of a single copy coding gene (minD) as well as the 16S rDNA V4 region. We surveyed honey bees (Apis mellifera) sampled globally and 12 bumble bee species (Bombus) sampled from two regions of the USA. The minD analyses reveal that S. alvi contains far more strain diversity than is evident from 16S rDNA analysis. Many taxa inferred on the basis of 16S rDNA are shared between A. mellifera and Bombus species, but taxa inferred on the basis of minD are never shared and often are restricted to particular Bombus species. Clustering based on minD revealed that gut communities often reflect host species and geographic location. Both minD and 16S rDNA analyses indicate that strain diversity is higher in A. mellifera than in Bombus species. The minD locus flanks a 16S gene, enabling development of strain-specific 16S fluorescent probes to illuminate the spatial relationship of strains within the bee gut. PMID:27482856

  7. Protein Solvent-Accessibility Prediction by a Stacked Deep Bidirectional Recurrent Neural Network.

    PubMed

    Zhang, Buzhong; Li, Linqing; Lü, Qiang

    2018-05-25

    Residue solvent accessibility is closely related to the spatial arrangement and packing of residues. Predicting the solvent accessibility of a protein is an important step to understand its structure and function. In this work, we present a deep learning method to predict residue solvent accessibility, which is based on a stacked deep bidirectional recurrent neural network applied to sequence profiles. To capture more long-range sequence information, a merging operator was proposed when bidirectional information from hidden nodes was merged for outputs. Three types of merging operators were used in our improved model, with a long short-term memory network performing as a hidden computing node. The trained database was constructed from 7361 proteins extracted from the PISCES server using a cut-off of 25% sequence identity. Sequence-derived features including position-specific scoring matrix, physical properties, physicochemical characteristics, conservation score and protein coding were used to represent a residue. Using this method, predictive values of continuous relative solvent-accessible area were obtained, and then, these values were transformed into binary states with predefined thresholds. Our experimental results showed that our deep learning method improved prediction quality relative to current methods, with mean absolute error and Pearson's correlation coefficient values of 8.8% and 74.8%, respectively, on the CB502 dataset and 8.2% and 78%, respectively, on the Manesh215 dataset.

  8. High precision in protein contact prediction using fully convolutional neural networks and minimal sequence features.

    PubMed

    Jones, David T; Kandathil, Shaun M

    2018-04-26

    In addition to substitution frequency data from protein sequence alignments, many state-of-the-art methods for contact prediction rely on additional sources of information, or features, of protein sequences in order to predict residue-residue contacts, such as solvent accessibility, predicted secondary structure, and scores from other contact prediction methods. It is unclear how much of this information is needed to achieve state-of-the-art results. Here, we show that using deep neural network models, simple alignment statistics contain sufficient information to achieve state-of-the-art precision. Our prediction method, DeepCov, uses fully convolutional neural networks operating on amino-acid pair frequency or covariance data derived directly from sequence alignments, without using global statistical methods such as sparse inverse covariance or pseudolikelihood estimation. Comparisons against CCMpred and MetaPSICOV2 show that using pairwise covariance data calculated from raw alignments as input allows us to match or exceed the performance of both of these methods. Almost all of the achieved precision is obtained when considering relatively local windows (around 15 residues) around any member of a given residue pairing; larger window sizes have comparable performance. Assessment on a set of shallow sequence alignments (fewer than 160 effective sequences) indicates that the new method is substantially more precise than CCMpred and MetaPSICOV2 in this regime, suggesting that improved precision is attainable on smaller sequence families. Overall, the performance of DeepCov is competitive with the state of the art, and our results demonstrate that global models, which employ features from all parts of the input alignment when predicting individual contacts, are not strictly needed in order to attain precise contact predictions. DeepCov is freely available at https://github.com/psipred/DeepCov. d.t.jones@ucl.ac.uk.

  9. A robust and cost-effective approach to sequence and analyze complete genomes of small RNA viruses

    USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

    Background: Next-generation sequencing (NGS) allows ultra-deep sequencing of nucleic acids. The use of sequence-independent amplification of viral nucleic acids without utilization of target-specific primers provides advantages over traditional sequencing methods and allows detection of unsuspected ...

  10. Revealing the unexplored fungal communities in deep groundwater of crystalline bedrock fracture zones in Olkiluoto, Finland.

    PubMed

    Sohlberg, Elina; Bomberg, Malin; Miettinen, Hanna; Nyyssönen, Mari; Salavirta, Heikki; Vikman, Minna; Itävaara, Merja

    2015-01-01

    The diversity and functional role of fungi, one of the ecologically most important groups of eukaryotic microorganisms, remains largely unknown in deep biosphere environments. In this study we investigated fungal communities in packer-isolated bedrock fractures in Olkiluoto, Finland at depths ranging from 296 to 798 m below surface level. DNA- and cDNA-based high-throughput amplicon sequencing analysis of the fungal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) gene markers was used to examine the total fungal diversity and to identify the active members in deep fracture zones at different depths. Results showed that fungi were present in fracture zones at all depths and fungal diversity was higher than expected. Most of the observed fungal sequences belonged to the phylum Ascomycota. Phyla Basidiomycota and Chytridiomycota were only represented as a minor part of the fungal community. Dominating fungal classes in the deep bedrock aquifers were Sordariomycetes, Eurotiomycetes, and Dothideomycetes from the Ascomycota phylum and classes Microbotryomycetes and Tremellomycetes from the Basidiomycota phylum, which are the most frequently detected fungal taxa reported also from deep sea environments. In addition some fungal sequences represented potentially novel fungal species. Active fungi were detected in most of the fracture zones, which proves that fungi are able to maintain cellular activity in these oligotrophic conditions. Possible roles of fungi and their origin in deep bedrock groundwater can only be speculated in the light of current knowledge but some species may be specifically adapted to deep subsurface environment and may play important roles in the utilization and recycling of nutrients and thus sustaining the deep subsurface microbial community.

  11. Hemisphere, gender and age-related effects on iron deposition in deep gray matter revealed by quantitative susceptibility mapping.

    PubMed

    Gong, Nan-Jie; Wong, Chun-Sing; Hui, Edward S; Chan, Chun-Chung; Leung, Lam-Ming

    2015-10-01

    The purpose of this work was to investigate the effects of hemispheric location, gender and age on susceptibility value, as well as the association between susceptibility value and diffusional metrics, in deep gray matter. Iron content was estimated in vivo using quantitative susceptibility mapping. Microstructure was probed using diffusional kurtosis imaging. Regional susceptibility and diffusional metrics were measured for the putamen, caudate nucleus, globus pallidus, thalamus, substantia nigra and red nucleus in 42 healthy adults (age range 25-78 years). Susceptibility value was significantly higher in the left than the right side of the caudate nucleus (P = 0.043) and substantia nigra (P < 0.001). Women exhibited lower susceptibility values than men in the thalamus (P < 0.001) and red nucleus (P = 0.032). Significant age-related increases of susceptibility were observed in the putamen (P < 0.001), red nucleus (P < 0.001), substantia nigra (P = 0.004), caudate nucleus (P < 0.001) and globus pallidus (P = 0.017). The putamen exhibited the highest rate of iron accumulation with aging (slope of linear regression = 0.73 × 10(-3) ppm/year), which was nearly twice those in substantia nigra (slope = 0.40 × 10(-3) ppm/year) and caudate nucleus (slope = 0.39 × 10(-3) ppm/year). Significant positive correlations between the susceptibility value and diffusion measurements were observed for fractional anisotropy (P = 0.045) and mean kurtosis (P = 0.048) in the putamen without controlling for age. Neither correlation was significant after controlling for age. Hemisphere, gender and age-related differences in iron measurements were observed in deep gray matter. Notably, the putamen exhibited the highest rate of increase in susceptibility with aging. Correlations between susceptibility value and microstructural measurements were inconclusive. These findings could provide new clues for unveiling mechanisms underlying iron-related neurodegenerative diseases. Copyright

  12. Analysis of hepatitis C NS5A resistance associated polymorphisms using ultra deep single molecule real time (SMRT) sequencing.

    PubMed

    Bergfors, Assar; Leenheer, Daniël; Bergqvist, Anders; Ameur, Adam; Lennerstrand, Johan

    2016-02-01

    Development of Hepatitis C virus (HCV) resistance against direct-acting antivirals (DAAs), including NS5A inhibitors, is an obstacle to successful treatment of HCV when DAAs are used in sub-optimal combinations. Furthermore, it has been shown that baseline (pre-existing) resistance against DAAs is present in treatment naïve-patients and this will potentially complicate future treatment strategies in different HCV genotypes (GTs). Thus the aim was to detect low levels of NS5A resistant associated variants (RAVs) in a limited sample set of treatment-naïve patients of HCV GT1a and 3a, since such polymorphisms can display in vitro resistance as high as 60000 fold. Ultra-deep single molecule real time (SMRT) sequencing with the Pacific Biosciences (PacBio) RSII instrument was used to detect these RAVs. The SMRT sequencing was conducted on ten samples; three of them positive with Sanger sequencing (GT1a Q30H and Y93N, and GT3a Y93H), five GT1a samples, and two GT3a non-positive samples. The same methods were applied to the HCV GT1a H77-plasmid in a dilution series, in order to determine the error rates of replication, which in turn was used to determine the limit of detection (LOD), as defined by mean + 3SD, of minority variants down to 0.24%. We found important baseline NS5A RAVs at levels between 0.24 and 0.5%, which could potentially have clinical relevance. This new method with low level detection of baseline RAVs could be useful in predicting the most cost-efficient combination of DAA treatment, and reduce the treatment duration for an HCV infected individual. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  13. Gene expression in the deep biosphere.

    PubMed

    Orsi, William D; Edgcomb, Virginia P; Christman, Glenn D; Biddle, Jennifer F

    2013-07-11

    Scientific ocean drilling has revealed a deep biosphere of widespread microbial life in sub-seafloor sediment. Microbial metabolism in the marine subsurface probably has an important role in global biogeochemical cycles, but deep biosphere activities are not well understood. Here we describe and analyse the first sub-seafloor metatranscriptomes from anaerobic Peru Margin sediment up to 159 metres below the sea floor, represented by over 1 billion complementary DNA (cDNA) sequence reads. Anaerobic metabolism of amino acids, carbohydrates and lipids seem to be the dominant metabolic processes, and profiles of dissimilatory sulfite reductase (dsr) transcripts are consistent with pore-water sulphate concentration profiles. Moreover, transcripts involved in cell division increase as a function of microbial cell concentration, indicating that increases in sub-seafloor microbial abundance are a function of cell division across all three domains of life. These data support calculations and models of sub-seafloor microbial metabolism and represent the first holistic picture of deep biosphere activities.

  14. Deep-targeted exon sequencing reveals renal polymorphisms associate with postexercise hypotension among African Americans.

    PubMed

    Pescatello, Linda S; Schifano, Elizabeth D; Ash, Garrett I; Panza, Gregory A; Lamberti, Lauren; Chen, Ming-Hui; Deshpande, Ved; Zaleski, Amanda; Farinatti, Paulo; Taylor, Beth A; Thompson, Paul D

    2016-10-01

    We found variants from the Angiotensinogen-Converting Enzyme (ACE), Angiotensin Type 1 Receptor (AGTR1), Aldosterone Synthase (CYP11B2), and Adducin (ADD1) genes exhibited intensity-dependent associations with the ambulatory blood pressure (BP) response following acute exercise, or postexercise hypotension (PEH). In a validation cohort, we sequenced exons from these genes for their associations with PEH Obese (30.9 ± 3.6 kg m -2 ) adults (n = 23; 61% African Americans [AF], 39% Caucasian) 42.0 ± 9.8 years with hypertension (139.8 ± 10.4/84.6 ± 6.2 mmHg) completed three random experiments: bouts of vigorous and moderate intensity cycling and control. Subjects wore an ambulatory BP monitor for 19 h. We performed deep-targeted exon sequencing using the Illumina TruSeq Custom Amplicon kit. Variant genotypes were coded as number of minor alleles (#MA) and selected for further statistical analysis based upon Bonferonni or Benjamini-Yekutieli multiple testing corrected p-values under time adjusted linear models for 19 hourly BP measurements per subject. After vigorous intensity over 19 h among ACE, AGTR1, CYP11B2, and ADD1 variants passing multiple testing thresholds, as the #MA increased, systolic (SBP) and/or diastolic BP decreased 12 mmHg (P = 4.5E-05) to 30 mmHg (P = 6.4E-04) among AF only. In contrast, after moderate intensity over 19 h among ACE and CYP11B2 variants passing multiple testing thresholds, as the #MA increased, SBP increased 21 mmHg (P = 8.0E-04) to 22 mmHg (P = 8.2E-04) among AF only. In this replication study, ACE, AGTR1, CYP11B2, and ADD1 variants exhibited associations with PEH after vigorous, but not moderate intensity exercise among AF only. Renal variants should be explored further with a multi-level "omics" approach for associations with PEH among a large, ethnically diverse sample of adults with hypertension. © 2016 The Authors. Physiological Reports published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of the

  15. Fungal diversity in deep-sea sediments of a hydrothermal vent system in the Southwest Indian Ridge

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Xu, Wei; Gong, Lin-feng; Pang, Ka-Lai; Luo, Zhu-Hua

    2018-01-01

    Deep-sea hydrothermal sediment is known to support remarkably diverse microbial consortia. In deep sea environments, fungal communities remain less studied despite their known taxonomic and functional diversity. High-throughput sequencing methods have augmented our capacity to assess eukaryotic diversity and their functions in microbial ecology. Here we provide the first description of the fungal community diversity found in deep sea sediments collected at the Southwest Indian Ridge (SWIR) using culture-dependent and high-throughput sequencing approaches. A total of 138 fungal isolates were cultured from seven different sediment samples using various nutrient media, and these isolates were identified to 14 fungal taxa, including 11 Ascomycota taxa (7 genera) and 3 Basidiomycota taxa (2 genera) based on internal transcribed spacers (ITS1, ITS2 and 5.8S) of rDNA. Using illumina HiSeq sequencing, a total of 757,467 fungal ITS2 tags were recovered from the samples and clustered into 723 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) belonging to 79 taxa (Ascomycota and Basidiomycota contributed to 99% of all samples) based on 97% sequence similarity. Results from both approaches suggest that there is a high fungal diversity in the deep-sea sediments collected in the SWIR and fungal communities were shown to be slightly different by location, although all were collected from adjacent sites at the SWIR. This study provides baseline data of the fungal diversity and biogeography, and a glimpse to the microbial ecology associated with the deep-sea sediments of the hydrothermal vent system of the Southwest Indian Ridge.

  16. Deep sequencing of the Camellia chekiangoleosa transcriptome revealed candidate genes for anthocyanin biosynthesis.

    PubMed

    Wang, Zhong-Wei; Jiang, Cong; Wen, Qiang; Wang, Na; Tao, Yuan-Yuan; Xu, Li-An

    2014-03-15

    Camellia chekiangoleosa is an important species of genus Camellia. It provides high-quality edible oil and has great ornamental value. The flowers are big and red which bloom between February and March. Flower pigmentation is closely related to the accumulation of anthocyanin. Although anthocyanin biosynthesis has been studied extensively in herbaceous plants, little molecular information on the anthocyanin biosynthesis pathway of C. chekiangoleosa is yet known. In the present study, a cDNA library was constructed to obtain detailed and general data from the flowers of C. chekiangoleosa. To explore the transcriptome of C. chekiangoleosa and investigate genes involved in anthocyanin biosynthesis, a 454 GS FLX Titanium platform was used to generate an EST dataset. About 46,279 sequences were obtained, and 24,593 (53.1%) were annotated. Using Blast search against the AGRIS, 1740 unigenes were found homologous to 599 Arabidopsis transcription factor genes. Based on the transcriptome dataset, nine anthocyanin biosynthesis pathway genes (PAL, CHS1, CHS2, CHS3, CHI, F3H, DFR, ANS, and UFGT) were identified and cloned. The spatio-temporal expression patterns of these genes were also analyzed using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. The study results not only enrich the gene resource but also provide valuable information for further studies concerning anthocyanin biosynthesis. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  17. Complete genome sequence of 'Halanaeroarchaeum sulfurireducens' M27-SA2, a sulfur-reducing and acetate-oxidizing haloarchaeon from the deep-sea hypersaline anoxic lake Medee.

    PubMed

    Messina, Enzo; Sorokin, Dimitry Y; Kublanov, Ilya V; Toshchakov, Stepan; Lopatina, Anna; Arcadi, Erika; Smedile, Francesco; La Spada, Gina; La Cono, Violetta; Yakimov, Michail M

    2016-01-01

    Strain M27-SA2 was isolated from the deep-sea salt-saturated anoxic lake Medee, which represents one of the most hostile extreme environments on our planet. On the basis of physiological studies and phylogenetic positioning this extremely halophilic euryarchaeon belongs to a novel genus 'Halanaeroarchaeum' within the family Halobacteriaceae. All members of this genus cultivated so far are strict anaerobes using acetate as the sole carbon and energy source and elemental sulfur as electron acceptor. Here we report the complete genome sequence of the strain M27-SA2 which is composed of a 2,129,244-bp chromosome and a 124,256-bp plasmid. This is the second complete genome sequence within the genus Halanaeroarchaeum. We demonstrate that genome of 'Halanaeroarchaeum sulfurireducens' M27-SA2 harbors complete metabolic pathways for acetate and sulfur catabolism and for de novo biosynthesis of 19 amino acids. The genomic analysis also reveals that 'Halanaeroarchaeum sulfurireducens' M27-SA2 harbors two prophage loci and one CRISPR locus, highly similar to that of Kulunda Steppe (Altai, Russia) isolate 'H. sulfurireducens' HSR2(T). The discovery of sulfur-respiring acetate-utilizing haloarchaeon in deep-sea hypersaline anoxic lakes has certain significance for understanding the biogeochemical functioning of these harsh ecosystems, which are incompatible with life for common organisms. Moreover, isolations of Halanaeroarchaeum members from geographically distant salt-saturated sites of different origin suggest a high degree of evolutionary success in their adaptation to this type of extreme biotopes around the world.

  18. Automated analysis of high-content microscopy data with deep learning.

    PubMed

    Kraus, Oren Z; Grys, Ben T; Ba, Jimmy; Chong, Yolanda; Frey, Brendan J; Boone, Charles; Andrews, Brenda J

    2017-04-18

    Existing computational pipelines for quantitative analysis of high-content microscopy data rely on traditional machine learning approaches that fail to accurately classify more than a single dataset without substantial tuning and training, requiring extensive analysis. Here, we demonstrate that the application of deep learning to biological image data can overcome the pitfalls associated with conventional machine learning classifiers. Using a deep convolutional neural network (DeepLoc) to analyze yeast cell images, we show improved performance over traditional approaches in the automated classification of protein subcellular localization. We also demonstrate the ability of DeepLoc to classify highly divergent image sets, including images of pheromone-arrested cells with abnormal cellular morphology, as well as images generated in different genetic backgrounds and in different laboratories. We offer an open-source implementation that enables updating DeepLoc on new microscopy datasets. This study highlights deep learning as an important tool for the expedited analysis of high-content microscopy data. © 2017 The Authors. Published under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.

  19. Unbiased whole-genome deep sequencing of human and porcine stool samples reveals circulation of multiple groups of rotaviruses and a putative zoonotic infection

    PubMed Central

    Phan, My V. T.; Anh, Pham Hong; Cuong, Nguyen Van; Munnink, Bas B. Oude; van der Hoek, Lia; My, Phuc Tran; Tri, Tue Ngo; Bryant, Juliet E.; Baker, Stephen; Thwaites, Guy; Woolhouse, Mark; Kellam, Paul; Rabaa, Maia A.

    2016-01-01

    Abstract Coordinated and synchronous surveillance for zoonotic viruses in both human clinical cases and animal reservoirs provides an opportunity to identify interspecies virus movement. Rotavirus (RV) is an important cause of viral gastroenteritis in humans and animals. In this study, we document the RV diversity within co-located humans and animals sampled from the Mekong delta region of Vietnam using a primer-independent, agnostic, deep sequencing approach. A total of 296 stool samples (146 from diarrhoeal human patients and 150 from pigs living in the same geographical region) were directly sequenced, generating the genomic sequences of sixty human rotaviruses (all group A) and thirty-one porcine rotaviruses (thirteen group A, seven group B, six group C, and five group H). Phylogenetic analyses showed the co-circulation of multiple distinct RV group A (RVA) genotypes/strains, many of which were divergent from the strain components of licensed RVA vaccines, as well as considerable virus diversity in pigs including full genomes of rotaviruses in groups B, C, and H, none of which have been previously reported in Vietnam. Furthermore, the detection of an atypical RVA genotype constellation (G4-P[6]-I1-R1-C1-M1-A8-N1-T7-E1-H1) in a human patient and a pig from the same region provides some evidence for a zoonotic event. PMID:28748110

  20. An interleaved sequence for simultaneous magnetic resonance angiography (MRA), susceptibility weighted imaging (SWI) and quantitative susceptibility mapping (QSM).

    PubMed

    Chen, Yongsheng; Liu, Saifeng; Buch, Sagar; Hu, Jiani; Kang, Yan; Haacke, E Mark

    2018-04-01

    To image the entire vasculature of the brain with complete suppression of signal from background tissue using a single 3D excitation interleaved rephased/dephased multi-echo gradient echo sequence. This ensures no loss of signal from fast flow and provides co-registered susceptibility weighted images (SWI) and quantitative susceptibility maps (QSM) from the same scan. The suppression of background tissue was accomplished by subtracting the flow-dephased images from the flow-rephased images with the same echo time of 12.5ms to generate a magnetic resonance angiogram and venogram (MRAV). Further, a 2.5ms flow-compensated echo was added in the rephased portion to provide sufficient signal for major arteries with fast flow. The QSM data from the rephased 12.5ms echo was used to suppress veins on the MRAV to generate an artery-only MRA. The proposed approach was tested on five healthy volunteers at 3T. This three-echo interleaved GRE sequence provided complete background suppression of stationary tissues, while the short echo data gave high signal in the internal carotid and middle cerebral arteries (MCA). The contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) of the arteries was significantly improved in the M3 territory of the MCA compared to the non-linear subtraction MRA and TOF-MRA. Veins were suppressed successfully utilizing the QSM data. The background tissue can be properly suppressed using the proposed interleaved MRAV sequence. One can obtain whole brain MRAV, MRA, SWI, true-SWI (or tSWI) and QSM data simultaneously from a single scan. Published by Elsevier Inc.

  1. Deep sequencing reveals a novel closterovirus associated with wild rose leaf rosette disease.

    PubMed

    He, Yan; Yang, Zuokun; Hong, Ni; Wang, Guoping; Ning, Guogui; Xu, Wenxing

    2015-06-01

    A bizarre virus-like symptom of a leaf rosette formed by dense small leaves on branches of wild roses (Rosa multiflora Thunb.), designated as 'wild rose leaf rosette disease' (WRLRD), was observed in China. To investigate the presumed causal virus, a wild rose sample affected by WRLRD was subjected to deep sequencing of small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) for a complete survey of the infecting viruses and viroids. The assembly of siRNAs led to the reconstruction of the complete genomes of three known viruses, namely Apple stem grooving virus (ASGV), Blackberry chlorotic ringspot virus (BCRV) and Prunus necrotic ringspot virus (PNRSV), and of a novel virus provisionally named 'rose leaf rosette-associated virus' (RLRaV). Phylogenetic analysis clearly placed RLRaV alongside members of the genus Closterovirus, family Closteroviridae. Genome organization of RLRaV RNA (17,653 nucleotides) showed 13 open reading frames (ORFs), except ORF1 and the quintuple gene block, most of which showed no significant similarities with known viral proteins, but, instead, had detectable identities to fungal or bacterial proteins. Additional novel molecular features indicated that RLRaV seems to be the most complex virus among the known genus members. To our knowledge, this is the first report of WRLRD and its associated closterovirus, as well as two ilarviruses and one capilovirus, infecting wild roses. Our findings present novel information about the closterovirus and the aetiology of this rose disease which should facilitate its control. More importantly, the novel features of RLRaV help to clarify the molecular and evolutionary features of the closterovirus. © 2014 BSPP AND JOHN WILEY & SONS LTD.

