TreeFam (http://www.treefam.org) is a database of phylogenetic trees inferred from animal genomes. For every TreeFam family we provide homology predictions together with the evolutionary history of ...the genes. Here we describe an update of the TreeFam database. The TreeFam project was resurrected in 2012 and has seen two releases since. The latest release (TreeFam 9) was made available in March 2013. It has orthology predictions and gene trees for 109 species in 15,736 families covering ∼2.2 million sequences. With release 9 we made modifications to our production pipeline and redesigned our website with improved gene tree visualizations and Wikipedia integration. Furthermore, we now provide an HMM-based sequence search that places a user-provided protein sequence into a TreeFam gene tree and provides quick orthology prediction. The tool uses Mafft and RAxML for the fast insertion into a reference alignment and tree, respectively. Besides the aforementioned technical improvements, we present a new approach to visualize gene trees and alternative displays that focuses on showing homology information from a species tree point of view. From release 9 onwards, TreeFam is now hosted at the EBI.
Abstract
Ensembl Genomes (http://www.ensemblgenomes.org) is an integrating resource for genome-scale data from non-vertebrate species, complementing the resources for vertebrate genomics developed in ...the context of the Ensembl project (http://www.ensembl.org). Together, the two resources provide a consistent set of interfaces to genomic data across the tree of life, including reference genome sequence, gene models, transcriptional data, genetic variation and comparative analysis. Data may be accessed via our website, online tools platform and programmatic interfaces, with updates made four times per year (in synchrony with Ensembl). Here, we provide an overview of Ensembl Genomes, with a focus on recent developments. These include the continued growth, more robust and reproducible sets of orthologues and paralogues, and enriched views of gene expression and gene function in plants. Finally, we report on our continued deeper integration with the Ensembl project, which forms a key part of our future strategy for dealing with the increasing quantity of available genome-scale data across the tree of life.
Advances and Applications in the Quest for Orthologs Glover, Natasha; Dessimoz, Christophe; Ebersberger, Ingo ...
Molecular biology and evolution,
10/2019, Volume:
36, Issue:
10
Journal Article, Conference Proceeding
Peer reviewed
Open access
Abstract
Gene families evolve by the processes of speciation (creating orthologs), gene duplication (paralogs), and horizontal gene transfer (xenologs), in addition to sequence divergence and gene ...loss. Orthologs in particular play an essential role in comparative genomics and phylogenomic analyses. With the continued sequencing of organisms across the tree of life, the data are available to reconstruct the unique evolutionary histories of tens of thousands of gene families. Accurate reconstruction of these histories, however, is a challenging computational problem, and the focus of the Quest for Orthologs Consortium. We review the recent advances and outstanding challenges in this field, as revealed at a symposium and meeting held at the University of Southern California in 2017. Key advances have been made both at the level of orthology algorithm development and with respect to coordination across the community of algorithm developers and orthology end-users. Applications spanned a broad range, including gene function prediction, phylostratigraphy, genome evolution, and phylogenomics. The meetings highlighted the increasing use of meta-analyses integrating results from multiple different algorithms, and discussed ongoing challenges in orthology inference as well as the next steps toward improvement and integration of orthology resources.
Abstract
Accurate determination of the evolutionary relationships between genes is a foundational challenge in biology. Homology—evolutionary relatedness—is in many cases readily determined based on ...sequence similarity analysis. By contrast, whether or not two genes directly descended from a common ancestor by a speciation event (orthologs) or duplication event (paralogs) is more challenging, yet provides critical information on the history of a gene. Since 2009, this task has been the focus of the Quest for Orthologs (QFO) Consortium. The sixth QFO meeting took place in Okazaki, Japan in conjunction with the 67th National Institute for Basic Biology conference. Here, we report recent advances, applications, and oncoming challenges that were discussed during the conference. Steady progress has been made toward standardization and scalability of new and existing tools. A feature of the conference was the presentation of a panel of accessible tools for phylogenetic profiling and several developments to bring orthology beyond the gene unit—from domains to networks. This meeting brought into light several challenges to come: leveraging orthology computations to get the most of the incoming avalanche of genomic data, integrating orthology from domain to biological network levels, building better gene models, and adapting orthology approaches to the broad evolutionary and genomic diversity recognized in different forms of life and viruses.
ABSTRACT
Background
The giant squid (Architeuthis dux; Steenstrup, 1857) is an enigmatic giant mollusc with a circumglobal distribution in the deep ocean, except in the high Arctic and Antarctic ...waters. The elusiveness of the species makes it difficult to study. Thus, having a genome assembled for this deep-sea–dwelling species will allow several pending evolutionary questions to be unlocked.
