GenomeTools: a comprehensive software library for efficient processing of structured genome annotations.

Genome annotations are often published as plain text files describing genomic features and their subcomponents by an implicit annotation graph. In this paper, we present the GenomeTools, a convenient and efficient software library and associated software tools for developing bioinformatics software intended to create, process or convert annotation graphs. The GenomeTools strictly follow the annotation graph approach, offering a unified graph-based representation. This gives the developer intuitive and immediate access to genomic features and tools for their manipulation. To process large annotation sets with low memory overhead, we have designed and implemented an efficient pull-based approach for sequential processing of annotations. This allows to handle even the largest annotation sets, such as a complete catalogue of human variations. Our object-oriented C-based software library enables a developer to conveniently implement their own functionality on annotation graphs and to integrate it into larger workflows, simultaneously accessing compressed sequence data if required. The careful C implementation of the GenomeTools does not only ensure a light-weight memory footprint while allowing full sequential as well as random access to the annotation graph, but also facilitates the creation of bindings to a variety of script programming languages (like Python and Ruby) sharing the same interface.

Fine-grained annotation and classification of de novo predicted LTR retrotransposons.

Long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons and endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) are transposable elements in eukaryotic genomes well suited for computational identification. De novo identification tools determine the position of potential LTR retrotransposon or ERV insertions in genomic sequences. For further analysis, it is desirable to obtain an annotation of the internal structure of such candidates. This article presents LTRdigest, a novel software tool for automated annotation of internal features of putative LTR retrotransposons. It uses local alignment and hidden Markov model-based algorithms to detect retrotransposon-associated protein domains as well as primer binding sites and polypurine tracts. As an example, we used LTRdigest results to identify 88 (near) full-length ERVs in the chromosome 4 sequence of Mus musculus, separating them from truncated insertions and other repeats. Furthermore, we propose a work flow for the use of LTRdigest in de novo LTR retrotransposon classification and perform an exemplary de novo analysis on the Drosophila melanogaster genome as a proof of concept. Using a new method solely based on the annotations generated by LTRdigest, 518 potential LTR retrotransposons were automatically assigned to 62 candidate groups. Representative sequences from 41 of these 62 groups were matched to reference sequences with >80% global sequence similarity.

AnnotationSketch: a genome annotation drawing library.

SUMMARY: To analyse the vast amount of genome annotation data available today, a visual representation of genomic features in a given sequence range is required. We developed a C library which provides layout and drawing capabilities for annotation features. It supports several common input and output formats and can easily be integrated into custom C applications. To exemplify the use of AnnotationSketch in other languages, we provide bindings to the scripting languages Ruby, Python and Lua. AVAILABILITY: The software is available under an open-source license as part of GenomeTools (http://genometools.org/annotationsketch.html).