  2. Deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) on colloidal-synthesized nanocrystal solids.

    PubMed

    Bozyigit, Deniz; Jakob, Michael; Yarema, Olesya; Wood, Vanessa

    2013-04-24

    We demonstrate current-based, deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) on semiconductor nanocrystal solids to obtain quantitative information on deep-lying trap states, which play an important role in the electronic transport properties of these novel solids and impact optoelectronic device performance. Here, we apply this purely electrical measurement to an ethanedithiol-treated, PbS nanocrystal solid and find a deep trap with an activation energy of 0.40 eV and a density of NT = 1.7 × 10(17) cm(-3). We use these findings to draw and interpret band structure models to gain insight into charge transport in PbS nanocrystal solids and the operation of PbS nanocrystal-based solar cells.

  3. Insertion sequences enrichment in extreme Red sea brine pool vent.

    PubMed

    Elbehery, Ali H A; Aziz, Ramy K; Siam, Rania

    2017-03-01

    Mobile genetic elements are major agents of genome diversification and evolution. Limited studies addressed their characteristics, including abundance, and role in extreme habitats. One of the rare natural habitats exposed to multiple-extreme conditions, including high temperature, salinity and concentration of heavy metals, are the Red Sea brine pools. We assessed the abundance and distribution of different mobile genetic elements in four Red Sea brine pools including the world's largest known multiple-extreme deep-sea environment, the Red Sea Atlantis II Deep. We report a gradient in the abundance of mobile genetic elements, dramatically increasing in the harshest environment of the pool. Additionally, we identified a strong association between the abundance of insertion sequences and extreme conditions, being highest in the harshest and deepest layer of the Red Sea Atlantis II Deep. Our comparative analyses of mobile genetic elements in secluded, extreme and relatively non-extreme environments, suggest that insertion sequences predominantly contribute to polyextremophiles genome plasticity.

  4. Human-associated fungi in deep subseafloor sediment?

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Fulfer, V. M.; Kirkpatrick, J. B.; D'Hondt, S.

    2015-12-01

    Recent studies have reported fungi in marine sediment samples from depths as great as 1740 meters below seafloor (mbsf) (Rédou et al., 2014). Such studies have utilized a variety of techniques to identify fungi, including cultivation of isolates, amplicon sequencing, and metagenomics. Six recent studies of marine sediment collectively identify nearly 100 fungal taxa at the genus and species levels (Damare et al., 2006; Lai et al., 2007; Edgcomb et al., 2010; Singh et al., 2010; Orsi et al., 2013; Rédou et al., 2014). Known marine taxa are rarely identified by these studies. For individual studies with more than two taxa, between 16% and 57% of the fungal taxa are human microflora or associated with human environments (e.g., human skin or indoor air). For example, three of the six studies identified Malassezia species that are common skin inhabitants of humans and dogs. Although human-associated taxa have been identified in both shallow and deep sediment, they pose a particularly acute problem for deep subseafloor samples, where claims of a eukaryotic deep biosphere are most striking; depending on the study, 25% to 38% of species identified in sediment taken at depths greater than 40 meters are human-associated. Only one to three species have been reported from each of the four samples taken at depths greater than one km (eight species total; Rédou et al., 2014). Of these eight species, three are human-associated. This ubiquity of human-associated microflora is very problematic for interpretations of an indigenous deep subseafloor fungal community; either human-associated taxa comprise a large fraction of marine sedimentary fungi, or sample and analytical contamination is so widespread that the extent and ubiquity of a deep subseafloor fungal community remains uncertain. This highlights the need for stringent quality control measures throughout coring, sampling, and recovery of marine sediment, and when cultivating, extracting, and/or sequencing fungi from

  5. Deep Sequencing of Pyrethroid-Resistant Bed Bugs Reveals Multiple Mechanisms of Resistance within a Single Population

    PubMed Central

    Adelman, Zach N.; Kilcullen, Kathleen A.; Koganemaru, Reina; Anderson, Michelle A. E.; Anderson, Troy D.; Miller, Dini M.

    2011-01-01

    A frightening resurgence of bed bug infestations has occurred over the last 10 years in the U.S. and current chemical methods have been inadequate for controlling this pest due to widespread insecticide resistance. Little is known about the mechanisms of resistance present in U.S. bed bug populations, making it extremely difficult to develop intelligent strategies for their control. We have identified bed bugs collected in Richmond, VA which exhibit both kdr-type (L925I) and metabolic resistance to pyrethroid insecticides. Using LD50 bioassays, we determined that resistance ratios for Richmond strain bed bugs were ∼5200-fold to the insecticide deltamethrin. To identify metabolic genes potentially involved in the detoxification of pyrethroids, we performed deep-sequencing of the adult bed bug transcriptome, obtaining more than 2.5 million reads on the 454 titanium platform. Following assembly, analysis of newly identified gene transcripts in both Harlan (susceptible) and Richmond (resistant) bed bugs revealed several candidate cytochrome P450 and carboxylesterase genes which were significantly over-expressed in the resistant strain, consistent with the idea of increased metabolic resistance. These data will accelerate efforts to understand the biochemical basis for insecticide resistance in bed bugs, and provide molecular markers to assist in the surveillance of metabolic resistance. PMID:22039447

  6. Complete genome sequence of a tomato infecting tomato mottle mosaic virus in New York

    USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

    Complete genome sequence of an emerging isolate of tomato mottle mosaic virus (ToMMV) infecting experimental nicotianan benthamiana plants in up-state New York was obtained using small RNA deep sequencing. ToMMV_NY-13 shared 99% sequence identity to ToMMV isolates from Mexico and Florida. Broader d...

  7. The complete mitochondrial genome of the deep-sea sponge Poecillastra laminaris (Astrophorida, Vulcanellidae).

    PubMed

    Zeng, Cong; Thomas, Leighton J; Kelly, Michelle; Gardner, Jonathan P A

    2016-05-01

    The complete mitochondrial genome of a New Zealand specimen of the deep-sea sponge Poecillastra laminaris (Sollas, 1886) (Astrophorida, Vulcanellidae), from the Colville Ridge, New Zealand, was sequenced using the 454 Life Science pyrosequencing system. To identify homologous mitochondrial sequences, the 454 reads were mapped to the complete mitochondrial genome sequence of Geodia neptuni (GeneBank No. NC_006990). The P. laminaris genome is 18,413 bp in length and includes 14 protein-coding genes, 24 transfer RNA genes and 2 ribosomal RNA genes. Gene order resembled that of other demosponges. The base composition of the genome is A (29.1%), T (35.2%), C (14.0%) and G (21.7%). This is the second published mitogenome for a sponge of the order Astrophorida and will be useful in future phylogenetic analysis of deep-sea sponges.

  8. Bacterial Pathogens and Community Composition in Advanced Sewage Treatment Systems Revealed by Metagenomics Analysis Based on High-Throughput Sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Lu, Xin; Zhang, Xu-Xiang; Wang, Zhu; Huang, Kailong; Wang, Yuan; Liang, Weigang; Tan, Yunfei; Liu, Bo; Tang, Junying

    2015-01-01

    This study used 454 pyrosequencing, Illumina high-throughput sequencing and metagenomic analysis to investigate bacterial pathogens and their potential virulence in a sewage treatment plant (STP) applying both conventional and advanced treatment processes. Pyrosequencing and Illumina sequencing consistently demonstrated that Arcobacter genus occupied over 43.42% of total abundance of potential pathogens in the STP. At species level, potential pathogens Arcobacter butzleri, Aeromonas hydrophila and Klebsiella pneumonia dominated in raw sewage, which was also confirmed by quantitative real time PCR. Illumina sequencing also revealed prevalence of various types of pathogenicity islands and virulence proteins in the STP. Most of the potential pathogens and virulence factors were eliminated in the STP, and the removal efficiency mainly depended on oxidation ditch. Compared with sand filtration, magnetic resin seemed to have higher removals in most of the potential pathogens and virulence factors. However, presence of the residual A. butzleri in the final effluent still deserves more concerns. The findings indicate that sewage acts as an important source of environmental pathogens, but STPs can effectively control their spread in the environment. Joint use of the high-throughput sequencing technologies is considered a reliable method for deep and comprehensive overview of environmental bacterial virulence. PMID:25938416

  9. Comparison of illumina and 454 deep sequencing in participants failing raltegravir-based antiretroviral therapy.

    PubMed

    Li, Jonathan Z; Chapman, Brad; Charlebois, Patrick; Hofmann, Oliver; Weiner, Brian; Porter, Alyssa J; Samuel, Reshmi; Vardhanabhuti, Saran; Zheng, Lu; Eron, Joseph; Taiwo, Babafemi; Zody, Michael C; Henn, Matthew R; Kuritzkes, Daniel R; Hide, Winston; Wilson, Cara C; Berzins, Baiba I; Acosta, Edward P; Bastow, Barbara; Kim, Peter S; Read, Sarah W; Janik, Jennifer; Meres, Debra S; Lederman, Michael M; Mong-Kryspin, Lori; Shaw, Karl E; Zimmerman, Louis G; Leavitt, Randi; De La Rosa, Guy; Jennings, Amy

    2014-01-01

    The impact of raltegravir-resistant HIV-1 minority variants (MVs) on raltegravir treatment failure is unknown. Illumina sequencing offers greater throughput than 454, but sequence analysis tools for viral sequencing are needed. We evaluated Illumina and 454 for the detection of HIV-1 raltegravir-resistant MVs. A5262 was a single-arm study of raltegravir and darunavir/ritonavir in treatment-naïve patients. Pre-treatment plasma was obtained from 5 participants with raltegravir resistance at the time of virologic failure. A control library was created by pooling integrase clones at predefined proportions. Multiplexed sequencing was performed with Illumina and 454 platforms at comparable costs. Illumina sequence analysis was performed with the novel snp-assess tool and 454 sequencing was analyzed with V-Phaser. Illumina sequencing resulted in significantly higher sequence coverage and a 0.095% limit of detection. Illumina accurately detected all MVs in the control library at ≥0.5% and 7/10 MVs expected at 0.1%. 454 sequencing failed to detect any MVs at 0.1% with 5 false positive calls. For MVs detected in the patient samples by both 454 and Illumina, the correlation in the detected variant frequencies was high (R2 = 0.92, P<0.001). Illumina sequencing detected 2.4-fold greater nucleotide MVs and 2.9-fold greater amino acid MVs compared to 454. The only raltegravir-resistant MV detected was an E138K mutation in one participant by Illumina sequencing, but not by 454. In participants of A5262 with raltegravir resistance at virologic failure, baseline raltegravir-resistant MVs were rarely detected. At comparable costs to 454 sequencing, Illumina demonstrated greater depth of coverage, increased sensitivity for detecting HIV MVs, and fewer false positive variant calls.

  10. Effects of hydrostatic pressure on yeasts isolated from deep-sea hydrothermal vents.

    PubMed

    Burgaud, Gaëtan; Hué, Nguyen Thi Minh; Arzur, Danielle; Coton, Monika; Perrier-Cornet, Jean-Marie; Jebbar, Mohamed; Barbier, Georges

    2015-11-01

    Hydrostatic pressure plays a significant role in the distribution of life in the biosphere. Knowledge of deep-sea piezotolerant and (hyper)piezophilic bacteria and archaea diversity has been well documented, along with their specific adaptations to cope with high hydrostatic pressure (HHP). Recent investigations of deep-sea microbial community compositions have shown unexpected micro-eukaryotic communities, mainly dominated by fungi. Molecular methods such as next-generation sequencing have been used for SSU rRNA gene sequencing to reveal fungal taxa. Currently, a difficult but fascinating challenge for marine mycologists is to create deep-sea marine fungus culture collections and assess their ability to cope with pressure. Indeed, although there is no universal genetic marker for piezoresistance, physiological analyses provide concrete relevant data for estimating their adaptations and understanding the role of fungal communities in the abyss. The present study investigated morphological and physiological responses of fungi to HHP using a collection of deep-sea yeasts as a model. The aim was to determine whether deep-sea yeasts were able to tolerate different HHP and if they were metabolically active. Here we report an unexpected taxonomic-based dichotomic response to pressure with piezosensitve ascomycetes and piezotolerant basidiomycetes, and distinct morphological switches triggered by pressure for certain strains. Copyright © 2015 Institut Pasteur. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

  11. Fungal diversity in deep-sea sediments associated with asphalt seeps at the Sao Paulo Plateau

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Nagano, Yuriko; Miura, Toshiko; Nishi, Shinro; Lima, Andre O.; Nakayama, Cristina; Pellizari, Vivian H.; Fujikura, Katsunori

    2017-12-01

    We investigated the fungal diversity in a total of 20 deep-sea sediment samples (of which 14 samples were associated with natural asphalt seeps and 6 samples were not associated) collected from two different sites at the Sao Paulo Plateau off Brazil by Ion Torrent PGM targeting ITS region of ribosomal RNA. Our results suggest that diverse fungi (113 operational taxonomic units (OTUs) based on clustering at 97% sequence similarity assigned into 9 classes and 31 genus) are present in deep-sea sediment samples collected at the Sao Paulo Plateau, dominated by Ascomycota (74.3%), followed by Basidiomycota (11.5%), unidentified fungi (7.1%), and sequences with no affiliation to any organisms in the public database (7.1%). However, it was revealed that only three species, namely Penicillium sp., Cadophora malorum and Rhodosporidium diobovatum, were dominant, with the majority of OTUs remaining a minor community. Unexpectedly, there was no significant difference in major fungal community structure between the asphalt seep and non-asphalt seep sites, despite the presence of mass hydrocarbon deposits and the high amount of macro organisms surrounding the asphalt seeps. However, there were some differences in the minor fungal communities, with possible asphalt degrading fungi present specifically in the asphalt seep sites. In contrast, some differences were found between the two different sampling sites. Classification of OTUs revealed that only 47 (41.6%) fungal OTUs exhibited >97% sequence similarity, in comparison with pre-existing ITS sequences in public databases, indicating that a majority of deep-sea inhabiting fungal taxa still remain undescribed. Although our knowledge on fungi and their role in deep-sea environments is still limited and scarce, this study increases our understanding of fungal diversity and community structure in deep-sea environments.

  12. Dissecting enzyme function with microfluidic-based deep mutational scanning.

    PubMed

    Romero, Philip A; Tran, Tuan M; Abate, Adam R

    2015-06-09

    Natural enzymes are incredibly proficient catalysts, but engineering them to have new or improved functions is challenging due to the complexity of how an enzyme's sequence relates to its biochemical properties. Here, we present an ultrahigh-throughput method for mapping enzyme sequence-function relationships that combines droplet microfluidic screening with next-generation DNA sequencing. We apply our method to map the activity of millions of glycosidase sequence variants. Microfluidic-based deep mutational scanning provides a comprehensive and unbiased view of the enzyme function landscape. The mapping displays expected patterns of mutational tolerance and a strong correspondence to sequence variation within the enzyme family, but also reveals previously unreported sites that are crucial for glycosidase function. We modified the screening protocol to include a high-temperature incubation step, and the resulting thermotolerance landscape allowed the discovery of mutations that enhance enzyme thermostability. Droplet microfluidics provides a general platform for enzyme screening that, when combined with DNA-sequencing technologies, enables high-throughput mapping of enzyme sequence space.

  13. Deep developmental transcriptome sequencing uncovers numerous new genes and enhances gene annotation in the sponge Amphimedon queenslandica.

    PubMed

    Fernandez-Valverde, Selene L; Calcino, Andrew D; Degnan, Bernard M

    2015-05-15

    The demosponge Amphimedon queenslandica is amongst the few early-branching metazoans with an assembled and annotated draft genome, making it an important species in the study of the origin and early evolution of animals. Current gene models in this species are largely based on in silico predictions and low coverage expressed sequence tag (EST) evidence. Amphimedon queenslandica protein-coding gene models are improved using deep RNA-Seq data from four developmental stages and CEL-Seq data from 82 developmental samples. Over 86% of previously predicted genes are retained in the new gene models, although 24% have additional exons; there is also a marked increase in the total number of annotated 3' and 5' untranslated regions (UTRs). Importantly, these new developmental transcriptome data reveal numerous previously unannotated protein-coding genes in the Amphimedon genome, increasing the total gene number by 25%, from 30,060 to 40,122. In general, Amphimedon genes have introns that are markedly smaller than those in other animals and most of the alternatively spliced genes in Amphimedon undergo intron-retention; exon-skipping is the least common mode of alternative splicing. Finally, in addition to canonical polyadenylation signal sequences, Amphimedon genes are enriched in a number of unique AT-rich motifs in their 3' UTRs. The inclusion of developmental transcriptome data has substantially improved the structure and composition of protein-coding gene models in Amphimedon queenslandica, providing a more accurate and comprehensive set of genes for functional and comparative studies. These improvements reveal the Amphimedon genome is comprised of a remarkably high number of tightly packed genes. These genes have small introns and there is pervasive intron retention amongst alternatively spliced transcripts. These aspects of the sponge genome are more similar unicellular opisthokont genomes than to other animal genomes.

  14. Bacterial community diversity of the deep-sea octocoral Paramuricea placomus.

    PubMed

    Kellogg, Christina A; Ross, Steve W; Brooke, Sandra D

    2016-01-01

    Compared to tropical corals, much less is known about deep-sea coral biology and ecology. Although the microbial communities of some deep-sea corals have been described, this is the first study to characterize the bacterial community associated with the deep-sea octocoral, Paramuricea placomus . Samples from five colonies of P. placomus were collected from Baltimore Canyon (379-382 m depth) in the Atlantic Ocean off the east coast of the United States of America. DNA was extracted from the coral samples and 16S rRNA gene amplicons were pyrosequenced using V4-V5 primers. Three samples sequenced deeply (>4,000 sequences each) and were further analyzed. The dominant microbial phylum was Proteobacteria, but other major phyla included Firmicutes and Planctomycetes. A conserved community of bacterial taxa held in common across the three P. placomus colonies was identified, comprising 68-90% of the total bacterial community depending on the coral individual. The bacterial community of P. placomus does not appear to include the genus Endozoicomonas , which has been found previously to be the dominant bacterial associate in several temperate and tropical gorgonians. Inferred functionality suggests the possibility of nitrogen cycling by the core bacterial community.

  15. Bacterial community diversity of the deep-sea octocoral Paramuricea placomus

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Kellogg, Christina A.; Ross, Steve W.; Brooke, Sandra D.

    2016-01-01

    Compared to tropical corals, much less is known about deep-sea coral biology and ecology. Although the microbial communities of some deep-sea corals have been described, this is the first study to characterize the bacterial community associated with the deep-sea octocoral, Paramuricea placomus. Samples from five colonies of P. placomus were collected from Baltimore Canyon (379–382 m depth) in the Atlantic Ocean off the east coast of the United States of America. DNA was extracted from the coral samples and 16S rRNA gene amplicons were pyrosequenced using V4-V5 primers. Three samples sequenced deeply (>4,000 sequences each) and were further analyzed. The dominant microbial phylum was Proteobacteria, but other major phyla included Firmicutes and Planctomycetes. A conserved community of bacterial taxa held in common across the three P. placomuscolonies was identified, comprising 68–90% of the total bacterial community depending on the coral individual. The bacterial community of P. placomusdoes not appear to include the genus Endozoicomonas, which has been found previously to be the dominant bacterial associate in several temperate and tropical gorgonians. Inferred functionality suggests the possibility of nitrogen cycling by the core bacterial community.

  16. De Novo Peptide Sequencing: Deep Mining of High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry Data.

    PubMed

    Islam, Mohammad Tawhidul; Mohamedali, Abidali; Fernandes, Criselda Santan; Baker, Mark S; Ranganathan, Shoba

    2017-01-01

    High resolution mass spectrometry has revolutionized proteomics over the past decade, resulting in tremendous amounts of data in the form of mass spectra, being generated in a relatively short span of time. The mining of this spectral data for analysis and interpretation though has lagged behind such that potentially valuable data is being overlooked because it does not fit into the mold of traditional database searching methodologies. Although the analysis of spectra by de novo sequences removes such biases and has been available for a long period of time, its uptake has been slow or almost nonexistent within the scientific community. In this chapter, we propose a methodology to integrate de novo peptide sequencing using three commonly available software solutions in tandem, complemented by homology searching, and manual validation of spectra. This simplified method would allow greater use of de novo sequencing approaches and potentially greatly increase proteome coverage leading to the unearthing of valuable insights into protein biology, especially of organisms whose genomes have been recently sequenced or are poorly annotated.

  17. De novo characterization of Lentinula edodes C(91-3) transcriptome by deep Solexa sequencing.

    PubMed

    Zhong, Mintao; Liu, Ben; Wang, Xiaoli; Liu, Lei; Lun, Yongzhi; Li, Xingyun; Ning, Anhong; Cao, Jing; Huang, Min

    2013-02-01

    Lentinula edodes, has been utilized as food, as well as, in popular medicine, moreover, its extract isolated from its mycelium and fruiting body have shown several therapeutic properties. Yet little is understood about its genes involved in these properties, and the absence of L.edodes genomes has been a barrier to the development of functional genomics research. However, high throughput sequencing technologies are now being widely applied to non-model species. To facilitate research on L.edodes, we leveraged Solexa sequencing technology in de novo assembly of L.edodes C(91-3) transcriptome. In a single run, we produced more than 57 million sequencing reads. These reads were assembled into 28,923 unigene sequences (mean size=689bp) including 18,120 unigenes with coding sequence (CDS). Based on similarity search with known proteins, assembled unigene sequences were annotated with gene descriptions, gene ontology (GO) and clusters of orthologous group (COG) terms. Our data provides the first comprehensive sequence resource available for functional genomics studies in L.edodes, and demonstrates the utility of Illumina/Solexa sequencing for de novo transcriptome characterization and gene discovery in a non-model mushroom. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  18. Macrostrat and GeoDeepDive: A Platform for Geological Data Integration and Deep-Time Research

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Husson, J. M.; Peters, S. E.; Ross, I.; Czaplewski, J. J.

    2016-12-01

    Characterizing the quantity, lithology, age, and properties of rocks and sediments in the upper crust is central to many questions in Earth science. Although a large number of geological maps, regional syntheses, and sample-based measurements have been published in a variety of formats, there is no system for integrating and accessing rock record-derived data or for facilitating the large-scale quantitative interrogation of the physical, chemical, and biological properties of Earth's crust. Here we describe two data resources that aim to overcome some of these limitations: 1) Macrostrat, a geospatial database and supporting cyberinfrastructure that is designed to enable quantitative analyses of the entire assemblage of surface and subsurface sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rocks, and 2) GeoDeepDive, a digital library and high throughput computing system designed to facilitate the location and extraction of information and data from the published literature. Macrostrat currently contains general summaries of the age and lithology of rocks and sediments in the upper crust at 1,474 regions in North and Central America, the Caribbean, New Zealand, and the deep sea. Distributed among these geographic regions are nearly 34,000 lithologically and chronologically-defined geological units, many of which are linked to a bedrock geologic map database with more than 1.7 million globally distributed units. Sample-derived data, including fossil occurrences in the Paleobiology Database and more than 180,000 geochemical and outcrop-derived measurements are linked to Macrostrat units and/or lithologies within those units. The rock names, lithological terms, and geological time intervals that are applied to Macrostrat units define a hierarchical, spatially and temporally indexed vocabulary that is leveraged by GeoDeepDive in order to provide researchers access to data within the scientific literature as it is published and ingested into the infrastructure. All data in

  19. Optimization of whole-transcriptome amplification from low cell density deep-sea microbial samples for metatranscriptomic analysis.