Findings
We present a draft genome assembly that includes 200 Gb of Illumina reads, 4 Gb of Moleculo synthetic long reads, and 108 Gb of Chicago libraries, with a final size matching the estimated genome size of 2.7 Gb, and a scaffold N50 of 4.8 Mb. We also present an alternative assembly including 27 Gb raw reads generated using the Pacific Biosciences platform. In addition, we sequenced the proteome of the same individual and RNA from 3 different tissue types from 3 other species of squid (Onychoteuthis banksii, Dosidicus gigas, and Sthenoteuthis oualaniensis) to assist genome annotation. We annotated 33,406 protein-coding genes supported by evidence, and the genome completeness estimated by BUSCO reached 92%. Repetitive regions cover 49.17% of the genome.
Conclusions
This annotated draft genome of A. dux provides a critical resource to investigate the unique traits of this species, including its gigantism and key adaptations to deep-sea environments.
Typical evolutionary events like recombination, hybridization or gene transfer make necessary the use of phylogenetic networks to properly depict the evolution of DNA and protein sequences. Although ...several theoretical classes have been proposed to characterize these networks, they make stringent assumptions that will likely not be met by the evolutionary process. We have recently shown that the complexity of simulated networks is a function of the population recombination rate, and that at moderate and large recombination rates the resulting networks cannot be categorized. However, we do not know whether these results extend to networks estimated from real data.
We introduce a web server for the categorization of explicit phylogenetic networks, including the most relevant theoretical classes developed so far. Using this tool, we analyzed statistical parsimony phylogenetic networks estimated from approximately 5,000 DNA alignments, obtained from the NCBI PopSet and Polymorphix databases. The level of characterization was correlated to nucleotide diversity, and a high proportion of the networks derived from these data sets could be formally characterized.
We have developed a public web server, NetTest (freely available from the software section at http://darwin.uvigo.es), to formally characterize the complexity of phylogenetic networks. Using NetTest we found that most statistical parsimony networks estimated with the program TCS could be assigned to a known network class. The level of network characterization was correlated to nucleotide diversity and dependent upon the intra/interspecific levels, although no significant differences were detected among genes. More research on the properties of phylogenetic networks is clearly needed.
Abstract
The Ensembl (https://www.ensembl.org) is a system for generating and distributing genome annotation such as genes, variation, regulation and comparative genomics across the vertebrate ...subphylum and key model organisms. The Ensembl annotation pipeline is capable of integrating experimental and reference data from multiple providers into a single integrated resource. Here, we present 94 newly annotated and re-annotated genomes, bringing the total number of genomes offered by Ensembl to 227. This represents the single largest expansion of the resource since its inception. We also detail our continued efforts to improve human annotation, developments in our epigenome analysis and display, a new tool for imputing causal genes from genome-wide association studies and visualisation of variation within a 3D protein model. Finally, we present information on our new website. Both software and data are made available without restriction via our website, online tools platform and programmatic interfaces (available under an Apache 2.0 license) and data updates made available four times a year.
Abstract
The Ensembl project has been aggregating, processing, integrating and redistributing genomic datasets since the initial releases of the draft human genome, with the aim of accelerating ...genomics research through rapid open distribution of public data. Large amounts of raw data are thus transformed into knowledge, which is made available via a multitude of channels, in particular our browser (http://www.ensembl.org). Over time, we have expanded in multiple directions. First, our resources describe multiple fields of genomics, in particular gene annotation, comparative genomics, genetics and epigenomics. Second, we cover a growing number of genome assemblies; Ensembl Release 90 contains exactly 100. Third, our databases feed simultaneously into an array of services designed around different use cases, ranging from quick browsing to genome-wide bioinformatic analysis. We present here the latest developments of the Ensembl project, with a focus on managing an increasing number of assemblies, supporting efforts in genome interpretation and improving our browser.
Abstract
The Ensembl project (https://www.ensembl.org) makes key genomic data sets available to the entire scientific community without restrictions. Ensembl seeks to be a fundamental resource ...driving scientific progress by creating, maintaining and updating reference genome annotation and comparative genomics resources. This year we describe our new and expanded gene, variant and comparative annotation capabilities, which led to a 50% increase in the number of vertebrate genomes we support. We have also doubled the number of available human variants and added regulatory regions for many mouse cell types and developmental stages. Our data sets and tools are available via the Ensembl website as well as a through a RESTful webservice, Perl application programming interface and as data files for download.
The Ensembl project (http://www.ensembl.org) is a system for genome annotation, analysis, storage and dissemination designed to facilitate the access of genomic annotation from chordates and key ...model organisms. It provides access to data from 87 species across our main and early access Pre! websites. This year we introduced three newly annotated species and released numerous updates across our supported species with a concentration on data for the latest genome assemblies of human, mouse, zebrafish and rat. We also provided two data updates for the previous human assembly, GRCh37, through a dedicated website (http://grch37.ensembl.org). Our tools, in particular the VEP, have been improved significantly through integration of additional third party data. REST is now capable of larger-scale analysis and our regulatory data BioMart can deliver faster results. The website is now capable of displaying long-range interactions such as those found in cis-regulated datasets. Finally we have launched a website optimized for mobile devices providing views of genes, variants and phenotypes. Our data is made available without restriction and all code is available from our GitHub organization site (http://github.com/Ensembl) under an Apache 2.0 license.
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