Data standards for Omics data: the basis of data sharing and reuse.

To facilitate sharing of Omics data, many groups of scientists have been working to establish the relevant data standards. The main components of data sharing standards are experiment description standards, data exchange standards, terminology standards, and experiment execution standards. Here we provide a survey of existing and emerging standards that are intended to assist the free and open exchange of large-format data.

Genoviz Software Development Kit: Java tool kit for building genomics visualization applications.

BACKGROUND: Visualization software can expose previously undiscovered patterns in genomic data and advance biological science. RESULTS: The Genoviz Software Development Kit (SDK) is an open source, Java-based framework designed for rapid assembly of visualization software applications for genomics. The Genoviz SDK framework provides a mechanism for incorporating adaptive, dynamic zooming into applications, a desirable feature of genome viewers. Visualization capabilities of the Genoviz SDK include automated layout of features along genetic or genomic axes; support for user interactions with graphical elements (Glyphs) in a map; a variety of Glyph sub-classes that promote experimentation with new ways of representing data in graphical formats; and support for adaptive, semantic zooming, whereby objects change their appearance depending on zoom level and zooming rate adapts to the current scale. Freely available demonstration and production quality applications, including the Integrated Genome Browser, illustrate Genoviz SDK capabilities. CONCLUSION: Separation between graphics components and genomic data models makes it easy for developers to add visualization capability to pre-existing applications or build new applications using third-party data models. Source code, documentation, sample applications, and tutorials are available at http://genoviz.sourceforge.net/.

Use of site-directed cysteine and disulfide chemistry to probe protein structure and dynamics: applications to soluble and transmembrane receptors of bacterial chemotaxis.

Site-directed cysteine and disulfide chemistry is broadly useful in the analysis of protein structure and dynamics, and applications of this chemistry to the bacterial chemotaxis pathway have illustrated the kinds of information that can be generated. Notably, in many cases, cysteine and disulfide chemistry can be carried out in the native environment of the protein whether it be aqueous solution, a lipid bilayer, or a multiprotein complex. Moreover, the approach can tackle three types of problems crucial to a molecular understanding of a given protein: (1) it can map out 2 degrees structure, 3 degrees structure, and 4 degrees structure; (2) it can analyze conformational changes and the structural basis of regulation by covalently trapping specific conformational or signaling states; and (3) it can uncover the spatial and temporal aspects of thermal fluctuations by detecting backbone and domain dynamics. The approach can provide structural information for many proteins inaccessible to high-resolution methods. Even when a high-resolution structure is available, the approach provides complementary information about regulatory mechanisms and thermal dynamics in the native environment. Finally, the approach can be applied to an entire protein, or to a specific domain or subdomain within the full-length protein, thereby facilitating a divide-and-conquer strategy in large systems or multiprotein complexes. Rigorous application of the approach to a given protein, domain, or subdomain requires careful experimental design that adequately resolves the structural and dynamical information provided by the method. A full structural and dynamical analysis begins by scanning engineered cysteines throughout the region of interest. To determine 2 degrees structure, the solvent exposure of each cysteine is determined by measuring its chemical reactivity, and the periodicity of exposure is analyzed. To probe 3 degrees structure, 4 degrees structure, and conformational regulation, pairs of cysteines are identified that rapidly form disulfide bonds and that retain function when induced to form a disulfide bond in the folded protein or complex. Finally, to map out thermal fluctuations in a protein of known structure, disulfide formation rates are measured between distal pairs of nonperturbing surface cysteines. This chapter details these methods and illustrates applications to two proteins from the bacterial chemotaxis pathway: the periplasmic galactose binding protein and the transmembrane aspartate receptor.

The Bioperl toolkit: Perl modules for the life sciences.

The Bioperl project is an international open-source collaboration of biologists, bioinformaticians, and computer scientists that has evolved over the past 7 yr into the most comprehensive library of Perl modules available for managing and manipulating life-science information. Bioperl provides an easy-to-use, stable, and consistent programming interface for bioinformatics application programmers. The Bioperl modules have been successfully and repeatedly used to reduce otherwise complex tasks to only a few lines of code. The Bioperl object model has been proven to be flexible enough to support enterprise-level applications such as EnsEMBL, while maintaining an easy learning curve for novice Perl programmers. Bioperl is capable of executing analyses and processing results from programs such as BLAST, ClustalW, or the EMBOSS suite. Interoperation with modules written in Python and Java is supported through the evolving BioCORBA bridge. Bioperl provides access to data stores such as GenBank and SwissProt via a flexible series of sequence input/output modules, and to the emerging common sequence data storage format of the Open Bioinformatics Database Access project. This study describes the overall architecture of the toolkit, the problem domains that it addresses, and gives specific examples of how the toolkit can be used to solve common life-sciences problems. We conclude with a discussion of how the open-source nature of the project has contributed to the development effort.