    PubMed

    Wu, Jieying; Gao, Weimin; Zhang, Weiwen; Meldrum, Deirdre R

    2011-01-01

    Limitation in sample quality and quantity is one of the big obstacles for applying metatranscriptomic technologies to explore gene expression and functionality of microbial communities in natural environments. In this study, several amplification methods were evaluated for whole-transcriptome amplification of deep-sea microbial samples, which are of low cell density and high impurity. The best amplification method was identified and incorporated into a complete protocol to isolate and amplify deep-sea microbial samples. In the protocol, total RNA was first isolated by a modified method combining Trizol (Invitrogen, CA) and RNeasy (QIAGEN, CA) method, amplified with a WT-Ovation™ Pico RNA Amplification System (NuGEN, CA), and then converted to double-strand DNA from single-strand cDNA with a WT-Ovation™ Exon Module (NuGEN, CA). The products from the whole-transcriptome amplification of deep-sea microbial samples were assessed first through random clone library sequencing. The BLAST search results showed that marine-based sequences are dominant in the libraries, consistent with the ecological source of the samples. The products were then used for next-generation Roche GS FLX Titanium sequencing to obtain metatranscriptome data. Preliminary analysis of the metatranscriptomic data showed good sequencing quality. Although the protocol was designed and demonstrated to be effective for deep-sea microbial samples, it should be applicable to similar samples from other extreme environments in exploring community structure and functionality of microbial communities. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  20. Small RNA deep sequencing identifies novel and salt-stress-regulated microRNAs from roots of Medicago sativa and Medicago truncatula.

    PubMed

    Long, Rui-Cai; Li, Ming-Na; Kang, Jun-Mei; Zhang, Tie-Jun; Sun, Yan; Yang, Qing-Chuan

    2015-05-01

    Small 21- to 24-nucleotide (nt) ribonucleic acids (RNAs), notably the microRNA (miRNA), are emerging as a posttranscriptional regulation mechanism. Salt stress is one of the primary abiotic stresses that cause the crop losses worldwide. In saline lands, root growth and function of plant are determined by the action of environmental salt stress through specific genes that adapt root development to the restrictive condition. To elucidate the role of miRNAs in salt stress regulation in Medicago, we used a high-throughput sequencing approach to analyze four small RNA libraries from roots of Zhongmu-1 (Medicago sativa) and Jemalong A17 (Medicago truncatula), which were treated with 300 mM NaCl for 0 and 8 h. Each library generated about 20 million short sequences and contained predominantly small RNAs of 24-nt length, followed by 21-nt and 22-nt small RNAs. Using sequence analysis, we identified 385 conserved miRNAs from 96 families, along with 68 novel candidate miRNAs. Of all the 68 predicted novel miRNAs, 15 miRNAs were identified to have miRNA*. Statistical analysis on abundance of sequencing read revealed specific miRNA showing contrasting expression patterns between M. sativa and M. truncatula roots, as well as between roots treated for 0 and 8 h. The expression of 10 conserved and novel miRNAs was also quantified by quantitative real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). The miRNA precursor and target genes were predicted by bioinformatics analysis. We concluded that the salt stress related conserved and novel miRNAs may have a large variety of target mRNAs, some of which might play key roles in salt stress regulation of Medicago. © 2014 Scandinavian Plant Physiology Society.

  1. Action-Driven Visual Object Tracking With Deep Reinforcement Learning.

    PubMed

    Yun, Sangdoo; Choi, Jongwon; Yoo, Youngjoon; Yun, Kimin; Choi, Jin Young

    2018-06-01

    In this paper, we propose an efficient visual tracker, which directly captures a bounding box containing the target object in a video by means of sequential actions learned using deep neural networks. The proposed deep neural network to control tracking actions is pretrained using various training video sequences and fine-tuned during actual tracking for online adaptation to a change of target and background. The pretraining is done by utilizing deep reinforcement learning (RL) as well as supervised learning. The use of RL enables even partially labeled data to be successfully utilized for semisupervised learning. Through the evaluation of the object tracking benchmark data set, the proposed tracker is validated to achieve a competitive performance at three times the speed of existing deep network-based trackers. The fast version of the proposed method, which operates in real time on graphics processing unit, outperforms the state-of-the-art real-time trackers with an accuracy improvement of more than 8%.

  2. Quantitative indexes of aminonucleoside-induced nephrotic syndrome.

    PubMed Central

    Nevins, T. E.; Gaston, T.; Basgen, J. M.

    1984-01-01

    Aminonucleoside of puromycin (PAN) is known to cause altered glomerular permeability, resulting in a nephrotic syndrome in rats. The early sequence of this lesion was studied quantitatively, with the application of a new morphometric technique for determining epithelial foot process widths and a sensitive assay for quantifying urinary albumin excretion. Twenty-four hours following a single intraperitoneal injection of PAN, significant widening of foot processes was documented. Within 36 hours significant increases in urinary albumin excretion were observed. When control rats were examined, there was no clear correlation between epithelial foot process width and quantitative albumin excretion. However, in the PAN-treated animals, abnormal albuminuria only appeared in association with appreciable foot process expansion. These studies indicate that quantitative alterations occur in the rat glomerular capillary wall as early as 24 hours after PAN. Further studies of altered glomerular permeability may use these sensitive measures to more precisely define the temporal sequence and elucidate possible subgroups of experimental glomerular injury. Images Figure 1 Figure 2 PMID:6486243

  3. DEEP: a general computational framework for predicting enhancers

    PubMed Central

    Kleftogiannis, Dimitrios; Kalnis, Panos; Bajic, Vladimir B.

    2015-01-01

    Transcription regulation in multicellular eukaryotes is orchestrated by a number of DNA functional elements located at gene regulatory regions. Some regulatory regions (e.g. enhancers) are located far away from the gene they affect. Identification of distal regulatory elements is a challenge for the bioinformatics research. Although existing methodologies increased the number of computationally predicted enhancers, performance inconsistency of computational models across different cell-lines, class imbalance within the learning sets and ad hoc rules for selecting enhancer candidates for supervised learning, are some key questions that require further examination. In this study we developed DEEP, a novel ensemble prediction framework. DEEP integrates three components with diverse characteristics that streamline the analysis of enhancer's properties in a great variety of cellular conditions. In our method we train many individual classification models that we combine to classify DNA regions as enhancers or non-enhancers. DEEP uses features derived from histone modification marks or attributes coming from sequence characteristics. Experimental results indicate that DEEP performs better than four state-of-the-art methods on the ENCODE data. We report the first computational enhancer prediction results on FANTOM5 data where DEEP achieves 90.2% accuracy and 90% geometric mean (GM) of specificity and sensitivity across 36 different tissues. We further present results derived using in vivo-derived enhancer data from VISTA database. DEEP-VISTA, when tested on an independent test set, achieved GM of 80.1% and accuracy of 89.64%. DEEP framework is publicly available at http://cbrc.kaust.edu.sa/deep/. PMID:25378307

  4. ATAC-see reveals the accessible genome by transposase-mediated imaging and sequencing.

    PubMed

    Chen, Xingqi; Shen, Ying; Draper, Will; Buenrostro, Jason D; Litzenburger, Ulrike; Cho, Seung Woo; Satpathy, Ansuman T; Carter, Ava C; Ghosh, Rajarshi P; East-Seletsky, Alexandra; Doudna, Jennifer A; Greenleaf, William J; Liphardt, Jan T; Chang, Howard Y

    2016-12-01

    Spatial organization of the genome plays a central role in gene expression, DNA replication, and repair. But current epigenomic approaches largely map DNA regulatory elements outside of the native context of the nucleus. Here we report assay of transposase-accessible chromatin with visualization (ATAC-see), a transposase-mediated imaging technology that employs direct imaging of the accessible genome in situ, cell sorting, and deep sequencing to reveal the identity of the imaged elements. ATAC-see revealed the cell-type-specific spatial organization of the accessible genome and the coordinated process of neutrophil chromatin extrusion, termed NETosis. Integration of ATAC-see with flow cytometry enables automated quantitation and prospective cell isolation as a function of chromatin accessibility, and it reveals a cell-cycle dependence of chromatin accessibility that is especially dynamic in G1 phase. The integration of imaging and epigenomics provides a general and scalable approach for deciphering the spatiotemporal architecture of gene control.

  5. A combination of LongSAGE with Solexa sequencing is well suited to explore the depth and the complexity of transcriptome

    PubMed Central

    Hanriot, Lucie; Keime, Céline; Gay, Nadine; Faure, Claudine; Dossat, Carole; Wincker, Patrick; Scoté-Blachon, Céline; Peyron, Christelle; Gandrillon, Olivier

    2008-01-01

    Background "Open" transcriptome analysis methods allow to study gene expression without a priori knowledge of the transcript sequences. As of now, SAGE (Serial Analysis of Gene Expression), LongSAGE and MPSS (Massively Parallel Signature Sequencing) are the mostly used methods for "open" transcriptome analysis. Both LongSAGE and MPSS rely on the isolation of 21 pb tag sequences from each transcript. In contrast to LongSAGE, the high throughput sequencing method used in MPSS enables the rapid sequencing of very large libraries containing several millions of tags, allowing deep transcriptome analysis. However, a bias in the complexity of the transcriptome representation obtained by MPSS was recently uncovered. Results In order to make a deep analysis of mouse hypothalamus transcriptome avoiding the limitation introduced by MPSS, we combined LongSAGE with the Solexa sequencing technology and obtained a library of more than 11 millions of tags. We then compared it to a LongSAGE library of mouse hypothalamus sequenced with the Sanger method. Conclusion We found that Solexa sequencing technology combined with LongSAGE is perfectly suited for deep transcriptome analysis. In contrast to MPSS, it gives a complex representation of transcriptome as reliable as a LongSAGE library sequenced by the Sanger method. PMID:18796152

  6. Deep ART Neural Model for Biologically Inspired Episodic Memory and Its Application to Task Performance of Robots.

    PubMed

    Park, Gyeong-Moon; Yoo, Yong-Ho; Kim, Deok-Hwa; Kim, Jong-Hwan; Gyeong-Moon Park; Yong-Ho Yoo; Deok-Hwa Kim; Jong-Hwan Kim; Yoo, Yong-Ho; Park, Gyeong-Moon; Kim, Jong-Hwan; Kim, Deok-Hwa

    2018-06-01

    Robots are expected to perform smart services and to undertake various troublesome or difficult tasks in the place of humans. Since these human-scale tasks consist of a temporal sequence of events, robots need episodic memory to store and retrieve the sequences to perform the tasks autonomously in similar situations. As episodic memory, in this paper we propose a novel Deep adaptive resonance theory (ART) neural model and apply it to the task performance of the humanoid robot, Mybot, developed in the Robot Intelligence Technology Laboratory at KAIST. Deep ART has a deep structure to learn events, episodes, and even more like daily episodes. Moreover, it can retrieve the correct episode from partial input cues robustly. To demonstrate the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed Deep ART, experiments are conducted with the humanoid robot, Mybot, for performing the three tasks of arranging toys, making cereal, and disposing of garbage.

  7. High Resolution Qualitative and Quantitative MR Evaluation of the Glenoid Labrum

    PubMed Central

    Iwasaki, Kenyu; Tafur, Monica; Chang, Eric Y.; SherondaStatum; Biswas, Reni; Tran, Betty; Bae, Won C.; Du, Jiang; Bydder, Graeme M.; Chung, Christine B.

    2015-01-01

    Objective To implement qualitative and quantitative MR sequences for the evaluation of labral pathology. Methods Six glenoid labra were dissected and the anterior and posterior portions were divided into normal, mildly degenerated, or severely degenerated groups using gross and MR findings. Qualitative evaluation was performed using T1-weighted, proton density-weighted (PD), spoiled gradient echo (SPGR) and ultra-short echo time (UTE) sequences. Quantitative evaluation included T2 and T1rho measurements as well as T1, T2*, and T1rho measurements acquired with UTE techniques. Results SPGR and UTE sequences best demonstrated labral fiber structure. Degenerated labra had a tendency towards decreased T1 values, increased T2/T2* values and increased T1 rho values. T2* values obtained with the UTE sequence allowed for delineation between normal, mildly degenerated and severely degenerated groups (p<0.001). Conclusion Quantitative T2* measurements acquired with the UTE technique are useful for distinguishing between normal, mildly degenerated and severely degenerated labra. PMID:26359581

  8. Archaeal Diversity in Waters from Deep South African Gold Mines

    PubMed Central

    Takai, Ken; Moser, Duane P.; DeFlaun, Mary; Onstott, Tullis C.; Fredrickson, James K.

    2001-01-01

    A culture-independent molecular analysis of archaeal communities in waters collected from deep South African gold mines was performed by performing a PCR-mediated terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) analysis of rRNA genes (rDNA) in conjunction with a sequencing analysis of archaeal rDNA clone libraries. The water samples used represented various environments, including deep fissure water, mine service water, and water from an overlying dolomite aquifer. T-RFLP analysis revealed that the ribotype distribution of archaea varied with the source of water. The archaeal communities in the deep gold mine environments exhibited great phylogenetic diversity; the majority of the members were most closely related to uncultivated species. Some archaeal rDNA clones obtained from mine service water and dolomite aquifer water samples were most closely related to environmental rDNA clones from surface soil (soil clones) and marine environments (marine group I [MGI]). Other clones exhibited intermediate phylogenetic affiliation between soil clones and MGI in the Crenarchaeota. Fissure water samples, derived from active or dormant geothermal environments, yielded archaeal sequences that exhibited novel phylogeny, including a novel lineage of Euryarchaeota. These results suggest that deep South African gold mines harbor novel archaeal communities distinct from those observed in other environments. Based on the phylogenetic analysis of archaeal strains and rDNA clones, including the newly discovered archaeal rDNA clones, the evolutionary relationship and the phylogenetic organization of the domain Archaea are reevaluated. PMID:11722932

  9. Brain Tumor Segmentation Using Deep Belief Networks and Pathological Knowledge.

    PubMed

    Zhan, Tianming; Chen, Yi; Hong, Xunning; Lu, Zhenyu; Chen, Yunjie

    2017-01-01

    In this paper, we propose an automatic brain tumor segmentation method based on Deep Belief Networks (DBNs) and pathological knowledge. The proposed method is targeted against gliomas (both low and high grade) obtained in multi-sequence magnetic resonance images (MRIs). Firstly, a novel deep architecture is proposed to combine the multi-sequences intensities feature extraction with classification to get the classification probabilities of each voxel. Then, graph cut based optimization is executed on the classification probabilities to strengthen the spatial relationships of voxels. At last, pathological knowledge of gliomas is applied to remove some false positives. Our method was validated in the Brain Tumor Segmentation Challenge 2012 and 2013 databases (BRATS 2012, 2013). The performance of segmentation results demonstrates our proposal providing a competitive solution with stateof- the-art methods. Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.org.

  10. Deep Sequencing of the Oral Microbiome Reveals Signatures of Periodontal Disease

    PubMed Central

    Ghodsi, Mohammad; Sommer, Daniel D.; Gibbons, Theodore R.; Treangen, Todd J.; Chang, Yi-Chien; Li, Shan; Stine, O. Colin; Hasturk, Hatice; Kasif, Simon; Segrè, Daniel; Pop, Mihai; Amar, Salomon

    2012-01-01

    The oral microbiome, the complex ecosystem of microbes inhabiting the human mouth, harbors several thousands of bacterial types. The proliferation of pathogenic bacteria within the mouth gives rise to periodontitis, an inflammatory disease known to also constitute a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. While much is known about individual species associated with pathogenesis, the system-level mechanisms underlying the transition from health to disease are still poorly understood. Through the sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene and of whole community DNA we provide a glimpse at the global genetic, metabolic, and ecological changes associated with periodontitis in 15 subgingival plaque samples, four from each of two periodontitis patients, and the remaining samples from three healthy individuals. We also demonstrate the power of whole-metagenome sequencing approaches in characterizing the genomes of key players in the oral microbiome, including an unculturable TM7 organism. We reveal the disease microbiome to be enriched in virulence factors, and adapted to a parasitic lifestyle that takes advantage of the disrupted host homeostasis. Furthermore, diseased samples share a common structure that was not found in completely healthy samples, suggesting that the disease state may occupy a narrow region within the space of possible configurations of the oral microbiome. Our pilot study demonstrates the power of high-throughput sequencing as a tool for understanding the role of the oral microbiome in periodontal disease. Despite a modest level of sequencing (∼2 lanes Illumina 76 bp PE) and high human DNA contamination (up to ∼90%) we were able to partially reconstruct several oral microbes and to preliminarily characterize some systems-level differences between the healthy and diseased oral microbiomes. PMID:22675498

  11. Oral Microbiome of Deep and Shallow Dental Pockets In Chronic Periodontitis

    PubMed Central

    Ge, Xiuchun; Rodriguez, Rafael; Trinh, My; Gunsolley, John; Xu, Ping

    2013-01-01

    We examined the subgingival bacterial biodiversity in untreated chronic periodontitis patients by sequencing 16S rRNA genes. The primary purpose of the study was to compare the oral microbiome in deep (diseased) and shallow (healthy) sites. A secondary purpose was to evaluate the influences of smoking, race and dental caries on this relationship. A total of 88 subjects from two clinics were recruited. Paired subgingival plaque samples were taken from each subject, one from a probing site depth >5 mm (deep site) and the other from a probing site depth ≤3mm (shallow site). A universal primer set was designed to amplify the V4–V6 region for oral microbial 16S rRNA sequences. Differences in genera and species attributable to deep and shallow sites were determined by statistical analysis using a two-part model and false discovery rate. Fifty-one of 170 genera and 200 of 746 species were found significantly different in abundances between shallow and deep sites. Besides previously identified periodontal disease-associated bacterial species, additional species were found markedly changed in diseased sites. Cluster analysis revealed that the microbiome difference between deep and shallow sites was influenced by patient-level effects such as clinic location, race and smoking. The differences between clinic locations may be influenced by racial distribution, in that all of the African Americans subjects were seen at the same clinic. Our results suggested that there were influences from the microbiome for caries and periodontal disease and these influences are independent. PMID:23762384

  12. Determination of binding affinity upon mutation for type I dockerin-cohesin complexes from Clostridium thermocellum and Clostridium cellulolyticum using deep sequencing.

    PubMed

    Kowalsky, Caitlin A; Whitehead, Timothy A

    2016-12-01

    The comprehensive sequence determinants of binding affinity for type I cohesin toward dockerin from Clostridium thermocellum and Clostridium cellulolyticum was evaluated using deep mutational scanning coupled to yeast surface display. We measured the relative binding affinity to dockerin for 2970 and 2778 single point mutants of C. thermocellum and C. cellulolyticum, respectively, representing over 96% of all possible single point mutants. The interface ΔΔG for each variant was reconstructed from sequencing counts and compared with the three independent experimental methods. This reconstruction results in a narrow dynamic range of -0.8-0.5 kcal/mol. The computational software packages FoldX and Rosetta were used to predict mutations that disrupt binding by more than 0.4 kcal/mol. The area under the curve of receiver operator curves was 0.82 for FoldX and 0.77 for Rosetta, showing reasonable agreements between predictions and experimental results. Destabilizing mutations to core and rim positions were predicted with higher accuracy than support positions. This benchmark dataset may be useful for developing new computational prediction tools for the prediction of the mutational effect on binding affinities for protein-protein interactions. Experimental considerations to improve precision and range of the reconstruction method are discussed. Proteins 2016; 84:1914-1928. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  13. A deep learning pipeline for Indian dance style classification

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Dewan, Swati; Agarwal, Shubham; Singh, Navjyoti

    2018-04-01

    In this paper, we address the problem of dance style classification to classify Indian dance or any dance in general. We propose a 3-step deep learning pipeline. First, we extract 14 essential joint locations of the dancer from each video frame, this helps us to derive any body region location within the frame, we use this in the second step which forms the main part of our pipeline. Here, we divide the dancer into regions of important motion in each video frame. We then extract patches centered at these regions. Main discriminative motion is captured in these patches. We stack the features from all such patches of a frame into a single vector and form our hierarchical dance pose descriptor. Finally, in the third step, we build a high level representation of the dance video using the hierarchical descriptors and train it using a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) for classification. Our novelty also lies in the way we use multiple representations for a single video. This helps us to: (1) Overcome the RNN limitation of learning small sequences over big sequences such as dance; (2) Extract more data from the available dataset for effective deep learning by training multiple representations. Our contributions in this paper are three-folds: (1) We provide a deep learning pipeline for classification of any form of dance; (2) We prove that a segmented representation of a dance video works well with sequence learning techniques for recognition purposes; (3) We extend and refine the ICD dataset and provide a new dataset for evaluation of dance. Our model performs comparable or better in some cases than the state-of-the-art on action recognition benchmarks.

  14. Reproducibility of Illumina platform deep sequencing errors allows accurate determination of DNA barcodes in cells.

    PubMed

    Beltman, Joost B; Urbanus, Jos; Velds, Arno; van Rooij, Nienke; Rohr, Jan C; Naik, Shalin H; Schumacher, Ton N

    2016-04-02

    Next generation sequencing (NGS) of amplified DNA is a powerful tool to describe genetic heterogeneity within cell populations that can both be used to investigate the clonal structure of cell populations and to perform genetic lineage tracing. For applications in which both abundant and rare sequences are biologically relevant, the relatively high error rate of NGS techniques complicates data analysis, as it is difficult to distinguish rare true sequences from spurious sequences that are generated by PCR or sequencing errors. This issue, for instance, applies to cellular barcoding strategies that aim to follow the amount and type of offspring of single cells, by supplying these with unique heritable DNA tags. Here, we use genetic barcoding data from the Illumina HiSeq platform to show that straightforward read threshold-based filtering of data is typically insufficient to filter out spurious barcodes. Importantly, we demonstrate that specific sequencing errors occur at an approximately constant rate across different samples that are sequenced in parallel. We exploit this observation by developing a novel approach to filter out spurious sequences. Application of our new method demonstrates its value in the identification of true sequences amongst spurious sequences in biological data sets.

  15. Deep learning on temporal-spectral data for anomaly detection

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Ma, King; Leung, Henry; Jalilian, Ehsan; Huang, Daniel

    2017-05-01

    Detecting anomalies is important for continuous monitoring of sensor systems. One significant challenge is to use sensor data and autonomously detect changes that cause different conditions to occur. Using deep learning methods, we are able to monitor and detect changes as a result of some disturbance in the system. We utilize deep neural networks for sequence analysis of time series. We use a multi-step method for anomaly detection. We train the network to learn spectral and temporal features from the acoustic time series. We test our method using fiber-optic acoustic data from a pipeline.

  16. A deep learning framework for causal shape transformation.

    PubMed

    Lore, Kin Gwn; Stoecklein, Daniel; Davies, Michael; Ganapathysubramanian, Baskar; Sarkar, Soumik

    2018-02-01

    Recurrent neural network (RNN) and Long Short-term Memory (LSTM) networks are the common go-to architecture for exploiting sequential information where the output is dependent on a sequence of inputs. However, in most considered problems, the dependencies typically lie in the latent domain which may not be suitable for applications involving the prediction of a step-wise transformation sequence that is dependent on the previous states only in the visible domain with a known terminal state. We propose a hybrid architecture of convolution neural networks (CNN) and stacked autoencoders (SAE) to learn a sequence of causal actions that nonlinearly transform an input visual pattern or distribution into a target visual pattern or distribution with the same support and demonstrated its practicality in a real-world engineering problem involving the physics of fluids. We solved a high-dimensional one-to-many inverse mapping problem concerning microfluidic flow sculpting, where the use of deep learning methods as an inverse map is very seldom explored. This work serves as a fruitful use-case to applied scientists and engineers in how deep learning can be beneficial as a solution for high-dimensional physical problems, and potentially opening doors to impactful advance in fields such as material sciences and medical biology where multistep topological transformations is a key element. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  17. Deep sequencing reveals unique small RNA repertoire that is regulated during head regeneration in Hydra magnipapillata.

