Dataset Information

BLASTGrabber: a bioinformatic tool for visualization, analysis and sequence selection of massive BLAST data.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Advances in sequencing efficiency have vastly increased the sizes of biological sequence databases, including many thousands of genome-sequenced species. The BLAST algorithm remains the main search engine for retrieving sequence information, and must consequently handle data on an unprecedented scale. This has been possible due to high-performance computers and parallel processing. However, the raw BLAST output from contemporary searches involving thousands of queries becomes ill-suited for direct human processing. Few programs attempt to directly visualize and interpret BLAST output; those that do often provide a mere basic structuring of BLAST data. RESULTS: Here we present a bioinformatics application named BLASTGrabber suitable for high-throughput sequencing analysis. BLASTGrabber, being implemented as a Java application, is OS-independent and includes a user friendly graphical user interface. Text or XML-formatted BLAST output files can be directly imported, displayed and categorized based on BLAST statistics. Query names and FASTA headers can be analysed by text-mining. In addition to visualizing sequence alignments, BLAST data can be ordered as an interactive taxonomy tree. All modes of analysis support selection, export and storage of data. A Java interface-based plugin structure facilitates the addition of customized third party functionality. CONCLUSION: The BLASTGrabber application introduces new ways of visualizing and analysing massive BLAST output data by integrating taxonomy identification, text mining capabilities and generic multi-dimensional rendering of BLAST hits. The program aims at a non-expert audience in terms of computer skills; the combination of new functionalities makes the program flexible and useful for a broad range of operations.

SUBMITTER: Neumann RS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4062517 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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BLASTGrabber: a bioinformatic tool for visualization, analysis and sequence selection of massive BLAST data.

Neumann Ralf Stefan RS Kumar Surendra S Haverkamp Thomas Hendricus Augustus TH Shalchian-Tabrizi Kamran K

BMC bioinformatics 20140505

<h4>Background</h4>Advances in sequencing efficiency have vastly increased the sizes of biological sequence databases, including many thousands of genome-sequenced species. The BLAST algorithm remains the main search engine for retrieving sequence information, and must consequently handle data on an unprecedented scale. This has been possible due to high-performance computers and parallel processing. However, the raw BLAST output from contemporary searches involving thousands of queries becomes ...[more]

PMID: 24885091

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Project description:BackgroundSequencing data has become a standard measure of diverse cellular activities. For example, gene expression is accurately measured by RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) libraries, protein-DNA interactions are captured by chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-Seq), protein-RNA interactions by crosslinking immunoprecipitation sequencing (CLIP-Seq) or RNA immunoprecipitation (RIP-Seq) sequencing, DNA accessibility by assay for transposase-accessible chromatin (ATAC-Seq), DNase or MNase sequencing libraries. The processing of these sequencing techniques involves library-specific approaches. However, in all cases, once the sequencing libraries are processed, the result is a count table specifying the estimated number of reads originating from each genomic locus. Differential analysis to determine which loci have different cellular activity under different conditions starts with the count table and iterates through a cycle of data assessment, preparation and analysis. Such complex analysis often relies on multiple programs and is therefore a challenge for those without programming skills.ResultsWe developed DEBrowser as an R bioconductor project to interactively visualize every step of the differential analysis, without programming. The application provides a rich and interactive web based graphical user interface built on R's shiny infrastructure. DEBrowser allows users to visualize data with various types of graphs that can be explored further by selecting and re-plotting any desired subset of data. Using the visualization approaches provided, users can determine and correct technical variations such as batch effects and sequencing depth that affect differential analysis. We show DEBrowser's ease of use by reproducing the analysis of two previously published data sets.ConclusionsDEBrowser is a flexible, intuitive, web-based analysis platform that enables an iterative and interactive analysis of count data without any requirement of programming knowledge.

Dataset Information

BLASTGrabber: a bioinformatic tool for visualization, analysis and sequence selection of massive BLAST data.

Publications

BLASTGrabber: a bioinformatic tool for visualization, analysis and sequence selection of massive BLAST data.

Similar Datasets

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