    PubMed

    Krishna, Srikar; Nair, Aparna; Cheedipudi, Sirisha; Poduval, Deepak; Dhawan, Jyotsna; Palakodeti, Dasaradhi; Ghanekar, Yashoda

    2013-01-07

    Small non-coding RNAs such as miRNAs, piRNAs and endo-siRNAs fine-tune gene expression through post-transcriptional regulation, modulating important processes in development, differentiation, homeostasis and regeneration. Using deep sequencing, we have profiled small non-coding RNAs in Hydra magnipapillata and investigated changes in small RNA expression pattern during head regeneration. Our results reveal a unique repertoire of small RNAs in hydra. We have identified 126 miRNA loci; 123 of these miRNAs are unique to hydra. Less than 50% are conserved across two different strains of Hydra vulgaris tested in this study, indicating a highly diverse nature of hydra miRNAs in contrast to bilaterian miRNAs. We also identified siRNAs derived from precursors with perfect stem-loop structure and that arise from inverted repeats. piRNAs were the most abundant small RNAs in hydra, mapping to transposable elements, the annotated transcriptome and unique non-coding regions on the genome. piRNAs that map to transposable elements and the annotated transcriptome display a ping-pong signature. Further, we have identified several miRNAs and piRNAs whose expression is regulated during hydra head regeneration. Our study defines different classes of small RNAs in this cnidarian model system, which may play a role in orchestrating gene expression essential for hydra regeneration.

  18. Deep sequencing reveals unique small RNA repertoire that is regulated during head regeneration in Hydra magnipapillata

    PubMed Central

    Krishna, Srikar; Nair, Aparna; Cheedipudi, Sirisha; Poduval, Deepak; Dhawan, Jyotsna; Palakodeti, Dasaradhi; Ghanekar, Yashoda

    2013-01-01

    Small non-coding RNAs such as miRNAs, piRNAs and endo-siRNAs fine-tune gene expression through post-transcriptional regulation, modulating important processes in development, differentiation, homeostasis and regeneration. Using deep sequencing, we have profiled small non-coding RNAs in Hydra magnipapillata and investigated changes in small RNA expression pattern during head regeneration. Our results reveal a unique repertoire of small RNAs in hydra. We have identified 126 miRNA loci; 123 of these miRNAs are unique to hydra. Less than 50% are conserved across two different strains of Hydra vulgaris tested in this study, indicating a highly diverse nature of hydra miRNAs in contrast to bilaterian miRNAs. We also identified siRNAs derived from precursors with perfect stem–loop structure and that arise from inverted repeats. piRNAs were the most abundant small RNAs in hydra, mapping to transposable elements, the annotated transcriptome and unique non-coding regions on the genome. piRNAs that map to transposable elements and the annotated transcriptome display a ping–pong signature. Further, we have identified several miRNAs and piRNAs whose expression is regulated during hydra head regeneration. Our study defines different classes of small RNAs in this cnidarian model system, which may play a role in orchestrating gene expression essential for hydra regeneration. PMID:23166307

  19. Deep-Earth reactor: Nuclear fission, helium, and the geomagnetic field

    PubMed Central

    Hollenbach, D. F.; Herndon, J. M.

    2001-01-01

    Geomagnetic field reversals and changes in intensity are understandable from an energy standpoint as natural consequences of intermittent and/or variable nuclear fission chain reactions deep within the Earth. Moreover, deep-Earth production of helium, having 3He/4He ratios within the range observed from deep-mantle sources, is demonstrated to be a consequence of nuclear fission. Numerical simulations of a planetary-scale geo-reactor were made by using the SCALE sequence of codes. The results clearly demonstrate that such a geo-reactor (i) would function as a fast-neutron fuel breeder reactor; (ii) could, under appropriate conditions, operate over the entire period of geologic time; and (iii) would function in such a manner as to yield variable and/or intermittent output power. PMID:11562483

  20. Deep-Earth reactor: nuclear fission, helium, and the geomagnetic field.

    PubMed

    Hollenbach, D F; Herndon, J M

    2001-09-25

    Geomagnetic field reversals and changes in intensity are understandable from an energy standpoint as natural consequences of intermittent and/or variable nuclear fission chain reactions deep within the Earth. Moreover, deep-Earth production of helium, having (3)He/(4)He ratios within the range observed from deep-mantle sources, is demonstrated to be a consequence of nuclear fission. Numerical simulations of a planetary-scale geo-reactor were made by using the SCALE sequence of codes. The results clearly demonstrate that such a geo-reactor (i) would function as a fast-neutron fuel breeder reactor; (ii) could, under appropriate conditions, operate over the entire period of geologic time; and (iii) would function in such a manner as to yield variable and/or intermittent output power.

  1. High-Resolution Sequence-Function Mapping of Full-Length Proteins

    PubMed Central

    Kowalsky, Caitlin A.; Klesmith, Justin R.; Stapleton, James A.; Kelly, Vince; Reichkitzer, Nolan; Whitehead, Timothy A.

    2015-01-01

    Comprehensive sequence-function mapping involves detailing the fitness contribution of every possible single mutation to a gene by comparing the abundance of each library variant before and after selection for the phenotype of interest. Deep sequencing of library DNA allows frequency reconstruction for tens of thousands of variants in a single experiment, yet short read lengths of current sequencers makes it challenging to probe genes encoding full-length proteins. Here we extend the scope of sequence-function maps to entire protein sequences with a modular, universal sequence tiling method. We demonstrate the approach with both growth-based selections and FACS screening, offer parameters and best practices that simplify design of experiments, and present analytical solutions to normalize data across independent selections. Using this protocol, sequence-function maps covering full sequences can be obtained in four to six weeks. Best practices introduced in this manuscript are fully compatible with, and complementary to, other recently published sequence-function mapping protocols. PMID:25790064

  2. A deep learning framework for improving long-range residue-residue contact prediction using a hierarchical strategy.

    PubMed

    Xiong, Dapeng; Zeng, Jianyang; Gong, Haipeng

    2017-09-01

    Residue-residue contacts are of great value for protein structure prediction, since contact information, especially from those long-range residue pairs, can significantly reduce the complexity of conformational sampling for protein structure prediction in practice. Despite progresses in the past decade on protein targets with abundant homologous sequences, accurate contact prediction for proteins with limited sequence information is still far from satisfaction. Methodologies for these hard targets still need further improvement. We presented a computational program DeepConPred, which includes a pipeline of two novel deep-learning-based methods (DeepCCon and DeepRCon) as well as a contact refinement step, to improve the prediction of long-range residue contacts from primary sequences. When compared with previous prediction approaches, our framework employed an effective scheme to identify optimal and important features for contact prediction, and was only trained with coevolutionary information derived from a limited number of homologous sequences to ensure robustness and usefulness for hard targets. Independent tests showed that 59.33%/49.97%, 64.39%/54.01% and 70.00%/59.81% of the top L/5, top L/10 and top 5 predictions were correct for CASP10/CASP11 proteins, respectively. In general, our algorithm ranked as one of the best methods for CASP targets. All source data and codes are available at http://166.111.152.91/Downloads.html . hgong@tsinghua.edu.cn or zengjy321@tsinghua.edu.cn. Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

  3. Deep Learning in Label-free Cell Classification

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Chen, Claire Lifan; Mahjoubfar, Ata; Tai, Li-Chia

    Label-free cell analysis is essential to personalized genomics, cancer diagnostics, and drug development as it avoids adverse effects of staining reagents on cellular viability and cell signaling. However, currently available label-free cell assays mostly rely only on a single feature and lack sufficient differentiation. Also, the sample size analyzed by these assays is limited due to their low throughput. Here, we integrate feature extraction and deep learning with high-throughput quantitative imaging enabled by photonic time stretch, achieving record high accuracy in label-free cell classification. Our system captures quantitative optical phase and intensity images and extracts multiple biophysical features of individualmore » cells. These biophysical measurements form a hyperdimensional feature space in which supervised learning is performed for cell classification. We compare various learning algorithms including artificial neural network, support vector machine, logistic regression, and a novel deep learning pipeline, which adopts global optimization of receiver operating characteristics. As a validation of the enhanced sensitivity and specificity of our system, we show classification of white blood T-cells against colon cancer cells, as well as lipid accumulating algal strains for biofuel production. In conclusion, this system opens up a new path to data-driven phenotypic diagnosis and better understanding of the heterogeneous gene expressions in cells.« less

  4. Deep Learning in Label-free Cell Classification

    PubMed Central

    Chen, Claire Lifan; Mahjoubfar, Ata; Tai, Li-Chia; Blaby, Ian K.; Huang, Allen; Niazi, Kayvan Reza; Jalali, Bahram

    2016-01-01

    Label-free cell analysis is essential to personalized genomics, cancer diagnostics, and drug development as it avoids adverse effects of staining reagents on cellular viability and cell signaling. However, currently available label-free cell assays mostly rely only on a single feature and lack sufficient differentiation. Also, the sample size analyzed by these assays is limited due to their low throughput. Here, we integrate feature extraction and deep learning with high-throughput quantitative imaging enabled by photonic time stretch, achieving record high accuracy in label-free cell classification. Our system captures quantitative optical phase and intensity images and extracts multiple biophysical features of individual cells. These biophysical measurements form a hyperdimensional feature space in which supervised learning is performed for cell classification. We compare various learning algorithms including artificial neural network, support vector machine, logistic regression, and a novel deep learning pipeline, which adopts global optimization of receiver operating characteristics. As a validation of the enhanced sensitivity and specificity of our system, we show classification of white blood T-cells against colon cancer cells, as well as lipid accumulating algal strains for biofuel production. This system opens up a new path to data-driven phenotypic diagnosis and better understanding of the heterogeneous gene expressions in cells. PMID:26975219

  5. Deep Learning in Label-free Cell Classification

    DOE PAGES

    Chen, Claire Lifan; Mahjoubfar, Ata; Tai, Li-Chia; ...

    2016-03-15

    Label-free cell analysis is essential to personalized genomics, cancer diagnostics, and drug development as it avoids adverse effects of staining reagents on cellular viability and cell signaling. However, currently available label-free cell assays mostly rely only on a single feature and lack sufficient differentiation. Also, the sample size analyzed by these assays is limited due to their low throughput. Here, we integrate feature extraction and deep learning with high-throughput quantitative imaging enabled by photonic time stretch, achieving record high accuracy in label-free cell classification. Our system captures quantitative optical phase and intensity images and extracts multiple biophysical features of individualmore » cells. These biophysical measurements form a hyperdimensional feature space in which supervised learning is performed for cell classification. We compare various learning algorithms including artificial neural network, support vector machine, logistic regression, and a novel deep learning pipeline, which adopts global optimization of receiver operating characteristics. As a validation of the enhanced sensitivity and specificity of our system, we show classification of white blood T-cells against colon cancer cells, as well as lipid accumulating algal strains for biofuel production. In conclusion, this system opens up a new path to data-driven phenotypic diagnosis and better understanding of the heterogeneous gene expressions in cells.« less

  6. Deep Learning in Label-free Cell Classification

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Chen, Claire Lifan; Mahjoubfar, Ata; Tai, Li-Chia; Blaby, Ian K.; Huang, Allen; Niazi, Kayvan Reza; Jalali, Bahram

    2016-03-01

    Label-free cell analysis is essential to personalized genomics, cancer diagnostics, and drug development as it avoids adverse effects of staining reagents on cellular viability and cell signaling. However, currently available label-free cell assays mostly rely only on a single feature and lack sufficient differentiation. Also, the sample size analyzed by these assays is limited due to their low throughput. Here, we integrate feature extraction and deep learning with high-throughput quantitative imaging enabled by photonic time stretch, achieving record high accuracy in label-free cell classification. Our system captures quantitative optical phase and intensity images and extracts multiple biophysical features of individual cells. These biophysical measurements form a hyperdimensional feature space in which supervised learning is performed for cell classification. We compare various learning algorithms including artificial neural network, support vector machine, logistic regression, and a novel deep learning pipeline, which adopts global optimization of receiver operating characteristics. As a validation of the enhanced sensitivity and specificity of our system, we show classification of white blood T-cells against colon cancer cells, as well as lipid accumulating algal strains for biofuel production. This system opens up a new path to data-driven phenotypic diagnosis and better understanding of the heterogeneous gene expressions in cells.

  7. A generic assay for whole-genome amplification and deep sequencing of enterovirus A71

    PubMed Central

    Tan, Le Van; Tuyen, Nguyen Thi Kim; Thanh, Tran Tan; Ngan, Tran Thuy; Van, Hoang Minh Tu; Sabanathan, Saraswathy; Van, Tran Thi My; Thanh, Le Thi My; Nguyet, Lam Anh; Geoghegan, Jemma L.; Ong, Kien Chai; Perera, David; Hang, Vu Thi Ty; Ny, Nguyen Thi Han; Anh, Nguyen To; Ha, Do Quang; Qui, Phan Tu; Viet, Do Chau; Tuan, Ha Manh; Wong, Kum Thong; Holmes, Edward C.; Chau, Nguyen Van Vinh; Thwaites, Guy; van Doorn, H. Rogier

    2015-01-01

    Enterovirus A71 (EV-A71) has emerged as the most important cause of large outbreaks of severe and sometimes fatal hand, foot and mouth disease (HFMD) across the Asia-Pacific region. EV-A71 outbreaks have been associated with (sub)genogroup switches, sometimes accompanied by recombination events. Understanding EV-A71 population dynamics is therefore essential for understanding this emerging infection, and may provide pivotal information for vaccine development. Despite the public health burden of EV-A71, relatively few EV-A71 complete-genome sequences are available for analysis and from limited geographical localities. The availability of an efficient procedure for whole-genome sequencing would stimulate effort to generate more viral sequence data. Herein, we report for the first time the development of a next-generation sequencing based protocol for whole-genome sequencing of EV-A71 directly from clinical specimens. We were able to sequence viruses of subgenogroup C4 and B5, while RNA from culture materials of diverse EV-A71 subgenogroups belonging to both genogroup B and C was successfully amplified. The nature of intra-host genetic diversity was explored in 22 clinical samples, revealing 107 positions carrying minor variants (ranging from 0 to 15 variants per sample). Our analysis of EV-A71 strains sampled in 2013 showed that they all belonged to subgenogroup B5, representing the first report of this subgenogroup in Vietnam. In conclusion, we have successfully developed a high-throughput next-generation sequencing-based assay for whole-genome sequencing of EV-A71 from clinical samples. PMID:25704598

  8. Deep sequencing-based transcriptome profiling analysis of bacteria-challenged Lateolabrax japonicus reveals insight into the immune-relevant genes in marine fish

    PubMed Central

    2010-01-01

    Background Systematic research on fish immunogenetics is indispensable in understanding the origin and evolution of immune systems. This has long been a challenging task because of the limited number of deep sequencing technologies and genome backgrounds of non-model fish available. The newly developed Solexa/Illumina RNA-seq and Digital gene expression (DGE) are high-throughput sequencing approaches and are powerful tools for genomic studies at the transcriptome level. This study reports the transcriptome profiling analysis of bacteria-challenged Lateolabrax japonicus using RNA-seq and DGE in an attempt to gain insights into the immunogenetics of marine fish. Results RNA-seq analysis generated 169,950 non-redundant consensus sequences, among which 48,987 functional transcripts with complete or various length encoding regions were identified. More than 52% of these transcripts are possibly involved in approximately 219 known metabolic or signalling pathways, while 2,673 transcripts were associated with immune-relevant genes. In addition, approximately 8% of the transcripts appeared to be fish-specific genes that have never been described before. DGE analysis revealed that the host transcriptome profile of Vibrio harveyi-challenged L. japonicus is considerably altered, as indicated by the significant up- or down-regulation of 1,224 strong infection-responsive transcripts. Results indicated an overall conservation of the components and transcriptome alterations underlying innate and adaptive immunity in fish and other vertebrate models. Analysis suggested the acquisition of numerous fish-specific immune system components during early vertebrate evolution. Conclusion This study provided a global survey of host defence gene activities against bacterial challenge in a non-model marine fish. Results can contribute to the in-depth study of candidate genes in marine fish immunity, and help improve current understanding of host-pathogen interactions and evolutionary history

  9. DRREP: deep ridge regressed epitope predictor.

    PubMed

    Sher, Gene; Zhi, Degui; Zhang, Shaojie

    2017-10-03

    The ability to predict epitopes plays an enormous role in vaccine development in terms of our ability to zero in on where to do a more thorough in-vivo analysis of the protein in question. Though for the past decade there have been numerous advancements and improvements in epitope prediction, on average the best benchmark prediction accuracies are still only around 60%. New machine learning algorithms have arisen within the domain of deep learning, text mining, and convolutional networks. This paper presents a novel analytically trained and string kernel using deep neural network, which is tailored for continuous epitope prediction, called: Deep Ridge Regressed Epitope Predictor (DRREP). DRREP was tested on long protein sequences from the following datasets: SARS, Pellequer, HIV, AntiJen, and SEQ194. DRREP was compared to numerous state of the art epitope predictors, including the most recently published predictors called LBtope and DMNLBE. Using area under ROC curve (AUC), DRREP achieved a performance improvement over the best performing predictors on SARS (13.7%), HIV (8.9%), Pellequer (1.5%), and SEQ194 (3.1%), with its performance being matched only on the AntiJen dataset, by the LBtope predictor, where both DRREP and LBtope achieved an AUC of 0.702. DRREP is an analytically trained deep neural network, thus capable of learning in a single step through regression. By combining the features of deep learning, string kernels, and convolutional networks, the system is able to perform residue-by-residue prediction of continues epitopes with higher accuracy than the current state of the art predictors.

  10. OCT structure, COB location and magmatic type of the S Angolan & SE Brazilian margins from integrated quantitative analysis of deep seismic reflection and gravity anomaly data

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Cowie, Leanne; Kusznir, Nick; Horn, Brian

    2014-05-01

    Integrated quantitative analysis using deep seismic reflection data and gravity inversion have been applied to the S Angolan and SE Brazilian margins to determine OCT structure, COB location and magmatic type. Knowledge of these margin parameters are of critical importance for understanding rifted continental margin formation processes and in evaluating petroleum systems in deep-water frontier oil and gas exploration. The OCT structure, COB location and magmatic type of the S Angolan and SE Brazilian rifted continental margins are much debated; exhumed and serpentinised mantle have been reported at these margins. Gravity anomaly inversion, incorporating a lithosphere thermal gravity anomaly correction, has been used to determine Moho depth, crustal basement thickness and continental lithosphere thinning. Residual Depth Anomaly (RDA) analysis has been used to investigate OCT bathymetric anomalies with respect to expected oceanic bathymetries and subsidence analysis has been used to determine the distribution of continental lithosphere thinning. These techniques have been validated for profiles Lusigal 12 and ISE-01 on the Iberian margin. In addition a joint inversion technique using deep seismic reflection and gravity anomaly data has been applied to the ION-GXT BS1-575 SE Brazil and ION-GXT CS1-2400 S Angola deep seismic reflection lines. The joint inversion method solves for coincident seismic and gravity Moho in the time domain and calculates the lateral variations in crustal basement densities and velocities along the seismic profiles. Gravity inversion, RDA and subsidence analysis along the ION-GXT BS1-575 profile, which crosses the Sao Paulo Plateau and Florianopolis Ridge of the SE Brazilian margin, predict the COB to be located SE of the Florianopolis Ridge. Integrated quantitative analysis shows no evidence for exhumed mantle on this margin profile. The joint inversion technique predicts oceanic crustal thicknesses of between 7 and 8 km thickness with

  11. Detection of Somatic Mutations in Gastroenteropancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors Using Targeted Deep Sequencing.

    PubMed

    Backman, Samuel; Norlén, Olov; Eriksson, Barbro; Skogseid, Britt; Stålberg, Peter; Crona, Joakim

    2017-02-01

    Mutations affecting the mechanistic target of rapamycin (MTOR) signalling pathway are frequent in human cancer and have been identified in up to 15% of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (NETs). Grade A evidence supports the efficacy of MTOR inhibition with everolimus in pancreatic NETs. Although a significant proportion of patients experience disease stabilization, only a minority will show objective tumour responses. It has been proposed that genomic mutations resulting in activation of MTOR signalling could be used to predict sensitivity to everolimus. Patients with NETs that underwent treatment with everolimus at our Institution were identified and those with available tumour tissue were selected for further analysis. Targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) was used to re-sequence 22 genes that were selected on the basis of documented involvement in the MTOR signalling pathway or in the tumourigenesis of gastroenterpancreatic NETs. Radiological responses were documented using Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumours. Six patients were identified, one had a partial response and four had stable disease. Sequencing of tumour tissue resulted in a median sequence depth of 667.1 (range=404-1301) with 1-fold coverage of 95.9-96.5% and 10-fold coverage of 87.6-92.2%. A total of 494 genetic variants were discovered, four of which were identified as pathogenic. All pathogenic variants were validated using Sanger sequencing and were found exclusively in menin 1 (MEN1) and death domain associated protein (DAXX) genes. No mutations in the MTOR pathway-related genes were observed. Targeted NGS is a feasible method with high diagnostic yield for genetic characterization of pancreatic NETs. A potential association between mutations in NETs and response to everolimus should be investigated by future studies. Copyright© 2017, International Institute of Anticancer Research (Dr. George J. Delinasios), All rights reserved.

  12. Intelligent fault diagnosis of rolling bearings using an improved deep recurrent neural network

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Jiang, Hongkai; Li, Xingqiu; Shao, Haidong; Zhao, Ke

    2018-06-01

    Traditional intelligent fault diagnosis methods for rolling bearings heavily depend on manual feature extraction and feature selection. For this purpose, an intelligent deep learning method, named the improved deep recurrent neural network (DRNN), is proposed in this paper. Firstly, frequency spectrum sequences are used as inputs to reduce the input size and ensure good robustness. Secondly, DRNN is constructed by the stacks of the recurrent hidden layer to automatically extract the features from the input spectrum sequences. Thirdly, an adaptive learning rate is adopted to improve the training performance of the constructed DRNN. The proposed method is verified with experimental rolling bearing data, and the results confirm that the proposed method is more effective than traditional intelligent fault diagnosis methods.

  13. Reporting Differences Between Spacecraft Sequence Files

    NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

    Khanampompan, Teerapat; Gladden, Roy E.; Fisher, Forest W.

    2010-01-01

    A suite of computer programs, called seq diff suite, reports differences between the products of other computer programs involved in the generation of sequences of commands for spacecraft. These products consist of files of several types: replacement sequence of events (RSOE), DSN keyword file [DKF (wherein DSN signifies Deep Space Network)], spacecraft activities sequence file (SASF), spacecraft sequence file (SSF), and station allocation file (SAF). These products can include line numbers, request identifications, and other pieces of information that are not relevant when generating command sequence products, though these fields can result in the appearance of many changes to the files, particularly when using the UNIX diff command to inspect file differences. The outputs of prior software tools for reporting differences between such products include differences in these non-relevant pieces of information. In contrast, seq diff suite removes the fields containing the irrelevant pieces of information before processing to extract differences, so that only relevant differences are reported. Thus, seq diff suite is especially useful for reporting changes between successive versions of the various products and in particular flagging difference in fields relevant to the sequence command generation and review process.

  14. Repertoire of novel sequence signatures for the detection of Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus by quantitative real-time PCR

    PubMed Central

    2014-01-01

    Background Huanglongbing (HLB) or citrus greening is a devastating disease of citrus. The gram-negative bacterium Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (Las) belonging to the α-proteobacteria is responsible for HLB in North America as well as in Asia. Currently, there is no cure for this disease. Early detection and quarantine of Las-infected trees are important management strategies used to prevent HLB from invading HLB-free citrus producing regions. Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) based molecular diagnostic assays have been routinely used in the detection and diagnosis of Las. The oligonucleotide primer pairs based on conserved genes or regions, which include 16S rDNA and the β-operon, have been widely employed in the detection of Las by qRT-PCR. The availability of whole genome sequence of Las now allows the design of primers beyond the conserved regions for the detection of Las explicitly. Results We took a complimentary approach by systematically screening the genes in a genome-wide fashion, to identify the unique signatures that are only present in Las by an exhaustive sequence based similarity search against the nucleotide sequence database. Our search resulted in 34 probable unique signatures. Furthermore, by designing the primer pair specific to the identified signatures, we showed that most of our primer sets are able to detect Las from the infected plant and psyllid materials collected from the USA and China by qRT-PCR. Overall, 18 primer pairs of the 34 are found to be highly specific to Las with no cross reactivity to the closely related species Ca. L. americanus (Lam) and Ca. L. africanus (Laf). Conclusions We have designed qRT-PCR primers based on Las specific genes. Among them, 18 are suitable for the detection of Las from Las-infected plant and psyllid samples. The repertoire of primers that we have developed and characterized in this study enhanced the qRT-PCR based molecular diagnosis of HLB. PMID:24533511

  15. First complete genome sequence of an emerging cucumber green mottle mosaic virus isolate in North America

    USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

    The complete genome sequence (6,423 nt) of an emerging Cucumber green mottle mosaic virus (CGMMV) isolate on cucumber in North America was determined through deep sequencing of sRNA and rapid amplification of cDNA ends. It shares 99% nucleotide sequence identity to the Asian genotype, but only 90% t...

  16. Using deep RNA sequencing for the structural annotation of the laccaria bicolor mycorrhizal transcriptome.

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Larsen, P. E.; Trivedi, G.; Sreedasyam, A.

    2010-07-06

    Accurate structural annotation is important for prediction of function and required for in vitro approaches to characterize or validate the gene expression products. Despite significant efforts in the field, determination of the gene structure from genomic data alone is a challenging and inaccurate process. The ease of acquisition of transcriptomic sequence provides a direct route to identify expressed sequences and determine the correct gene structure. We developed methods to utilize RNA-seq data to correct errors in the structural annotation and extend the boundaries of current gene models using assembly approaches. The methods were validated with a transcriptomic data set derivedmore » from the fungus Laccaria bicolor, which develops a mycorrhizal symbiotic association with the roots of many tree species. Our analysis focused on the subset of 1501 gene models that are differentially expressed in the free living vs. mycorrhizal transcriptome and are expected to be important elements related to carbon metabolism, membrane permeability and transport, and intracellular signaling. Of the set of 1501 gene models, 1439 (96%) successfully generated modified gene models in which all error flags were successfully resolved and the sequences aligned to the genomic sequence. The remaining 4% (62 gene models) either had deviations from transcriptomic data that could not be spanned or generated sequence that did not align to genomic sequence. The outcome of this process is a set of high confidence gene models that can be reliably used for experimental characterization of protein function. 69% of expressed mycorrhizal JGI 'best' gene models deviated from the transcript sequence derived by this method. The transcriptomic sequence enabled correction of a majority of the structural inconsistencies and resulted in a set of validated models for 96% of the mycorrhizal genes. The method described here can be applied to improve gene structural annotation in other species, provided

  17. Stability of deep features across CT scanners and field of view using a physical phantom

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Paul, Rahul; Shafiq-ul-Hassan, Muhammad; Moros, Eduardo G.; Gillies, Robert J.; Hall, Lawrence O.; Goldgof, Dmitry B.

    2018-02-01

    Radiomics is the process of analyzing radiological images by extracting quantitative features for monitoring and diagnosis of various cancers. Analyzing images acquired from different medical centers is confounded by many choices in acquisition, reconstruction parameters and differences among device manufacturers. Consequently, scanning the same patient or phantom using various acquisition/reconstruction parameters as well as different scanners may result in different feature values. To further evaluate this issue, in this study, CT images from a physical radiomic phantom were used. Recent studies showed that some quantitative features were dependent on voxel size and that this dependency could be reduced or removed by the appropriate normalization factor. Deep features extracted from a convolutional neural network, may also provide additional features for image analysis. Using a transfer learning approach, we obtained deep features from three convolutional neural networks pre-trained on color camera images. An we examination of the dependency of deep features on image pixel size was done. We found that some deep features were pixel size dependent, and to remove this dependency we proposed two effective normalization approaches. For analyzing the effects of normalization, a threshold has been used based on the calculated standard deviation and average distance from a best fit horizontal line among the features' underlying pixel size before and after normalization. The inter and intra scanner dependency of deep features has also been evaluated.

  18. Complete genome sequence of the Antarctic Halorubrum lacusprofundi type strain ACAM 34

    DOE PAGES

    Anderson, Iain J.; DasSarma, Priya; Lucas, Susan; ...

    2016-09-10

    Halorubrum lacusprofundi is an extreme halophile within the archaeal phylum Euryarchaeota. The type strain ACAM 34 was isolated from Deep Lake, Antarctica. H. lacusprofundi is of phylogenetic interest because it is distantly related to the haloarchaea that have previously been sequenced. It is also of interest because of its psychrotolerance. We report here the complete genome sequence of H. lacusprofundi type strain ACAM 34 and its annotation. In conclusion, this genome is part of a 2006 Joint Genome Institute Community Sequencing Program project to sequence genomes of diverse Archaea.

  19. Complete genome sequence of the Antarctic Halorubrum lacusprofundi type strain ACAM 34

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Anderson, Iain J.; DasSarma, Priya; Lucas, Susan

    Halorubrum lacusprofundi is an extreme halophile within the archaeal phylum Euryarchaeota. The type strain ACAM 34 was isolated from Deep Lake, Antarctica. H. lacusprofundi is of phylogenetic interest because it is distantly related to the haloarchaea that have previously been sequenced. It is also of interest because of its psychrotolerance. We report here the complete genome sequence of H. lacusprofundi type strain ACAM 34 and its annotation. In conclusion, this genome is part of a 2006 Joint Genome Institute Community Sequencing Program project to sequence genomes of diverse Archaea.

  20. An Inquiry-Based Quantitative Reasoning Course for Business Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Piercey, Victor; Militzer, Erin

    2017-01-01

    Quantitative Reasoning for Business is a two-semester sequence that serves as an alternative to elementary and intermediate algebra for first-year business students with weak mathematical preparation. Students who take the sequence have been retained at a higher rate and demonstrated a larger reduction in math anxiety than those who take the…

  1. Ubiquitous healthy diatoms in the deep sea confirms deep carbon injection by the biological pump

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Agustí, Susana; González-Gordillo, Jose I.; Vaqué, Dolors; Estrada, Marta; Cerezo, Maria I.; Salazar, Guillem; Gasol, Josep M.; Duarte, Carlos M.

    2016-04-01

    The role of the ocean as a sink for CO2 is partially dependent on the downward transport of phytoplankton cells packaged within fast-sinking particles. However, whether such fast-sinking mechanisms deliver fresh organic carbon down to the deep bathypelagic sea and whether this mechanism is prevalent across the ocean awaits confirmation. Photosynthetic plankton, directly responsible for trapping CO2 in organic form in the surface layer, are a key constituent of the flux of sinking particles and are assumed to die and become detritus upon leaving the photic layer. Research in the 1960-70's reported the occasional presence of well-preserved phytoplankton cells in the deep ocean, but these observations, which could signal at rapid sinking rates, were considered anecdotal. Using new developments we tested the presence of healthy phytoplankton cells in the deep sea (2000 to 4000 m depth) along the Malaspina 2010 Circumnavigation Expedition, a global expedition sampling the bathypelagic zone of the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. In particular, we used a new microplankton sampling device, the Bottle-Net, 16S rDNA sequences, flow cytometric counts, vital stains and experiments to explore the abundance and health status of photosynthetic plankton cells between 2,000 and 4,000 m depth along the Circumnavigation track. We described the community of microplankton (> 20μm) found at the deep ocean (2000-4000 m depth), surprisingly dominated by phytoplankton, and within this, by diatoms. Moreover, we report the ubiquitous presence of healthy photosynthetic cells, dominated by diatoms, down to 4,000 m in the deep dark sea. Decay experiments with surface phytoplankton suggested that the large proportion (18%) of healthy photosynthetic cells observed, on average, in the dark ocean, requires transport times from few days to few weeks, corresponding to sinking rates of 124 to 732 m d-1, comparable to those of fast sinking aggregates and faecal pellets. These results confirm the

  2. Detection and quantitation of chromosomal mosaicism in human blastocysts using copy number variation sequencing.

    PubMed

    Ruttanajit, Tida; Chanchamroen, Sujin; Cram, David S; Sawakwongpra, Kritchakorn; Suksalak, Wanwisa; Leng, Xue; Fan, Junmei; Wang, Li; Yao, Yuanqing; Quangkananurug, Wiwat

    2016-02-01

    Currently, our understanding of the nature and reproductive potential of blastocysts associated with trophectoderm (TE) lineage chromosomal mosaicism is limited. The objective of this study was to first validate copy number variation sequencing (CNV-Seq) for measuring the level of mosaicism and second, examine the nature and level of mosaicism in TE biopsies of patient's blastocysts. TE biopy samples were analysed by array comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) and CNV-Seq to discriminate between euploid, aneuploid and mosaic blastocysts. Using artificial models of TE mosaicism for five different chromosomes, CNV-Seq accurately and reproducibly quantitated mosaicism at levels of 50% and 20%. In a comparative 24-chromosome study of 49 blastocysts by array CGH and CNV-Seq, 43 blastocysts (87.8%) had a concordant diagnosis and 6 blastocysts (12.2%) were discordant. The discordance was attributed to low to medium levels of chromosomal mosaicism (30-70%) not detected by array CGH. In an expanded study of 399 blastocysts using CNV-Seq as the sole diagnostic method, the proportion of diploid-aneuploid mosaics (34, 8.5%) was significantly higher than aneuploid mosaics (18, 4.5%) (p < 0.02). Mosaicism is a significant chromosomal abnormality associated with the TE lineage of human blastocysts that can be reliably and accurately detected by CNV-Seq. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  3. Quantitative trait nucleotide analysis using Bayesian model selection.

    PubMed

    Blangero, John; Goring, Harald H H; Kent, Jack W; Williams, Jeff T; Peterson, Charles P; Almasy, Laura; Dyer, Thomas D

    2005-10-01

    Although much attention has been given to statistical genetic methods for the initial localization and fine mapping of quantitative trait loci (QTLs), little methodological work has been done to date on the problem of statistically identifying the most likely functional polymorphisms using sequence data. In this paper we provide a general statistical genetic framework, called Bayesian quantitative trait nucleotide (BQTN) analysis, for assessing the likely functional status of genetic variants. The approach requires the initial enumeration of all genetic variants in a set of resequenced individuals. These polymorphisms are then typed in a large number of individuals (potentially in families), and marker variation is related to quantitative phenotypic variation using Bayesian model selection and averaging. For each sequence variant a posterior probability of effect is obtained and can be used to prioritize additional molecular functional experiments. An example of this quantitative nucleotide analysis is provided using the GAW12 simulated data. The results show that the BQTN method may be useful for choosing the most likely functional variants within a gene (or set of genes). We also include instructions on how to use our computer program, SOLAR, for association analysis and BQTN analysis.

  4. Real-time magnetic resonance imaging of deep venous flow during muscular exercise-preliminary experience.

    PubMed

    Joseph, Arun Antony; Merboldt, Klaus-Dietmar; Voit, Dirk; Dahm, Johannes; Frahm, Jens

    2016-12-01

    The accurate assessment of peripheral venous flow is important for the early diagnosis and treatment of disorders such as deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) which is a major cause of post-thrombotic syndrome or even death due to pulmonary embolism. The aim of this work is to quantitatively determine blood flow in deep veins during rest and muscular exercise using a novel real-time magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) method for velocity-encoded phase-contrast (PC) MRI at high spatiotemporal resolution. Real-time PC MRI of eight healthy volunteers and one patient was performed at 3 Tesla (Prisma fit, Siemens, Erlangen, Germany) using a flexible 16-channel receive coil (Variety, NORAS, Hoechberg, Germany). Acquisitions were based on a highly undersampled radial FLASH sequence with image reconstruction by regularized nonlinear inversion at 0.5×0.5×6 mm 3 spatial resolution and 100 ms temporal resolution. Flow was assessed in two cross-sections of the lower leg at the level of the calf muscle and knee using a protocol of 10 s rest, 20 s flexion and extension of the foot, and 10 s rest. Quantitative analyses included through-plane flow in the right posterior tibial, right peroneal and popliteal vein (PC maps) as well as signal intensity changes due to flow and muscle movements (corresponding magnitude images). Real-time PC MRI successfully monitored the dynamics of venous flow at high spatiotemporal resolution and clearly demonstrated increased flow in deep veins in response to flexion and extension of the foot. In normal subjects, the maximum velocity (averaged across vessel lumen) during exercise was 9.4±5.7 cm·s -1 for the right peroneal vein, 8.5±4.6 cm·s -1 for the right posterior tibial vein and 17.8±5.8 cm·s -1 for the popliteal vein. The integrated flow volume per exercise (20 s) was 1.9, 1.6 and 50 mL (mean across subjects) for right peroneal, right posterior tibial and popliteal vein, respectively. A patient with DVT presented with peak flow velocities of only

  5. Maximum entropy methods for extracting the learned features of deep neural networks.

    PubMed

    Finnegan, Alex; Song, Jun S

    2017-10-01

    New architectures of multilayer artificial neural networks and new methods for training them are rapidly revolutionizing the application of machine learning in diverse fields, including business, social science, physical sciences, and biology. Interpreting deep neural networks, however, currently remains elusive, and a critical challenge lies in understanding which meaningful features a network is actually learning. We present a general method for interpreting deep neural networks and extracting network-learned features from input data. We describe our algorithm in the context of biological sequence analysis. Our approach, based on ideas from statistical physics, samples from the maximum entropy distribution over possible sequences, anchored at an input sequence and subject to constraints implied by the empirical function learned by a network. Using our framework, we demonstrate that local transcription factor binding motifs can be identified from a network trained on ChIP-seq data and that nucleosome positioning signals are indeed learned by a network trained on chemical cleavage nucleosome maps. Imposing a further constraint on the maximum entropy distribution also allows us to probe whether a network is learning global sequence features, such as the high GC content in nucleosome-rich regions. This work thus provides valuable mathematical tools for interpreting and extracting learned features from feed-forward neural networks.

  6. Introduction of an automated user-independent quantitative volumetric magnetic resonance imaging breast density measurement system using the Dixon sequence: comparison with mammographic breast density assessment.

    PubMed

    Wengert, Georg Johannes; Helbich, Thomas H; Vogl, Wolf-Dieter; Baltzer, Pascal; Langs, Georg; Weber, Michael; Bogner, Wolfgang; Gruber, Stephan; Trattnig, Siegfried; Pinker, Katja

    2015-02-01

    The purposes of this study were to introduce and assess an automated user-independent quantitative volumetric (AUQV) breast density (BD) measurement system on the basis of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using the Dixon technique as well as to compare it with qualitative and quantitative mammographic (MG) BD measurements. Forty-three women with normal mammogram results (Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System 1) were included in this institutional review board-approved prospective study. All participants were subjected to BD assessment with MRI using the following sequence with the Dixon technique (echo time/echo time, 6 milliseconds/2.45 milliseconds/2.67 milliseconds; 1-mm isotropic; 3 minutes 38 seconds). To test the reproducibility, a second MRI after patient repositioning was performed. The AUQV magnetic resonance (MR) BD measurement system automatically calculated percentage (%) BD. The qualitative BD assessment was performed using the American College of Radiology Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System BD categories. Quantitative BD was estimated semiautomatically using the thresholding technique Cumulus4. Appropriate statistical tests were used to assess the agreement between the AUQV MR measurements and to compare them with qualitative and quantitative MG BD estimations. The AUQV MR BD measurements were successfully performed in all 43 women. There was a nearly perfect agreement of AUQV MR BD measurements between the 2 MR examinations for % BD (P < 0.001; intraclass correlation coefficient, 0.998) with no significant differences (P = 0.384). The AUQV MR BD measurements were significantly lower than quantitative and qualitative MG BD assessment (P < 0.001). The AUQV MR BD measurement system allows a fully automated, user-independent, robust, reproducible, as well as radiation- and compression-free volumetric quantitative BD assessment through different levels of BD. The AUQV MR BD measurements were significantly lower than the currently used qualitative

  7. Joint deep shape and appearance learning: application to optic pathway glioma segmentation

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Mansoor, Awais; Li, Ien; Packer, Roger J.; Avery, Robert A.; Linguraru, Marius George

    2017-03-01

    Automated tissue characterization is one of the major applications of computer-aided diagnosis systems. Deep learning techniques have recently demonstrated impressive performance for the image patch-based tissue characterization. However, existing patch-based tissue classification techniques struggle to exploit the useful shape information. Local and global shape knowledge such as the regional boundary changes, diameter, and volumetrics can be useful in classifying the tissues especially in scenarios where the appearance signature does not provide significant classification information. In this work, we present a deep neural network-based method for the automated segmentation of the tumors referred to as optic pathway gliomas (OPG) located within the anterior visual pathway (AVP; optic nerve, chiasm or tracts) using joint shape and appearance learning. Voxel intensity values of commonly used MRI sequences are generally not indicative of OPG. To be considered an OPG, current clinical practice dictates that some portion of AVP must demonstrate shape enlargement. The method proposed in this work integrates multiple sequence magnetic resonance image (T1, T2, and FLAIR) along with local boundary changes to train a deep neural network. For training and evaluation purposes, we used a dataset of multiple sequence MRI obtained from 20 subjects (10 controls, 10 NF1+OPG). To our best knowledge, this is the first deep representation learning-based approach designed to merge shape and multi-channel appearance data for the glioma detection. In our experiments, mean misclassification errors of 2:39% and 0:48% were observed respectively for glioma and control patches extracted from the AVP. Moreover, an overall dice similarity coefficient of 0:87+/-0:13 (0:93+/-0:06 for healthy tissue, 0:78+/-0:18 for glioma tissue) demonstrates the potential of the proposed method in the accurate localization and early detection of OPG.

  8. Subsurface microbial diversity in deep-granitic-fracture water in Colorado

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Sahl, J.W.; Schmidt, R.; Swanner, E.D.; Mandernack, K.W.; Templeton, A.S.; Kieft, Thomas L.; Smith, R.L.; Sanford, W.E.; Callaghan, R.L.; Mitton, J.B.; Spear, J.R.

    2008-01-01

    A microbial community analysis using 16S rRNA gene sequencing was performed on borehole water and a granite rock core from Henderson Mine, a >1,000-meter-deep molybdenum mine near Empire, CO. Chemical analysis of borehole water at two separate depths (1,044 m and 1,004 m below the mine entrance) suggests that a sharp chemical gradient exists, likely from the mixing of two distinct subsurface fluids, one metal rich and one relatively dilute; this has created unique niches for microorganisms. The microbial community analyzed from filtered, oxic borehole water indicated an abundance of sequences from iron-oxidizing bacteria (Gallionella spp.) and was compared to the community from the same borehole after 2 weeks of being plugged with an expandable packer. Statistical analyses with UniFrac revealed a significant shift in community structure following the addition of the packer. Phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) analysis suggested that Nitrosomonadales dominated the oxic borehole, while PLFAs indicative of anaerobic bacteria were most abundant in the samples from the plugged borehole. Microbial sequences were represented primarily by Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, and a lineage of sequences which did not group with any identified bacterial division; phylogenetic analyses confirmed the presence of a novel candidate division. This "Henderson candidate division" dominated the clone libraries from the dilute anoxic fluids. Sequences obtained from the granitic rock core (1,740 m below the surface) were represented by the divisions Proteobacteria (primarily the family Ralstoniaceae) and Firmicutes. Sequences grouping within Ralstoniaceae were also found in the clone libraries from metal-rich fluids yet were absent in more dilute fluids. Lineage-specific comparisons, combined with phylogenetic statistical analyses, show that geochemical variance has an important effect on microbial community structure in deep, subsurface systems. Copyright ?? 2008, American Society for Microbiology

  9. Subsurface Microbial Diversity in Deep-Granitic-Fracture Water in Colorado▿

    PubMed Central

    Sahl, Jason W.; Schmidt, Raleigh; Swanner, Elizabeth D.; Mandernack, Kevin W.; Templeton, Alexis S.; Kieft, Thomas L.; Smith, Richard L.; Sanford, William E.; Callaghan, Robert L.; Mitton, Jeffry B.; Spear, John R.

    2008-01-01

    A microbial community analysis using 16S rRNA gene sequencing was performed on borehole water and a granite rock core from Henderson Mine, a >1,000-meter-deep molybdenum mine near Empire, CO. Chemical analysis of borehole water at two separate depths (1,044 m and 1,004 m below the mine entrance) suggests that a sharp chemical gradient exists, likely from the mixing of two distinct subsurface fluids, one metal rich and one relatively dilute; this has created unique niches for microorganisms. The microbial community analyzed from filtered, oxic borehole water indicated an abundance of sequences from iron-oxidizing bacteria (Gallionella spp.) and was compared to the community from the same borehole after 2 weeks of being plugged with an expandable packer. Statistical analyses with UniFrac revealed a significant shift in community structure following the addition of the packer. Phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) analysis suggested that Nitrosomonadales dominated the oxic borehole, while PLFAs indicative of anaerobic bacteria were most abundant in the samples from the plugged borehole. Microbial sequences were represented primarily by Firmicutes, Proteobacteria, and a lineage of sequences which did not group with any identified bacterial division; phylogenetic analyses confirmed the presence of a novel candidate division. This “Henderson candidate division” dominated the clone libraries from the dilute anoxic fluids. Sequences obtained from the granitic rock core (1,740 m below the surface) were represented by the divisions Proteobacteria (primarily the family Ralstoniaceae) and Firmicutes. Sequences grouping within Ralstoniaceae were also found in the clone libraries from metal-rich fluids yet were absent in more dilute fluids. Lineage-specific comparisons, combined with phylogenetic statistical analyses, show that geochemical variance has an important effect on microbial community structure in deep, subsurface systems. PMID:17981950

  10. Deep Sequencing Reveals a Divergent Ugandan cassava brown streak virus Isolate from Malawi

    PubMed Central

    Winter, Stephan; Mukasa, Settumba; Tairo, Fred; Sseruwagi, Peter; Ndunguru, Joseph; Duffy, Siobain

    2017-01-01

    ABSTRACT Illumina sequencing of RNA from a cassava cutting from northern Malawi produced a genome of Ugandan cassava brown streak virus (UCBSV-MW-NB7_2013). Sequence comparisons revealed stronger similarity to an isolate from nearby Tanzania (93.4% pairwise nucleotide identity) than to those previously reported from Malawi (86.9 to 87.0%). PMID:28818908

  11. Instant Integrated Ultradeep Quantitative-structural Membrane Proteomics Discovered Post-translational Modification Signatures for Human Cys-loop Receptor Subunit Bias*

    PubMed Central

    Zhang, Xi

    2016-01-01

    Neurotransmitter ligand-gated ion channels (LGICs) are widespread and pivotal in brain functions. Unveiling their structure-function mechanisms is crucial to drive drug discovery, and demands robust proteomic quantitation of expression, post-translational modifications (PTMs) and dynamic structures. Yet unbiased digestion of these modified transmembrane proteins—at high efficiency and peptide reproducibility—poses the obstacle. Targeting both enzyme-substrate contacts and PTMs for peptide formation and detection, we devised flow-and-detergent-facilitated protease and de-PTM digestions for deep sequencing (FDD) method that combined omni-compatible detergent, tandem immobilized protease/PNGase columns, and Cys-selective reduction/alkylation, to achieve streamlined ultradeep peptide preparation within minutes not days, at high peptide reproducibility and low abundance-bias. FDD transformed enzyme-protein contacts into equal catalytic travel paths through enzyme-excessive columns regardless of protein abundance, removed products instantly preventing inhibition, tackled intricate structures via sequential multiple micro-digestions along the flow, and precisely controlled peptide formation by flow rate. Peptide-stage reactions reduced steric bias; low contamination deepened MS/MS scan; distinguishing disulfide from M oxidation and avoiding gain/loss artifacts unmasked protein-endogenous oxidation states. Using a recent interactome of 285-kDa human GABA type A receptor, this pilot study validated FDD platform's applicability to deep sequencing (up to 99% coverage), H/D-exchange and TMT-based structural mapping. FDD discovered novel subunit-specific PTM signatures, including unusual nontop-surface N-glycosylations, that may drive subunit biases in human Cys-loop LGIC assembly and pharmacology, by redefining subunit/ligand interfaces and connecting function domains. PMID:27073180

  12. Continental margin sedimentation: From sediment transport to sequence stratigraphy

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Nittrouer, Charles A.; Austin, James A.; Field, Michael E.; Kravitz, Joseph H.; Syvitski, James P. M.; Wiberg, Patricia L.

    2007-01-01

    This volume on continental margin sedimentation brings together an expert editorial and contributor team to create a state-of-the-art resource. Taking a global perspective, the book spans a range of timescales and content, ranging from how oceans transport particles, to how thick rock sequences are formed on continental margins.- Summarizes and integrates our understanding of sedimentary processes and strata associated with fluvial dispersal systems on continental shelves and slopes- Explores timescales ranging from particle transport at one extreme, to deep burial at the other- Insights are presented for margins in general, and with focus on a tectonically active margin (northern California) and a passive margin (New Jersey), enabling detailed examination of the intricate relationships between a wide suite of sedimentary processes and their preserved stratigraphy- Includes observational studies which document the processes and strata found on particular margins, in addition to numerical models and laboratory experimentation, which provide a quantitative basis for extrapolation in time and space of insights about continental-margin sedimentation- Provides a research resource for scientists studying modern and ancient margins, and an educational text for advanced students in sedimentology and stratigraphy

  13. Deep sequencing of the mitochondrial genome reveals common heteroplasmic sites in NADH dehydrogenase genes.

    PubMed

    Liu, Chunyu; Fetterman, Jessica L; Liu, Poching; Luo, Yan; Larson, Martin G; Vasan, Ramachandran S; Zhu, Jun; Levy, Daniel

    2018-03-01

    Increasing evidence implicates mitochondrial dysfunction in aging and age-related conditions. But little is known about the molecular basis for this connection. A possible cause may be mutations in the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which are often heteroplasmic-the joint presence of different alleles at a single locus in the same individual. However, the involvement of mtDNA heteroplasmy in aging and age-related conditions has not been investigated thoroughly. We deep-sequenced the complete mtDNA genomes of 356 Framingham Heart Study participants (52% women, mean age 43, mean coverage 4570-fold), identified 2880 unique mutations and comprehensively annotated them by MITOMAP and PolyPhen-2. We discovered 11 heteroplasmic "hot" spots [NADH dehydrogenase (ND) subunit 1, 4, 5 and 6 genes, n = 7; cytochrome c oxidase I (COI), n = 2; 16S rRNA, n = 1; D-loop, n = 1] for which the alternative-to-reference allele ratios significantly increased with advancing age (Bonferroni correction p < 0.001). Four of these heteroplasmic mutations in ND and COI genes were predicted to be deleterious nonsynonymous mutations which may have direct impact on ATP production. We confirmed previous findings that healthy individuals carry many low-frequency heteroplasmy mutations with potentially deleterious effects. We hypothesize that the effect of a single deleterious heteroplasmy may be minimal due to a low mutant-to-wildtype allele ratio, whereas the aggregate effects of many deleterious mutations may cause changes in mitochondrial function and contribute to age-related diseases. The identification of age-related mtDNA mutations is an important step to understand the genetic architecture of age-related diseases and may uncover novel therapeutic targets for such diseases.

  14. MRI markers of small vessel disease in lobar and deep hemispheric intracerebral hemorrhage

    PubMed Central

    Smith, Eric E.; Nandigam, Kaveer R.N.; Chen, Yu-Wei; Jeng, Jed; Salat, David; Halpin, Amy; Frosch, Matthew; Wendell, Lauren; Fazen, Louis; Rosand, Jonathan; Viswanathan, Anand; Greenberg, Steven M.

    2014-01-01

    Background MRI evidence of small vessel disease is common in intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). We hypothesized that ICH caused by cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA) or hypertensive vasculopathy would have different distributions of MRI T2 white matter hyperintensity (WMH) and microbleeds (MB). Methods Data were analyzed from 133 consecutive patients with primary supratentorial ICH and adequate MRI sequences. CAA was diagnosed using the Boston criteria. WMH segmentation was performed using a validated semi-automated method. WMH and MB were compared according to site of symptomatic hematoma origin (lobar vs. deep) or by pattern of hemorrhages, including both hematomas and MB, on MRI GRE sequence (grouped as lobar only--probable CAA, lobar only--possible CAA, deep hemispheric only, or mixed lobar and deep hemorrhages). Results Lobar and deep hemispheric hematoma patients had similar median nWMH volumes (19.5 cm vs. 19.9 cm3, p=0.74) and prevalence of ≥1 MB (54% vs. 52%, p=0.99). The supratentorial WMH distribution was similar according to hemorrhage location category, however the prevalence of brainstem T2 hyperintensity was lower in lobar hematoma vs. deep hematoma (54% vs. 70%, p=0.004). Mixed ICH was common (23%). Mixed ICH patients had large nWMH volumes and a posterior distribution of cortical hemorrhages similar to that seen in CAA. Conclusions WMH distribution is largely similar between CAA-related and non-CAA-related ICH. Mixed lobar and deep hemorrhages are seen on MRI GRE in up to one quarter of patients; in these patients both hypertension and CAA may be contributing to the burden of WMH. PMID:20689084

  15. A measurement of disorder in binary sequences

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Gong, Longyan; Wang, Haihong; Cheng, Weiwen; Zhao, Shengmei

    2015-03-01

    We propose a complex quantity, AL, to characterize the degree of disorder of L-length binary symbolic sequences. As examples, we respectively apply it to typical random and deterministic sequences. One kind of random sequences is generated from a periodic binary sequence and the other is generated from the logistic map. The deterministic sequences are the Fibonacci and Thue-Morse sequences. In these analyzed sequences, we find that the modulus of AL, denoted by |AL | , is a (statistically) equivalent quantity to the Boltzmann entropy, the metric entropy, the conditional block entropy and/or other quantities, so it is a useful quantitative measure of disorder. It can be as a fruitful index to discern which sequence is more disordered. Moreover, there is one and only one value of |AL | for the overall disorder characteristics. It needs extremely low computational costs. It can be easily experimentally realized. From all these mentioned, we believe that the proposed measure of disorder is a valuable complement to existing ones in symbolic sequences.

  16. In vivo quantitative NMR imaging of fruit tissues during growth using Spoiled Gradient Echo sequence.

    PubMed

    Kenouche, S; Perrier, M; Bertin, N; Larionova, J; Ayadi, A; Zanca, M; Long, J; Bezzi, N; Stein, P C; Guari, Y; Cieslak, M; Godin, C; Goze-Bac, C

    2014-12-01

    Nondestructive studies of physiological processes in agronomic products require increasingly higher spatial and temporal resolutions. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) imaging is a non-invasive technique providing physiological and morphological information on biological tissues. The aim of this study was to design a robust and accurate quantitative measurement method based on NMR imaging combined with contrast agent (CA) for mapping and quantifying water transport in growing cherry tomato fruits. A multiple flip-angle Spoiled Gradient Echo (SGE) imaging sequence was used to evaluate the intrinsic parameters maps M0 and T1 of the fruit tissues. Water transport and paths flow were monitored using Gd(3+)/[Fe(CN)6](3-)/D-mannitol nanoparticles as a tracer. This dynamic study was carried out using a compartmental modeling. The CA was preferentially accumulated in the surrounding tissues of columella and in the seed envelopes. The total quantities and the average volume flow of water estimated are: 198 mg, 1.76 mm(3)/h for the columella and 326 mg, 2.91 mm(3)/h for the seed envelopes. We demonstrate in this paper that the NMR imaging technique coupled with efficient and biocompatible CA in physiological medium has the potential to become a major tool in plant physiology research. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  17. Quantitative evaluation of deep and shallow tissue layers' contribution to fNIRS signal using multi-distance optodes and independent component analysis.

    PubMed

    Funane, Tsukasa; Atsumori, Hirokazu; Katura, Takusige; Obata, Akiko N; Sato, Hiroki; Tanikawa, Yukari; Okada, Eiji; Kiguchi, Masashi

    2014-01-15

    To quantify the effect of absorption changes in the deep tissue (cerebral) and shallow tissue (scalp, skin) layers on functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) signals, a method using multi-distance (MD) optodes and independent component analysis (ICA), referred to as the MD-ICA method, is proposed. In previous studies, when the signal from the shallow tissue layer (shallow signal) needs to be eliminated, it was often assumed that the shallow signal had no correlation with the signal from the deep tissue layer (deep signal). In this study, no relationship between the waveforms of deep and shallow signals is assumed, and instead, it is assumed that both signals are linear combinations of multiple signal sources, which allows the inclusion of a "shared component" (such as systemic signals) that is contained in both layers. The method also assumes that the partial optical path length of the shallow layer does not change, whereas that of the deep layer linearly increases along with the increase of the source-detector (S-D) distance. Deep- and shallow-layer contribution ratios of each independent component (IC) are calculated using the dependence of the weight of each IC on the S-D distance. Reconstruction of deep- and shallow-layer signals are performed by the sum of ICs weighted by the deep and shallow contribution ratio. Experimental validation of the principle of this technique was conducted using a dynamic phantom with two absorbing layers. Results showed that our method is effective for evaluating deep-layer contributions even if there are high correlations between deep and shallow signals. Next, we applied the method to fNIRS signals obtained on a human head with 5-, 15-, and 30-mm S-D distances during a verbal fluency task, a verbal working memory task (prefrontal area), a finger tapping task (motor area), and a tetrametric visual checker-board task (occipital area) and then estimated the deep-layer contribution ratio. To evaluate the signal separation

  18. A quantitative assessment of the Hadoop framework for analyzing massively parallel DNA sequencing data.

    PubMed

    Siretskiy, Alexey; Sundqvist, Tore; Voznesenskiy, Mikhail; Spjuth, Ola

    2015-01-01

    New high-throughput technologies, such as massively parallel sequencing, have transformed the life sciences into a data-intensive field. The most common e-infrastructure for analyzing this data consists of batch systems that are based on high-performance computing resources; however, the bioinformatics software that is built on this platform does not scale well in the general case. Recently, the Hadoop platform has emerged as an interesting option to address the challenges of increasingly large datasets with distributed storage, distributed processing, built-in data locality, fault tolerance, and an appealing programming methodology. In this work we introduce metrics and report on a quantitative comparison between Hadoop and a single node of conventional high-performance computing resources for the tasks of short read mapping and variant calling. We calculate efficiency as a function of data size and observe that the Hadoop platform is more efficient for biologically relevant data sizes in terms of computing hours for both split and un-split data files. We also quantify the advantages of the data locality provided by Hadoop for NGS problems, and show that a classical architecture with network-attached storage will not scale when computing resources increase in numbers. Measurements were performed using ten datasets of different sizes, up to 100 gigabases, using the pipeline implemented in Crossbow. To make a fair comparison, we implemented an improved preprocessor for Hadoop with better performance for splittable data files. For improved usability, we implemented a graphical user interface for Crossbow in a private cloud environment using the CloudGene platform. All of the code and data in this study are freely available as open source in public repositories. From our experiments we can conclude that the improved Hadoop pipeline scales better than the same pipeline on high-performance computing resources, we also conclude that Hadoop is an economically viable

  19. A deep semantic mobile application for thyroid cytopathology

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kim, Edward; Corte-Real, Miguel; Baloch, Zubair

    2016-03-01

    Cytopathology is the study of disease at the cellular level and often used as a screening tool for cancer. Thyroid cytopathology is a branch of pathology that studies the diagnosis of thyroid lesions and diseases. A pathologist views cell images that may have high visual variance due to different anatomical structures and pathological characteristics. To assist the physician with identifying and searching through images, we propose a deep semantic mobile application. Our work augments recent advances in the digitization of pathology and machine learning techniques, where there are transformative opportunities for computers to assist pathologists. Our system uses a custom thyroid ontology that can be augmented with multimedia metadata extracted from images using deep machine learning techniques. We describe the utilization of a particular methodology, deep convolutional neural networks, to the application of cytopathology classification. Our method is able to leverage networks that have been trained on millions of generic images, to medical scenarios where only hundreds or thousands of images exist. We demonstrate the benefits of our framework through both quantitative and qualitative results.

  20. A Statistical Guide to the Design of Deep Mutational Scanning Experiments.

    PubMed

    Matuszewski, Sebastian; Hildebrandt, Marcel E; Ghenu, Ana-Hermina; Jensen, Jeffrey D; Bank, Claudia

    2016-09-01

    The characterization of the distribution of mutational effects is a key goal in evolutionary biology. Recently developed deep-sequencing approaches allow for accurate and simultaneous estimation of the fitness effects of hundreds of engineered mutations by monitoring their relative abundance across time points in a single bulk competition. Naturally, the achievable resolution of the estimated fitness effects depends on the specific experimental setup, the organism and type of mutations studied, and the sequencing technology utilized, among other factors. By means of analytical approximations and simulations, we provide guidelines for optimizing time-sampled deep-sequencing bulk competition experiments, focusing on the number of mutants, the sequencing depth, and the number of sampled time points. Our analytical results show that sampling more time points together with extending the duration of the experiment improves the achievable precision disproportionately compared with increasing the sequencing depth or reducing the number of competing mutants. Even if the duration of the experiment is fixed, sampling more time points and clustering these at the beginning and the end of the experiment increase experimental power and allow for efficient and precise assessment of the entire range of selection coefficients. Finally, we provide a formula for calculating the 95%-confidence interval for the measurement error estimate, which we implement as an interactive web tool. This allows for quantification of the maximum expected a priori precision of the experimental setup, as well as for a statistical threshold for determining deviations from neutrality for specific selection coefficient estimates. Copyright © 2016 by the Genetics Society of America.

  1. A Statistical Guide to the Design of Deep Mutational Scanning Experiments

    PubMed Central

    Matuszewski, Sebastian; Hildebrandt, Marcel E.; Ghenu, Ana-Hermina; Jensen, Jeffrey D.; Bank, Claudia

    2016-01-01

    The characterization of the distribution of mutational effects is a key goal in evolutionary biology. Recently developed deep-sequencing approaches allow for accurate and simultaneous estimation of the fitness effects of hundreds of engineered mutations by monitoring their relative abundance across time points in a single bulk competition. Naturally, the achievable resolution of the estimated fitness effects depends on the specific experimental setup, the organism and type of mutations studied, and the sequencing technology utilized, among other factors. By means of analytical approximations and simulations, we provide guidelines for optimizing time-sampled deep-sequencing bulk competition experiments, focusing on the number of mutants, the sequencing depth, and the number of sampled time points. Our analytical results show that sampling more time points together with extending the duration of the experiment improves the achievable precision disproportionately compared with increasing the sequencing depth or reducing the number of competing mutants. Even if the duration of the experiment is fixed, sampling more time points and clustering these at the beginning and the end of the experiment increase experimental power and allow for efficient and precise assessment of the entire range of selection coefficients. Finally, we provide a formula for calculating the 95%-confidence interval for the measurement error estimate, which we implement as an interactive web tool. This allows for quantification of the maximum expected a priori precision of the experimental setup, as well as for a statistical threshold for determining deviations from neutrality for specific selection coefficient estimates. PMID:27412710

  2. Cough event classification by pretrained deep neural network.

    PubMed

    Liu, Jia-Ming; You, Mingyu; Wang, Zheng; Li, Guo-Zheng; Xu, Xianghuai; Qiu, Zhongmin

    2015-01-01

    Cough is an essential symptom in respiratory diseases. In the measurement of cough severity, an accurate and objective cough monitor is expected by respiratory disease society. This paper aims to introduce a better performed algorithm, pretrained deep neural network (DNN), to the cough classification problem, which is a key step in the cough monitor. The deep neural network models are built from two steps, pretrain and fine-tuning, followed by a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) decoder to capture tamporal information of the audio signals. By unsupervised pretraining a deep belief network, a good initialization for a deep neural network is learned. Then the fine-tuning step is a back propogation tuning the neural network so that it can predict the observation probability associated with each HMM states, where the HMM states are originally achieved by force-alignment with a Gaussian Mixture Model Hidden Markov Model (GMM-HMM) on the training samples. Three cough HMMs and one noncough HMM are employed to model coughs and noncoughs respectively. The final decision is made based on viterbi decoding algorihtm that generates the most likely HMM sequence for each sample. A sample is labeled as cough if a cough HMM is found in the sequence. The experiments were conducted on a dataset that was collected from 22 patients with respiratory diseases. Patient dependent (PD) and patient independent (PI) experimental settings were used to evaluate the models. Five criteria, sensitivity, specificity, F1, macro average and micro average are shown to depict different aspects of the models. From overall evaluation criteria, the DNN based methods are superior to traditional GMM-HMM based method on F1 and micro average with maximal 14% and 11% error reduction in PD and 7% and 10% in PI, meanwhile keep similar performances on macro average. They also surpass GMM-HMM model on specificity with maximal 14% error reduction on both PD and PI. In this paper, we tried pretrained deep neural network in

  3. Quantitative analysis of herpes virus sequences from normal tissue and fibropapillomas of marine turtles with real-time PCR

    USGS Publications Warehouse

    Quackenbush, S.L.; Casey, R.N.; Murcek, R.J.; Paul, T.A.; Work, Thierry M.; Limpus, C.J.; Chaves, A.; duToit, L.; Perez, J.V.; Aguirre, A.A.; Spraker, T.R.; Horrocks, J.A.; Vermeer, L.A.; Balazs, G.S.; Casey, J.W.

    2001-01-01

    Quantitative real-time PCR has been used to measure fibropapilloma-associated turtle herpesvirus (FPTHV) pol DNA loads in fibropapillomas, fibromas, and uninvolved tissues of green, loggerhead, and olive ridley turtles from Hawaii, Florida, Costa Rica, Australia, Mexico, and the West Indies. The viral DNA loads from tumors obtained from terminal animals were relatively homogenous (range 2a??20 copies/cell), whereas DNA copy numbers from biopsied tumors and skin of otherwise healthy turtles displayed a wide variation (range 0.001a??170 copies/cell) and may reflect the stage of tumor development. FPTHV DNA loads in tumors were 2.5a??4.5 logs higher than in uninvolved skin from the same animal regardless of geographic location, further implying a role for FPTHV in the etiology of fibropapillomatosis. Although FPTHV pol sequences amplified from tumors are highly related to each other, single signature amino acid substitutions distinguish the Australia/Hawaii, Mexico/Costa Rica, and Florida/Caribbean groups.

  4. The SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey: galaxies in the deep 850 μm survey, and the star-forming `main sequence'

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Koprowski, M. P.; Dunlop, J. S.; Michałowski, M. J.; Roseboom, I.; Geach, J. E.; Cirasuolo, M.; Aretxaga, I.; Bowler, R. A. A.; Banerji, M.; Bourne, N.; Coppin, K. E. K.; Chapman, S.; Hughes, D. H.; Jenness, T.; McLure, R. J.; Symeonidis, M.; Werf, P. van der

    2016-06-01

    We investigate the properties of the galaxies selected from the deepest 850-μm survey undertaken to date with (Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array 2) SCUBA-2 on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope as part of the SCUBA-2 Cosmology Legacy Survey. A total of 106 sources (>5σ) were uncovered at 850 μm from an area of ≃150 arcmin2 in the centre of the COSMOS/UltraVISTA/Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS) field, imaged to a typical depth of σ850 ≃ 0.25 mJy. We utilize the available multifrequency data to identify galaxy counterparts for 80 of these sources (75 per cent), and to establish the complete redshift distribution for this sample, yielding bar{z} = 2.38± 0.09. We have also been able to determine the stellar masses of the majority of the galaxy identifications, enabling us to explore their location on the star formation rate:stellar mass (SFR:M*) plane. Crucially, our new deep 850-μm-selected sample reaches flux densities equivalent to SFR ≃ 100 M⊙ yr-1, enabling us to confirm that sub-mm galaxies form the high-mass end of the `main sequence' (MS) of star-forming galaxies at z > 1.5 (with a mean specific SFR of sSFR = 2.25 ± 0.19 Gyr-1 at z ≃ 2.5). Our results are consistent with no significant flattening of the MS towards high masses at these redshifts. However, our results add to the growing evidence that average sSFR rises only slowly at high redshift, resulting in log10sSFR being an apparently simple linear function of the age of the Universe.

  5. Taxonomic research on deep-sea macrofauna in the South China Sea using the Chinese deep-sea submersible Jiaolong.

    PubMed

    Li, Xinzheng

    2017-07-01

    This paper reviews the taxonomic and biodiversity studies of deep-sea invertebrates in the South China Sea based on the samples collected by the Chinese manned deep-sea submersible Jiaolong. To date, 6 new species have been described, including the sponges Lophophysema eversa, Saccocalyx microhexactin and Semperella jiaolongae as well as the crustaceans Uroptychus jiaolongae, Uroptychus spinulosus and Globospongicola jiaolongi; some newly recorded species from the South China Sea have also been reported. The Bathymodiolus platifrons-Shinkaia crosnieri deep-sea cold seep community has been reported by Li (2015), as has the mitochondrial genome of the glass sponge L. eversa by Zhang et al. (2016). The population structures of two dominant species, the shrimp Shinkaia crosnieri and the mussel Bathymodiolus platifrons, from the cold seep Bathymodiolus platifrons-Shinkaia crosnieri community in the South China Sea and the hydrothermal vents in the Okinawa Trough, were compared using molecular analysis. The systematic position of the shrimp genus Globospongicola was discussed based on 16S rRNA gene sequences. © 2017 International Society of Zoological Sciences, Institute of Zoology/Chinese Academy of Sciences and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.

  6. Assessment of deep tissue hyperalgesia in the groin - a method comparison of electrical vs. pressure stimulation.

    PubMed

    Aasvang, E K; Werner, M U; Kehlet, H

    2014-09-01

    Deep pain complaints are more frequent than cutaneous in post-surgical patients, and a prevalent finding in quantitative sensory testing studies. However, the preferred assessment method - pressure algometry - is indirect and tissue unspecific, hindering advances in treatment and preventive strategies. Thus, there is a need for development of methods with direct stimulation of suspected hyperalgesic tissues to identify the peripheral origin of nociceptive input. We compared the reliability of an ultrasound-guided needle stimulation protocol of electrical detection and pain thresholds to pressure algometry, by performing identical test-retest sequences 10 days apart, in deep tissues in the groin region. Electrical stimulation was performed by five up-and-down staircase series of single impulses of 0.04 ms duration, starting from 0 mA in increments of 0.2 mA until a threshold was reached and descending until sensation was lost. Method reliability was assessed by Bland-Altman plots, descriptive statistics, coefficients of variance and intraclass correlation coefficients. The electrical stimulation method was comparable to pressure algometry regarding 10 days test-retest repeatability, but with superior same-day reliability for electrical stimulation (P < 0.05). Between-subject variance rather than within-subject variance was the main source for test variation. There were no systematic differences in electrical thresholds across tissues and locations (P > 0.05). The presented tissue-specific direct deep tissue electrical stimulation technique has equal or superior reliability compared with the indirect tissue-unspecific stimulation by pressure algometry. This method may facilitate advances in mechanism based preventive and treatment strategies in acute and chronic post-surgical pain states. © 2014 The Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica Foundation. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  7. Transmission Bottleneck Size Estimation from Pathogen Deep-Sequencing Data, with an Application to Human Influenza A Virus.

    PubMed

    Sobel Leonard, Ashley; Weissman, Daniel B; Greenbaum, Benjamin; Ghedin, Elodie; Koelle, Katia

    2017-07-15

    The bottleneck governing infectious disease transmission describes the size of the pathogen population transferred from the donor to the recipient host. Accurate quantification of the bottleneck size is particularly important for rapidly evolving pathogens such as influenza virus, as narrow bottlenecks reduce the amount of transferred viral genetic diversity and, thus, may decrease the rate of viral adaptation. Previous studies have estimated bottleneck sizes governing viral transmission by using statistical analyses of variants identified in pathogen sequencing data. These analyses, however, did not account for variant calling thresholds and stochastic viral replication dynamics within recipient hosts. Because these factors can skew bottleneck size estimates, we introduce a new method for inferring bottleneck sizes that accounts for these factors. Through the use of a simulated data set, we first show that our method, based on beta-binomial sampling, accurately recovers transmission bottleneck sizes, whereas other methods fail to do so. We then apply our method to a data set of influenza A virus (IAV) infections for which viral deep-sequencing data from transmission pairs are available. We find that the IAV transmission bottleneck size estimates in this study are highly variable across transmission pairs, while the mean bottleneck size of 196 virions is consistent with a previous estimate for this data set. Furthermore, regression analysis shows a positive association between estimated bottleneck size and donor infection severity, as measured by temperature. These results support findings from experimental transmission studies showing that bottleneck sizes across transmission events can be variable and influenced in part by epidemiological factors. IMPORTANCE The transmission bottleneck size describes the size of the pathogen population transferred from the donor to the recipient host and may affect the rate of pathogen adaptation within host populations. Recent

  8. Evaluating deep learning architectures for Speech Emotion Recognition.

    PubMed

    Fayek, Haytham M; Lech, Margaret; Cavedon, Lawrence

    2017-08-01

    Speech Emotion Recognition (SER) can be regarded as a static or dynamic classification problem, which makes SER an excellent test bed for investigating and comparing various deep learning architectures. We describe a frame-based formulation to SER that relies on minimal speech processing and end-to-end deep learning to model intra-utterance dynamics. We use the proposed SER system to empirically explore feed-forward and recurrent neural network architectures and their variants. Experiments conducted illuminate the advantages and limitations of these architectures in paralinguistic speech recognition and emotion recognition in particular. As a result of our exploration, we report state-of-the-art results on the IEMOCAP database for speaker-independent SER and present quantitative and qualitative assessments of the models' performances. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  9. A major QTL controlling deep rooting on rice chromosome 4.

    PubMed

    Uga, Yusaku; Yamamoto, Eiji; Kanno, Noriko; Kawai, Sawako; Mizubayashi, Tatsumi; Fukuoka, Shuichi

    2013-10-24

    Drought is the most serious abiotic stress that hinders rice production under rainfed conditions. Breeding for deep rooting is a promising strategy to improve the root system architecture in shallow-rooting rice cultivars to avoid drought stress. We analysed the quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for the ratio of deep rooting (RDR) in three F₂ mapping populations derived from crosses between each of three shallow-rooting varieties ('ARC5955', 'Pinulupot1', and 'Tupa729') and a deep-rooting variety, 'Kinandang Patong'. In total, we detected five RDR QTLs on chromosomes 2, 4, and 6. In all three populations, QTLs on chromosome 4 were found to be located at similar positions; they explained from 32.0% to 56.6% of the total RDR phenotypic variance. This suggests that one or more key genetic factors controlling the root growth angle in rice is located in this region of chromosome 4.

  10. Some New Windows into Terrestrial Deep Subsurface Microbial Ecosystems

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Moser, D. P.

    2011-12-01

    Over the past several years, our group has surveyed the microbial ecology and biogeochemistry of a range of fracture rock subsurface ecosystems via deep mine boreholes in South Africa, the United States, and Canada; and boreholes from surface or deeply-sourced natural springs of the U.S. Great Basin. Collectively, these mostly unexplored habitats represent a wide range of geologic provinces, host rock types, aquatic chemistries, and the vast potential for biogeographic isolation. Thus, patterns of microbial diversity are of interest from the perspective of filling a fundamental knowledge gap; and while not necessarily expected, the detection of closely related microorganisms from geographically isolated settings would be noteworthy. Across these sample sets, microbial communities were invariably very low in biomass (e.g. 10e3 - 10e4 cells per mL) and dominated by deeply-branching bacterial lineages, particularly from the phyla Firmicutes and Nitrospira. In several cases, the Firmicutes have shown very close phylogenetic affiliations to lineages detected at divergent locations. For example, one abundant lineage from a new artesian well drilled into the Furnace Creek Fault of Death Valley, CA bears a very close phylogenetic relatedness to environmental DNA sequences (SSU rRNA gene) detected in one of the world's deepest mines (Tau Tona of South Africa) and what was North America's deepest gold mine (Homestake of South Dakota). Several radioactive wells from the Nevada National Security Site have produced rRNA gene sequences very close (e.g. greater than 99% identity) to that of Desulforudis audaxviator, a rarely detected microorganism thought to subsist as a single species ecosystem on the products of radiochemical reactions in deep crustal rocks from the South African Witwatersrand Basin. These sequences, along with more distantly related sequences from the marine subsurface (ridge flank basalt and mud volcanoes) and groundwater in Europe, hint at a role in certain

  11. Application of Deep Learning in Automated Analysis of Molecular Images in Cancer: A Survey

    PubMed Central

    Xue, Yong; Chen, Shihui; Liu, Yong

    2017-01-01

    Molecular imaging enables the visualization and quantitative analysis of the alterations of biological procedures at molecular and/or cellular level, which is of great significance for early detection of cancer. In recent years, deep leaning has been widely used in medical imaging analysis, as it overcomes the limitations of visual assessment and traditional machine learning techniques by extracting hierarchical features with powerful representation capability. Research on cancer molecular images using deep learning techniques is also increasing dynamically. Hence, in this paper, we review the applications of deep learning in molecular imaging in terms of tumor lesion segmentation, tumor classification, and survival prediction. We also outline some future directions in which researchers may develop more powerful deep learning models for better performance in the applications in cancer molecular imaging. PMID:29114182

  12. Deep dermatophytosis and inherited CARD9 deficiency.

    PubMed

    Lanternier, Fanny; Pathan, Saad; Vincent, Quentin B; Liu, Luyan; Cypowyj, Sophie; Prando, Carolina; Migaud, Mélanie; Taibi, Lynda; Ammar-Khodja, Aomar; Stambouli, Omar Boudghene; Guellil, Boumediene; Jacobs, Frederique; Goffard, Jean-Christophe; Schepers, Kinda; Del Marmol, Véronique; Boussofara, Lobna; Denguezli, Mohamed; Larif, Molka; Bachelez, Hervé; Michel, Laurence; Lefranc, Gérard; Hay, Rod; Jouvion, Gregory; Chretien, Fabrice; Fraitag, Sylvie; Bougnoux, Marie-Elisabeth; Boudia, Merad; Abel, Laurent; Lortholary, Olivier; Casanova, Jean-Laurent; Picard, Capucine; Grimbacher, Bodo; Puel, Anne

    2013-10-31

    Deep dermatophytosis is a severe and sometimes life-threatening fungal infection caused by dermatophytes. It is characterized by extensive dermal and subcutaneous tissue invasion and by frequent dissemination to the lymph nodes and, occasionally, the central nervous system. The condition is different from common superficial dermatophyte infection and has been reported in patients with no known immunodeficiency. Patients are mostly from North African, consanguineous, multiplex families, which strongly suggests a mendelian genetic cause. We studied the clinical features of deep dermatophytosis in 17 patients with no known immunodeficiency from eight unrelated Tunisian, Algerian, and Moroccan families. Because CARD9 (caspase recruitment domain-containing protein 9) deficiency has been reported in an Iranian family with invasive fungal infections, we also sequenced CARD9 in the patients. Four patients died, at 28, 29, 37, and 39 years of age, with clinically active deep dermatophytosis. No other severe infections, fungal or otherwise, were reported in the surviving patients, who ranged in age from 37 to 75 years. The 15 Algerian and Tunisian patients, from seven unrelated families, had a homozygous Q289X CARD9 allele, due to a founder effect. The 2 Moroccan siblings were homozygous for the R101C CARD9 allele. Both alleles are rare deleterious variants. The familial segregation of these alleles was consistent with autosomal recessive inheritance and complete clinical penetrance. All the patients with deep dermatophytosis had autosomal recessive CARD9 deficiency. Deep dermatophytosis appears to be an important clinical manifestation of CARD9 deficiency. (Funded by Agence Nationale pour la Recherche and others.).

  13. When less is more: 'slicing' sequencing data improves read decoding accuracy and de novo assembly quality.

    PubMed

    Lonardi, Stefano; Mirebrahim, Hamid; Wanamaker, Steve; Alpert, Matthew; Ciardo, Gianfranco; Duma, Denisa; Close, Timothy J

    2015-09-15

    As the invention of DNA sequencing in the 70s, computational biologists have had to deal with the problem of de novo genome assembly with limited (or insufficient) depth of sequencing. In this work, we investigate the opposite problem, that is, the challenge of dealing with excessive depth of sequencing. We explore the effect of ultra-deep sequencing data in two domains: (i) the problem of decoding reads to bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) clones (in the context of the combinatorial pooling design we have recently proposed), and (ii) the problem of de novo assembly of BAC clones. Using real ultra-deep sequencing data, we show that when the depth of sequencing increases over a certain threshold, sequencing errors make these two problems harder and harder (instead of easier, as one would expect with error-free data), and as a consequence the quality of the solution degrades with more and more data. For the first problem, we propose an effective solution based on 'divide and conquer': we 'slice' a large dataset into smaller samples of optimal size, decode each slice independently, and then merge the results. Experimental results on over 15 000 barley BACs and over 4000 cowpea BACs demonstrate a significant improvement in the quality of the decoding and the final assembly. For the second problem, we show for the first time that modern de novo assemblers cannot take advantage of ultra-deep sequencing data. Python scripts to process slices and resolve decoding conflicts are available from http://goo.gl/YXgdHT; software Hashfilter can be downloaded from http://goo.gl/MIyZHs stelo@cs.ucr.edu or timothy.close@ucr.edu Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  14. TU-H-CAMPUS-IeP2-01: Quantitative Evaluation of PROPELLER DWI Using QIBA Diffusion Phantom

    DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

    Yung, J; Ai, H; Liu, H

    Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine the quantitative variability of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) values when varying imaging parameters in a diffusion-weighted (DW) fast spin echo (FSE) sequence with Periodically Rotated Overlapping ParallEL Lines with Enhanced Reconstruction (PROPELLER) k-space trajectory. Methods: Using a 3T MRI scanner, a NIST traceable, quantitative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) diffusion phantom (High Precision Devices, Inc, Boulder, Colorado) consisting of 13 vials filled with various concentrations of polymer polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) in aqueous solution was imaged with a standard Quantitative Imaging Biomarkers Alliance (QIBA) DWI spin echo, echo planar imaging (SE EPI) acquisition. Themore » same phantom was then imaged with a DWI PROPELLER sequence at varying echo train lengths (ETL) of 8, 20, and 32, as well as b-values of 400, 900, and 2000. QIBA DWI phantom analysis software was used to generate ADC maps and create region of interests (ROIs) for quantitative measurements of each vial. Mean and standard deviations of the ROIs were compared. Results: The SE EPI sequence generated ADC values that showed very good agreement with the known ADC values of the phantom (r2 = 0.9995, slope = 1.0061). The ADC values measured from the PROPELLER sequences were inflated, but were highly correlated with an r2 range from 0.8754 to 0.9880. The PROPELLER sequence with an ETL=20 and b-value of 0 and 2000 showed the closest agreement (r2 = 0.9034, slope = 0.9880). Conclusion: The DW PROPELLER sequence is promising for quantitative evaluation of ADC values. A drawback of the PROPELLER sequence is the longer acquisition time. The 180° refocusing pulses may also cause the observed increase in ADC values compared to the standard SE EPI DW sequence. However, the FSE sequence offers an advantage with in-plane motion and geometric distortion which will be investigated in future studies.« less

  15. Larval transport modeling of deep-sea invertebrates can aid the search for undiscovered populations.

    PubMed

    Yearsley, Jon M; Sigwart, Julia D

    2011-01-01

    Many deep-sea benthic animals occur in patchy distributions separated by thousands of kilometres, yet because deep-sea habitats are remote, little is known about their larval dispersal. Our novel method simulates dispersal by combining data from the Argo array of autonomous oceanographic probes, deep-sea ecological surveys, and comparative invertebrate physiology. The predicted particle tracks allow quantitative, testable predictions about the dispersal of benthic invertebrate larvae in the south-west Pacific. In a test case presented here, using non-feeding, non-swimming (lecithotrophic trochophore) larvae of polyplacophoran molluscs (chitons), we show that the likely dispersal pathways in a single generation are significantly shorter than the distances between the three known population centres in our study region. The large-scale density of chiton populations throughout our study region is potentially much greater than present survey data suggest, with intermediate 'stepping stone' populations yet to be discovered. We present a new method that is broadly applicable to studies of the dispersal of deep-sea organisms. This test case demonstrates the power and potential applications of our new method, in generating quantitative, testable hypotheses at multiple levels to solve the mismatch between observed and expected distributions: probabilistic predictions of locations of intermediate populations, potential alternative dispersal mechanisms, and expected population genetic structure. The global Argo data have never previously been used to address benthic biology, and our method can be applied to any non-swimming larvae of the deep-sea, giving information upon dispersal corridors and population densities in habitats that remain intrinsically difficult to assess.

  16. Larval Transport Modeling of Deep-Sea Invertebrates Can Aid the Search for Undiscovered Populations

    PubMed Central

    Yearsley, Jon M.; Sigwart, Julia D.

    2011-01-01

    Background Many deep-sea benthic animals occur in patchy distributions separated by thousands of kilometres, yet because deep-sea habitats are remote, little is known about their larval dispersal. Our novel method simulates dispersal by combining data from the Argo array of autonomous oceanographic probes, deep-sea ecological surveys, and comparative invertebrate physiology. The predicted particle tracks allow quantitative, testable predictions about the dispersal of benthic invertebrate larvae in the south-west Pacific. Principal Findings In a test case presented here, using non-feeding, non-swimming (lecithotrophic trochophore) larvae of polyplacophoran molluscs (chitons), we show that the likely dispersal pathways in a single generation are significantly shorter than the distances between the three known population centres in our study region. The large-scale density of chiton populations throughout our study region is potentially much greater than present survey data suggest, with intermediate ‘stepping stone’ populations yet to be discovered. Conclusions/Significance We present a new method that is broadly applicable to studies of the dispersal of deep-sea organisms. This test case demonstrates the power and potential applications of our new method, in generating quantitative, testable hypotheses at multiple levels to solve the mismatch between observed and expected distributions: probabilistic predictions of locations of intermediate populations, potential alternative dispersal mechanisms, and expected population genetic structure. The global Argo data have never previously been used to address benthic biology, and our method can be applied to any non-swimming larvae of the deep-sea, giving information upon dispersal corridors and population densities in habitats that remain intrinsically difficult to assess. PMID:21857992

  17. Quantitative Analysis of Focused A-To-I RNA Editing Sites by Ultra-High-Throughput Sequencing in Psychiatric Disorders

    PubMed Central

    Zhu, Hu; Urban, Daniel J.; Blashka, Jared; McPheeters, Matthew T.; Kroeze, Wesley K.; Mieczkowski, Piotr; Overholser, James C.; Jurjus, George J.; Dieter, Lesa; Mahajan, Gouri J.; Rajkowska, Grazyna; Wang, Zefeng; Sullivan, Patrick F.; Stockmeier, Craig A.; Roth, Bryan L.

    2012-01-01

    A-to-I RNA editing is a post-transcriptional modification of single nucleotides in RNA by adenosine deamination, which thereby diversifies the gene products encoded in the genome. Thousands of potential RNA editing sites have been identified by recent studies (e.g. see Li et al, Science 2009); however, only a handful of these sites have been independently confirmed. Here, we systematically and quantitatively examined 109 putative coding region A-to-I RNA editing sites in three sets of normal human brain samples by ultra-high-throughput sequencing (uHTS). Forty of 109 putative sites, including 25 previously confirmed sites, were validated as truly edited in our brain samples, suggesting an overestimation of A-to-I RNA editing in these putative sites by Li et al (2009). To evaluate RNA editing in human disease, we analyzed 29 of the confirmed sites in subjects with major depressive disorder and schizophrenia using uHTS. In striking contrast to many prior studies, we did not find significant alterations in the frequency of RNA editing at any of the editing sites in samples from these patients, including within the 5HT2C serotonin receptor (HTR2C). Our results indicate that uHTS is a fast, quantitative and high-throughput method to assess RNA editing in human physiology and disease and that many prior studies of RNA editing may overestimate both the extent and disease-related variability of RNA editing at the sites we examined in the human brain. PMID:22912834

  18. A visual tracking method based on deep learning without online model updating

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tang, Cong; Wang, Yicheng; Feng, Yunsong; Zheng, Chao; Jin, Wei

    2018-02-01

    The paper proposes a visual tracking method based on deep learning without online model updating. In consideration of the advantages of deep learning in feature representation, deep model SSD (Single Shot Multibox Detector) is used as the object extractor in the tracking model. Simultaneously, the color histogram feature and HOG (Histogram of Oriented Gradient) feature are combined to select the tracking object. In the process of tracking, multi-scale object searching map is built to improve the detection performance of deep detection model and the tracking efficiency. In the experiment of eight respective tracking video sequences in the baseline dataset, compared with six state-of-the-art methods, the method in the paper has better robustness in the tracking challenging factors, such as deformation, scale variation, rotation variation, illumination variation, and background clutters, moreover, its general performance is better than other six tracking methods.

  19. Targeted parallel sequencing of the Musa species: searching for an alternative model system for polyploidy studies

    USDA-ARS?s Scientific Manuscript database

    Modern day genomics holds the promise of solving the complexities of basic plant sciences, and of catalyzing practical advances in plant breeding. While contiguous, "base perfect" deep sequencing is a key module of any genome project, recent advances in parallel next generation sequencing technologi...

  20. Testing genotyping strategies for ultra-deep sequencing of a co-amplifying gene family: MHC class I in a passerine bird.

    PubMed

    Biedrzycka, Aleksandra; Sebastian, Alvaro; Migalska, Magdalena; Westerdahl, Helena; Radwan, Jacek

    2017-07-01

    Characterization of highly duplicated genes, such as genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), where multiple loci often co-amplify, has until recently been hindered by insufficient read depths per amplicon. Here, we used ultra-deep Illumina sequencing to resolve genotypes at exon 3 of MHC class I genes in the sedge warbler (Acrocephalus schoenobaenus). We sequenced 24 individuals in two replicates and used this data, as well as a simulated data set, to test the effect of amplicon coverage (range: 500-20 000 reads per amplicon) on the repeatability of genotyping using four different genotyping approaches. A third replicate employed unique barcoding to assess the extent of tag jumping, that is swapping of individual tag identifiers, which may confound genotyping. The reliability of MHC genotyping increased with coverage and approached or exceeded 90% within-method repeatability of allele calling at coverages of >5000 reads per amplicon. We found generally high agreement between genotyping methods, especially at high coverages. High reliability of the tested genotyping approaches was further supported by our analysis of the simulated data set, although the genotyping approach relying primarily on replication of variants in independent amplicons proved sensitive to repeatable errors. According to the most repeatable genotyping method, the number of co-amplifying variants per individual ranged from 19 to 42. Tag jumping was detectable, but at such low frequencies that it did not affect the reliability of genotyping. We thus demonstrate that gene families with many co-amplifying genes can be reliably genotyped using HTS, provided that there is sufficient per amplicon coverage. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  1. miRanalyzer: a microRNA detection and analysis tool for next-generation sequencing experiments.

    PubMed

    Hackenberg, Michael; Sturm, Martin; Langenberger, David; Falcón-Pérez, Juan Manuel; Aransay, Ana M

    2009-07-01

    Next-generation sequencing allows now the sequencing of small RNA molecules and the estimation of their expression levels. Consequently, there will be a high demand of bioinformatics tools to cope with the several gigabytes of sequence data generated in each single deep-sequencing experiment. Given this scene, we developed miRanalyzer, a web server tool for the analysis of deep-sequencing experiments for small RNAs. The web server tool requires a simple input file containing a list of unique reads and its copy numbers (expression levels). Using these data, miRanalyzer (i) detects all known microRNA sequences annotated in miRBase, (ii) finds all perfect matches against other libraries of transcribed sequences and (iii) predicts new microRNAs. The prediction of new microRNAs is an especially important point as there are many species with very few known microRNAs. Therefore, we implemented a highly accurate machine learning algorithm for the prediction of new microRNAs that reaches AUC values of 97.9% and recall values of up to 75% on unseen data. The web tool summarizes all the described steps in a single output page, which provides a comprehensive overview of the analysis, adding links to more detailed output pages for each analysis module. miRanalyzer is available at http://web.bioinformatics.cicbiogune.es/microRNA/.

  2. Construction of Pseudomolecule Sequences of the aus Rice Cultivar Kasalath for Comparative Genomics of Asian Cultivated Rice

    PubMed Central

    Sakai, Hiroaki; Kanamori, Hiroyuki; Arai-Kichise, Yuko; Shibata-Hatta, Mari; Ebana, Kaworu; Oono, Youko; Kurita, Kanako; Fujisawa, Hiroko; Katagiri, Satoshi; Mukai, Yoshiyuki; Hamada, Masao; Itoh, Takeshi; Matsumoto, Takashi; Katayose, Yuichi; Wakasa, Kyo; Yano, Masahiro; Wu, Jianzhong

    2014-01-01

    Having a deep genetic structure evolved during its domestication and adaptation, the Asian cultivated rice (Oryza sativa) displays considerable physiological and morphological variations. Here, we describe deep whole-genome sequencing of the aus rice cultivar Kasalath by using the advanced next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies to gain a better understanding of the sequence and structural changes among highly differentiated cultivars. The de novo assembled Kasalath sequences represented 91.1% (330.55 Mb) of the genome and contained 35 139 expressed loci annotated by RNA-Seq analysis. We detected 2 787 250 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and 7393 large insertion/deletion (indel) sites (>100 bp) between Kasalath and Nipponbare, and 2 216 251 SNPs and 3780 large indels between Kasalath and 93-11. Extensive comparison of the gene contents among these cultivars revealed similar rates of gene gain and loss. We detected at least 7.39 Mb of inserted sequences and 40.75 Mb of unmapped sequences in the Kasalath genome in comparison with the Nipponbare reference genome. Mapping of the publicly available NGS short reads from 50 rice accessions proved the necessity and the value of using the Kasalath whole-genome sequence as an additional reference to capture the sequence polymorphisms that cannot be discovered by using the Nipponbare sequence alone. PMID:24578372

  3. Accurate De Novo Prediction of Protein Contact Map by Ultra-Deep Learning Model.

    PubMed

    Wang, Sheng; Sun, Siqi; Li, Zhen; Zhang, Renyu; Xu, Jinbo

    2017-01-01

    Protein contacts contain key information for the understanding of protein structure and function and thus, contact prediction from sequence is an important problem. Recently exciting progress has been made on this problem, but the predicted contacts for proteins without many sequence homologs is still of low quality and not very useful for de novo structure prediction. This paper presents a new deep learning method that predicts contacts by integrating both evolutionary coupling (EC) and sequence conservation information through an ultra-deep neural network formed by two deep residual neural networks. The first residual network conducts a series of 1-dimensional convolutional transformation of sequential features; the second residual network conducts a series of 2-dimensional convolutional transformation of pairwise information including output of the first residual network, EC information and pairwise potential. By using very deep residual networks, we can accurately model contact occurrence patterns and complex sequence-structure relationship and thus, obtain higher-quality contact prediction regardless of how many sequence homologs are available for proteins in question. Our method greatly outperforms existing methods and leads to much more accurate contact-assisted folding. Tested on 105 CASP11 targets, 76 past CAMEO hard targets, and 398 membrane proteins, the average top L long-range prediction accuracy obtained by our method, one representative EC method CCMpred and the CASP11 winner MetaPSICOV is 0.47, 0.21 and 0.30, respectively; the average top L/10 long-range accuracy of our method, CCMpred and MetaPSICOV is 0.77, 0.47 and 0.59, respectively. Ab initio folding using our predicted contacts as restraints but without any force fields can yield correct folds (i.e., TMscore>0.6) for 203 of the 579 test proteins, while that using MetaPSICOV- and CCMpred-predicted contacts can do so for only 79 and 62 of them, respectively. Our contact-assisted models also have

  4. Accurate De Novo Prediction of Protein Contact Map by Ultra-Deep Learning Model

    PubMed Central

    Li, Zhen; Zhang, Renyu

    2017-01-01

    Motivation Protein contacts contain key information for the understanding of protein structure and function and thus, contact prediction from sequence is an important problem. Recently exciting progress has been made on this problem, but the predicted contacts for proteins without many sequence homologs is still of low quality and not very useful for de novo structure prediction. Method This paper presents a new deep learning method that predicts contacts by integrating both evolutionary coupling (EC) and sequence conservation information through an ultra-deep neural network formed by two deep residual neural networks. The first residual network conducts a series of 1-dimensional convolutional transformation of sequential features; the second residual network conducts a series of 2-dimensional convolutional transformation of pairwise information including output of the first residual network, EC information and pairwise potential. By using very deep residual networks, we can accurately model contact occurrence patterns and complex sequence-structure relationship and thus, obtain higher-quality contact prediction regardless of how many sequence homologs are available for proteins in question. Results Our method greatly outperforms existing methods and leads to much more accurate contact-assisted folding. Tested on 105 CASP11 targets, 76 past CAMEO hard targets, and 398 membrane proteins, the average top L long-range prediction accuracy obtained by our method, one representative EC method CCMpred and the CASP11 winner MetaPSICOV is 0.47, 0.21 and 0.30, respectively; the average top L/10 long-range accuracy of our method, CCMpred and MetaPSICOV is 0.77, 0.47 and 0.59, respectively. Ab initio folding using our predicted contacts as restraints but without any force fields can yield correct folds (i.e., TMscore>0.6) for 203 of the 579 test proteins, while that using MetaPSICOV- and CCMpred-predicted contacts can do so for only 79 and 62 of them, respectively. Our contact

  5. Are Deep Strategic Learners Better Suited to PBL? A Preliminary Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Papinczak, Tracey

    2009-01-01

    The aim of this study was to determine if medical students categorised as having deep and strategic approaches to their learning find problem-based learning (PBL) enjoyable and supportive of their learning, and achieve well in the first-year course. Quantitative and qualitative data were gathered from first-year medical students (N = 213). All…

  6. Automatic phase aberration compensation for digital holographic microscopy based on deep learning background detection.

    PubMed

    Nguyen, Thanh; Bui, Vy; Lam, Van; Raub, Christopher B; Chang, Lin-Ching; Nehmetallah, George

    2017-06-26

    We propose a fully automatic technique to obtain aberration free quantitative phase imaging in digital holographic microscopy (DHM) based on deep learning. The traditional DHM solves the phase aberration compensation problem by manually detecting the background for quantitative measurement. This would be a drawback in real time implementation and for dynamic processes such as cell migration phenomena. A recent automatic aberration compensation approach using principle component analysis (PCA) in DHM avoids human intervention regardless of the cells' motion. However, it corrects spherical/elliptical aberration only and disregards the higher order aberrations. Traditional image segmentation techniques can be employed to spatially detect cell locations. Ideally, automatic image segmentation techniques make real time measurement possible. However, existing automatic unsupervised segmentation techniques have poor performance when applied to DHM phase images because of aberrations and speckle noise. In this paper, we propose a novel method that combines a supervised deep learning technique with convolutional neural network (CNN) and Zernike polynomial fitting (ZPF). The deep learning CNN is implemented to perform automatic background region detection that allows for ZPF to compute the self-conjugated phase to compensate for most aberrations.

  7. A Deep-Coverage Tomato BAC Library and Prospects Toward Development of an STC Framework for Genome Sequencing

    PubMed Central

    Budiman, Muhammad A.; Mao, Long; Wood, Todd C.; Wing, Rod A.

    2000-01-01

    Recently a new strategy using BAC end sequences as sequence-tagged connectors (STCs) was proposed for whole-genome sequencing projects. In this study, we present the construction and detailed characterization of a 15.0 haploid genome equivalent BAC library for the cultivated tomato, Lycopersicon esculentum cv. Heinz 1706. The library contains 129,024 clones with an average insert size of 117.5 kb and a chloroplast content of 1.11%. BAC end sequences from 1490 ends were generated and analyzed as a preliminary evaluation for using this library to develop an STC framework to sequence the tomato genome. A total of 1205 BAC end sequences (80.9%) were obtained, with an average length of 360 high-quality bases, and were searched against the GenBank database. Using a cutoff expectation value of <10−6, and combining the results from BLASTN, BLASTX, and TBLASTX searches, 24.3% of the BAC end sequences were similar to known sequences, of which almost half (48.7%) share sequence similarities to retrotransposons and 7% to known genes. Some of the transposable element sequences were the first reported in tomato, such as sequences similar to maize transposon Activator (Ac) ORF and tobacco pararetrovirus-like sequences. Interestingly, there were no BAC end sequences similar to the highly repeated TGRI and TGRII elements. However, the majority (70.3%) of STCs did not share significant sequence similarities to any sequences in GenBank at either the DNA or predicted protein levels, indicating that a large portion of the tomato genome is still unknown. Our data demonstrate that this BAC library is suitable for developing an STC database to sequence the tomato genome. The advantages of developing an STC framework for whole-genome sequencing of tomato are discussed. [The BAC end sequences described in this paper have been deposited in the GenBank data library under accession nos. AQ367111–AQ368361.] PMID:10645957

  8. Sequence Capture versus Restriction Site Associated DNA Sequencing for Shallow Systematics.

    PubMed

    Harvey, Michael G; Smith, Brian Tilston; Glenn, Travis C; Faircloth, Brant C; Brumfield, Robb T

    2016-09-01

    Sequence capture and restriction site associated DNA sequencing (RAD-Seq) are two genomic enrichment strategies for applying next-generation sequencing technologies to systematics studies. At shallow timescales, such as within species, RAD-Seq has been widely adopted among researchers, although there has been little discussion of the potential limitations and benefits of RAD-Seq and sequence capture. We discuss a series of issues that may impact the utility of sequence capture and RAD-Seq data for shallow systematics in non-model species. We review prior studies that used both methods, and investigate differences between the methods by re-analyzing existing RAD-Seq and sequence capture data sets from a Neotropical bird (Xenops minutus). We suggest that the strengths of RAD-Seq data sets for shallow systematics are the wide dispersion of markers across the genome, the relative ease and cost of laboratory work, the deep coverage and read overlap at recovered loci, and the high overall information that results. Sequence capture's benefits include flexibility and repeatability in the genomic regions targeted, success using low-quality samples, more straightforward read orthology assessment, and higher per-locus information content. The utility of a method in systematics, however, rests not only on its performance within a study, but on the comparability of data sets and inferences with those of prior work. In RAD-Seq data sets, comparability is compromised by low overlap of orthologous markers across species and the sensitivity of genetic diversity in a data set to an interaction between the level of natural heterozygosity in the samples examined and the parameters used for orthology assessment. In contrast, sequence capture of conserved genomic regions permits interrogation of the same loci across divergent species, which is preferable for maintaining comparability among data sets and studies for the purpose of drawing general conclusions about the impact of

  9. A major QTL controlling deep rooting on rice chromosome 4

    PubMed Central

    Uga, Yusaku; Yamamoto, Eiji; Kanno, Noriko; Kawai, Sawako; Mizubayashi, Tatsumi; Fukuoka, Shuichi

    2013-01-01

    Drought is the most serious abiotic stress that hinders rice production under rainfed conditions. Breeding for deep rooting is a promising strategy to improve the root system architecture in shallow-rooting rice cultivars to avoid drought stress. We analysed the quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for the ratio of deep rooting (RDR) in three F2 mapping populations derived from crosses between each of three shallow-rooting varieties (‘ARC5955', ‘Pinulupot1', and ‘Tupa729') and a deep-rooting variety, ‘Kinandang Patong'. In total, we detected five RDR QTLs on chromosomes 2, 4, and 6. In all three populations, QTLs on chromosome 4 were found to be located at similar positions; they explained from 32.0% to 56.6% of the total RDR phenotypic variance. This suggests that one or more key genetic factors controlling the root growth angle in rice is located in this region of chromosome 4. PMID:24154623

  10. Iterative Correction of Reference Nucleotides (iCORN) using second generation sequencing technology.

    PubMed

    Otto, Thomas D; Sanders, Mandy; Berriman, Matthew; Newbold, Chris

    2010-07-15

    The accuracy of reference genomes is important for downstream analysis but a low error rate requires expensive manual interrogation of the sequence. Here, we describe a novel algorithm (Iterative Correction of Reference Nucleotides) that iteratively aligns deep coverage of short sequencing reads to correct errors in reference genome sequences and evaluate their accuracy. Using Plasmodium falciparum (81% A + T content) as an extreme example, we show that the algorithm is highly accurate and corrects over 2000 errors in the reference sequence. We give examples of its application to numerous other eukaryotic and prokaryotic genomes and suggest additional applications. The software is available at http://icorn.sourceforge.net

  11. Spatial distribution of marine crenarchaeota group I in the vicinity of deep-sea hydrothermal systems.

    PubMed

    Takai, Ken; Oida, Hanako; Suzuki, Yohey; Hirayama, Hisako; Nakagawa, Satoshi; Nunoura, Takuro; Inagaki, Fumio; Nealson, Kenneth H; Horikoshi, Koki

    2004-04-01

    Distribution profiles of marine crenarchaeota group I in the vicinity of deep-sea hydrothermal systems were mapped with culture-independent molecular techniques. Planktonic samples were obtained from the waters surrounding two geographically and geologically distinct hydrothermal systems, and the abundance of marine crenarchaeota group I was examined by 16S ribosomal DNA clone analysis, quantitative PCR, and whole-cell fluorescence in situ hybridization. A much higher proportion of marine crenarchaeota group I within the microbial community was detected in deep-sea hydrothermal environments than in normal deep and surface seawaters. The highest proportion was always obtained from the ambient seawater adjacent to hydrothermal emissions and chimneys but not from the hydrothermal plumes. These profiles were markedly different from the profiles of epsilon-Proteobacteria, which are abundant in the low temperatures of deep-sea hydrothermal environments.

  12. Dissection of the Octoploid Strawberry Genome by Deep Sequencing of the Genomes of Fragaria Species

    PubMed Central

    Hirakawa, Hideki; Shirasawa, Kenta; Kosugi, Shunichi; Tashiro, Kosuke; Nakayama, Shinobu; Yamada, Manabu; Kohara, Mistuyo; Watanabe, Akiko; Kishida, Yoshie; Fujishiro, Tsunakazu; Tsuruoka, Hisano; Minami, Chiharu; Sasamoto, Shigemi; Kato, Midori; Nanri, Keiko; Komaki, Akiko; Yanagi, Tomohiro; Guoxin, Qin; Maeda, Fumi; Ishikawa, Masami; Kuhara, Satoru; Sato, Shusei; Tabata, Satoshi; Isobe, Sachiko N.

    2014-01-01

    Cultivated strawberry (Fragaria x ananassa) is octoploid and shows allogamous behaviour. The present study aims at dissecting this octoploid genome through comparison with its wild relatives, F. iinumae, F. nipponica, F. nubicola, and F. orientalis by de novo whole-genome sequencing on an Illumina and Roche 454 platforms. The total length of the assembled Illumina genome sequences obtained was 698 Mb for F. x ananassa, and ∼200 Mb each for the four wild species. Subsequently, a virtual reference genome termed FANhybrid_r1.2 was constructed by integrating the sequences of the four homoeologous subgenomes of F. x ananassa, from which heterozygous regions in the Roche 454 and Illumina genome sequences were eliminated. The total length of FANhybrid_r1.2 thus created was 173.2 Mb with the N50 length of 5137 bp. The Illumina-assembled genome sequences of F. x ananassa and the four wild species were then mapped onto the reference genome, along with the previously published F. vesca genome sequence to establish the subgenomic structure of F. x ananassa. The strategy adopted in this study has turned out to be successful in dissecting the genome of octoploid F. x ananassa and appears promising when applied to the analysis of other polyploid plant species. PMID:24282021

  13. Quantifying the relationship between sequence and three-dimensional structure conservation in RNA

    PubMed Central

    2010-01-01

    Background In recent years, the number of available RNA structures has rapidly grown reflecting the increased interest on RNA biology. Similarly to the studies carried out two decades ago for proteins, which gave the fundamental grounds for developing comparative protein structure prediction methods, we are now able to quantify the relationship between sequence and structure conservation in RNA. Results Here we introduce an all-against-all sequence- and three-dimensional (3D) structure-based comparison of a representative set of RNA structures, which have allowed us to quantitatively confirm that: (i) there is a measurable relationship between sequence and structure conservation that weakens for alignments resulting in below 60% sequence identity, (ii) evolution tends to conserve more RNA structure than sequence, and (iii) there is a twilight zone for RNA homology detection. Discussion The computational analysis here presented quantitatively describes the relationship between sequence and structure for RNA molecules and defines a twilight zone region for detecting RNA homology. Our work could represent the theoretical basis and limitations for future developments in comparative RNA 3D structure prediction. PMID:20550657

  14. Instant Integrated Ultradeep Quantitative-structural Membrane Proteomics Discovered Post-translational Modification Signatures for Human Cys-loop Receptor Subunit Bias.

    PubMed

    Zhang, Xi

    2016-12-01

    Neurotransmitter ligand-gated ion channels (LGICs) are widespread and pivotal in brain functions. Unveiling their structure-function mechanisms is crucial to drive drug discovery, and demands robust proteomic quantitation of expression, post-translational modifications (PTMs) and dynamic structures. Yet unbiased digestion of these modified transmembrane proteins-at high efficiency and peptide reproducibility-poses the obstacle. Targeting both enzyme-substrate contacts and PTMs for peptide formation and detection, we devised flow-and-detergent-facilitated protease and de-PTM digestions for deep sequencing (FDD) method that combined omni-compatible detergent, tandem immobilized protease/PNGase columns, and Cys-selective reduction/alkylation, to achieve streamlined ultradeep peptide preparation within minutes not days, at high peptide reproducibility and low abundance-bias. FDD transformed enzyme-protein contacts into equal catalytic travel paths through enzyme-excessive columns regardless of protein abundance, removed products instantly preventing inhibition, tackled intricate structures via sequential multiple micro-digestions along the flow, and precisely controlled peptide formation by flow rate. Peptide-stage reactions reduced steric bias; low contamination deepened MS/MS scan; distinguishing disulfide from M oxidation and avoiding gain/loss artifacts unmasked protein-endogenous oxidation states. Using a recent interactome of 285-kDa human GABA type A receptor, this pilot study validated FDD platform's applicability to deep sequencing (up to 99% coverage), H/D-exchange and TMT-based structural mapping. FDD discovered novel subunit-specific PTM signatures, including unusual nontop-surface N-glycosylations, that may drive subunit biases in human Cys-loop LGIC assembly and pharmacology, by redefining subunit/ligand interfaces and connecting function domains. © 2016 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc.

  15. Analysis of Sequence Data Under Multivariate Trait-Dependent Sampling.

    PubMed

    Tao, Ran; Zeng, Donglin; Franceschini, Nora; North, Kari E; Boerwinkle, Eric; Lin, Dan-Yu

    2015-06-01

    High-throughput DNA sequencing allows for the genotyping of common and rare variants for genetic association studies. At the present time and for the foreseeable future, it is not economically feasible to sequence all individuals in a large cohort. A cost-effective strategy is to sequence those individuals with extreme values of a quantitative trait. We consider the design under which the sampling depends on multiple quantitative traits. Under such trait-dependent sampling, standard linear regression analysis can result in bias of parameter estimation, inflation of type I error, and loss of power. We construct a likelihood function that properly reflects the sampling mechanism and utilizes all available data. We implement a computationally efficient EM algorithm and establish the theoretical properties of the resulting maximum likelihood estimators. Our methods can be used to perform separate inference on each trait or simultaneous inference on multiple traits. We pay special attention to gene-level association tests for rare variants. We demonstrate the superiority of the proposed methods over standard linear regression through extensive simulation studies. We provide applications to the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology Targeted Sequencing Study and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Exome Sequencing Project.

  16. Deep Sequencing-Based Analysis of the Cymbidium ensifolium Floral Transcriptome

    PubMed Central

    Li, Xiaobai; Luo, Jie; Yan, Tianlian; Xiang, Lin; Jin, Feng; Qin, Dehui; Sun, Chongbo; Xie, Ming

    2013-01-01

    Cymbidium ensifolium is a Chinese Cymbidium with an elegant shape, beautiful appearance, and a fragrant aroma. C. ensifolium has a long history of cultivation in China and it has excellent commercial value as a potted plant and cut flower. The development of C. ensifolium genomic resources has been delayed because of its large genome size. Taking advantage of technical and cost improvement of RNA-Seq, we extracted total mRNA from flower buds and mature flowers and obtained a total of 9.52 Gb of filtered nucleotides comprising 98,819,349 filtered reads. The filtered reads were assembled into 101,423 isotigs, representing 51,696 genes. Of the 101,423 isotigs, 41,873 were putative homologs of annotated sequences in the public databases, of which 158 were associated with floral development and 119 were associated with flowering. The isotigs were categorized according to their putative functions. In total, 10,212 of the isotigs were assigned into 25 eukaryotic orthologous groups (KOGs), 41,690 into 58 gene ontology (GO) terms, and 9,830 into 126 Arabidopsis Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways, and 9,539 isotigs into 123 rice pathways. Comparison of the isotigs with those of the two related orchid species P. equestris and C. sinense showed that 17,906 isotigs are unique to C. ensifolium. In addition, a total of 7,936 SSRs and 16,676 putative SNPs were identified. To our knowledge, this transcriptome database is the first major genomic resource for C. ensifolium and the most comprehensive transcriptomic resource for genus Cymbidium. These sequences provide valuable information for understanding the molecular mechanisms of floral development and flowering. Sequences predicted to be unique to C. ensifolium would provide more insights into C. ensifolium gene diversity. The numerous SNPs and SSRs identified in the present study will contribute to marker development for C. ensifolium. PMID:24392013

  17. Deep Dermatophytosis and Inherited CARD9 Deficiency

    PubMed Central

    Vincent, Quentin B.; Liu, Luyan; Cypowyj, Sophie; Prando, Carolina; Migaud, Mélanie; Taibi, Lynda; Ammar-Khodja, Aomar; Stambouli, Omar Boudghene; Guellil, Boumediene; Jacobs, Frederique; Goffard, Jean-Christophe; Schepers, Kinda; del Marmol, Véronique; Boussofara, Lobna; Denguezli, Mohamed; Larif, Molka; Bachelez, Hervé; Michel, Laurence; Lefranc, Gérard; Hay, Rod; Jouvion, Gregory; Chretien, Fabrice; Fraitag, Sylvie; Bougnoux, Marie-Elisabeth; Boudia, Merad

    2014-01-01

    BACKGROUND Deep dermatophytosis is a severe and sometimes life-threatening fungal infection caused by dermatophytes. It is characterized by extensive dermal and subcutaneous tissue invasion and by frequent dissemination to the lymph nodes and, occasionally, the central nervous system. The condition is different from common superficial dermatophyte infection and has been reported in patients with no known immunodeficiency. Patients are mostly from North African, consanguineous, multiplex families, which strongly suggests a mendelian genetic cause. METHODS We studied the clinical features of deep dermatophytosis in 17 patients with no known immunodeficiency from eight unrelated Tunisian, Algerian, and Moroccan families. Because CARD9 (caspase recruitment domain–containing protein 9) deficiency has been reported in an Iranian family with invasive fungal infections, we also sequenced CARD9 in the patients. RESULTS Four patients died, at 28, 29, 37, and 39 years of age, with clinically active deep dermatophytosis. No other severe infections, fungal or otherwise, were reported in the surviving patients, who ranged in age from 37 to 75 years. The 15 Algerian and Tunisian patients, from seven unrelated families, had a homozygous Q289X CARD9 allele, due to a founder effect. The 2 Moroccan siblings were homozygous for the R101C CARD9 allele. Both alleles are rare deleterious variants. The familial segregation of these alleles was consistent with autosomal recessive inheritance and complete clinical penetrance. CONCLUSIONS All the patients with deep dermatophytosis had autosomal recessive CARD9 deficiency. Deep dermatophytosis appears to be an important clinical manifestation of CARD9 deficiency. (Funded by Agence Nationale pour la Recherche and others.) PMID:24131138

  18. Diverse assessment and active student engagement sustain deep learning: A comparative study of outcomes in two parallel introductory biochemistry courses.

    PubMed

    Bevan, Samantha J; Chan, Cecilia W L; Tanner, Julian A

    2014-01-01

    Although there is increasing evidence for a relationship between courses that emphasize student engagement and achievement of student deep learning, there is a paucity of quantitative comparative studies in a biochemistry and molecular biology context. Here, we present a pedagogical study in two contrasting parallel biochemistry introductory courses to compare student surface and deep learning. Surface and deep learning were measured quantitatively by a study process questionnaire at the start and end of the semester, and qualitatively by questionnaires and interviews with students. In the traditional lecture/examination based course, there was a dramatic shift to surface learning approaches through the semester. In the course that emphasized student engagement and adopted multiple forms of assessment, a preference for deep learning was sustained with only a small reduction through the semester. Such evidence for the benefits of implementing student engagement and more diverse non-examination based assessment has important implications for the design, delivery, and renewal of introductory courses in biochemistry and molecular biology. © 2014 The International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

  19. Ultra Deep Sequencing of Listeria monocytogenes sRNA Transcriptome Revealed New Antisense RNAs

    PubMed Central

    Behrens, Sebastian; Widder, Stefanie; Mannala, Gopala Krishna; Qing, Xiaoxing; Madhugiri, Ramakanth; Kefer, Nathalie; Mraheil, Mobarak Abu; Rattei, Thomas; Hain, Torsten

    2014-01-01

    Listeria monocytogenes, a gram-positive pathogen, and causative agent of listeriosis, has become a widely used model organism for intracellular infections. Recent studies have identified small non-coding RNAs (sRNAs) as important factors for regulating gene expression and pathogenicity of L. monocytogenes. Increased speed and reduced costs of high throughput sequencing (HTS) techniques have made RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) the state-of-the-art method to study bacterial transcriptomes. We created a large transcriptome dataset of L. monocytogenes containing a total of 21 million reads, using the SOLiD sequencing technology. The dataset contained cDNA sequences generated from L. monocytogenes RNA collected under intracellular and extracellular condition and additionally was size fractioned into three different size ranges from <40 nt, 40–150 nt and >150 nt. We report here, the identification of nine new sRNAs candidates of L. monocytogenes and a reevaluation of known sRNAs of L. monocytogenes EGD-e. Automatic comparison to known sRNAs revealed a high recovery rate of 55%, which was increased to 90% by manual revision of the data. Moreover, thorough classification of known sRNAs shed further light on their possible biological functions. Interestingly among the newly identified sRNA candidates are antisense RNAs (asRNAs) associated to the housekeeping genes purA, fumC and pgi and potentially their regulation, emphasizing the significance of sRNAs for metabolic adaptation in L. monocytogenes. PMID:24498259

  20. EHR Big Data Deep Phenotyping

    PubMed Central

    Lenert, L.; Lopez-Campos, G.

    2014-01-01

    Summary Objectives Given the quickening speed of discovery of variant disease drivers from combined patient genotype and phenotype data, the objective is to provide methodology using big data technology to support the definition of deep phenotypes in medical records. Methods As the vast stores of genomic information increase with next generation sequencing, the importance of deep phenotyping increases. The growth of genomic data and adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHR) in medicine provides a unique opportunity to integrate phenotype and genotype data into medical records. The method by which collections of clinical findings and other health related data are leveraged to form meaningful phenotypes is an active area of research. Longitudinal data stored in EHRs provide a wealth of information that can be used to construct phenotypes of patients. We focus on a practical problem around data integration for deep phenotype identification within EHR data. The use of big data approaches are described that enable scalable markup of EHR events that can be used for semantic and temporal similarity analysis to support the identification of phenotype and genotype relationships. Conclusions Stead and colleagues’ 2005 concept of using light standards to increase the productivity of software systems by riding on the wave of hardware/processing power is described as a harbinger for designing future healthcare systems. The big data solution, using flexible markup, provides a route to improved utilization of processing power for organizing patient records in genotype and phenotype research. PMID:25123744