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Advanced measurement and data storage technologies have enabled high-dimensional profiling of complex biological systems. For this, modern multiomics studies regularly produce datasets with hundreds of thousands of measurements per sample, enabling a new era of precision medicine. Correlation analysis is an important first step to gain deeper insights into the coordination and underlying processes of such complex systems. However, the construction of large correlation networks in modern high-dimensional datasets remains a major computational challenge owing to rapidly growing runtime and memory requirements. Here we address this challenge by introducing CorALS (Correlation Analysis of Large-scale (biological) Systems), an open-source framework for the construction and analysis of large-scale parametric as well as non-parametric correlation networks for high-dimensional biological data. It features off-the-shelf algorithms suitable for both personal and high-performance computers, enabling workflows and downstream analysis approaches. We illustrate the broad scope and potential of CorALS by exploring perspectives on complex biological processes in large-scale multiomics and single-cell studies.

Members of the Sp family of transcription factors regulate gene expression via binding GC boxes within promoter regions. Unlike Sp1, which stimulates transcription, the closely related Sp3 can either repress or activate gene expression and is required for perinatal survival in mice. Here, we use RNA-seq and cellular phenotyping to show how Sp3 regulates murine fetal cell differentiation and proliferation. Homozygous Sp3−/− mice were smaller than wild-type and Sp+/− littermates, died soon after birth and had abnormal lung morphogenesis. RNA-seq of Sp3−/− fetal lung mesenchymal cells identified alterations in extracellular matrix production, developmental signaling pathways and myofibroblast/lipofibroblast differentiation. The lungs of Sp3−/− mice contained multiple structural defects, with abnormal endothelial cell morphology, lack of elastic fiber formation, and accumulation of lipid droplets within mesenchymal lipofibroblasts. Sp3−/− cells and mice also displayed cell cycle arrest, with accumulation in G0/G1 and reduced expression of numerous cell cycle regulators including Ccne1. These data detail the global impact of Sp3 on in vivo mouse gene expression and development.

Drug extrusion through molecular efflux pumps is an important mechanism for the survival of many pathogenic bacteria by removing drugs, providing multidrug resistance (MDR). Understanding molecular mechanisms for drug extrusion in multidrug efflux pumps is important for the development of new antiresistance drugs. The AbgT family of transporters involved in the folic acid biosynthesis pathway represents one such important efflux pump system. In addition to the transport of the folic acid precursor p-amino benzoic acid (PABA), members of this family are involved in the efflux of several sulfa drugs, conferring drug resistance to the bacteria. With the availability of structures for two members of this family (YdaH and MtrF), we investigate molecular pathways for transport of PABA and a sulfa drug (sulfamethazine) particularly for the YdaH transporter using steered molecular dynamics. Our analyses reveal the probable ligand migration pathways through the transporter, which also identifies key residues along the transport pathway. In addition, simulations using both PABA and sulfamethazine show how the protein is able to transport ligands of different shapes and sizes out of the pathogen. Our observations confirm previously reported functional residues for transport along the pathways by which YdaH transporters achieve antibiotic resistance to shuttle drugs out of the cells.

The reduced cost of sequencing is leading to an explosive growth in the number of available sequences across diverse genomes, and for individual patients. Inferring meaningful functions of individual genes/proteins is lagging, which hinders the deeper understanding of biological function and evolution. Traditionally, protein function has been determined by time consuming experimental methods or by sequence matching that often does not agree with the experimental findings. We have significantly improved protein sequence matching, by accounting for inter-dependent amino acid substitutions observed within densely packed protein structures, which yields additional substitutions beyond those usually seen, with good matches to additional proteins, some having new functions, not identified by conventional sequence matching. In the current study, we have applied this approach to predict novel functions for the proteins from HIV. These newly found functional annotations are then manually reviewed and many are validated from the literature, here for the HIV envelope protein gp120. These new functions are both more specific as well as some being entirely novel functions. We also show statistically that on average our new functional annotations are more informative than those given by conventional substitution matrices such as BLOSUM62. These results suggest that the new ProtSub protein sequence matching that incorporates structural information generally yields better identifications of related proteins, which can have broader and often gains in identifying more specific functions

Glycosyltransferases (GTs) are a large family of enzymes that add sugars to a broad range of acceptor substrates, including polysaccharides, proteins and lipids, by utilizing a wide variety of donor substrates in the form of activated sugars. Individual GTs have generally been considered to exhibit a high level of substrate specificity, but this has not been thoroughly investigated across the extremely large set of GTs. Here we investigate xyloglucan xylosyltransferase 1 (XXT1), a GT involved in the synthesis of the plant cell wall polysaccharide, xyloglucan. Xyloglucan has a glucan backbone, with initial side chain substitutions exclusively composed of xylose from uridine diphosphate (UDP)-xylose. While this conserved substitution pattern suggests a high substrate specificity for XXT1, our in vitro kinetic studies elucidate a more complex set of behavior. Kinetic studies demonstrate comparable kcat values for reactions with UDP-xylose and UDP-glucose, while reactions with UDP-arabinose and UDP-galactose are over 10-fold slower. Using kcat/KM as a measure of efficiency, UDP-xylose is 8-fold more efficient as a substrate than the next best alternative, UDP-glucose. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to demonstrate that not all plant XXTs are highly substrate specific and some do show significant promiscuity in their in vitro reactions. Kinetic parameters alone likely do not explain the high substrate selectivity in planta, suggesting that there are additional control mechanisms operating during polysaccharide biosynthesis. Improved understanding of substrate specificity of the GTs will aid in protein engineering, development of diagnostic tools, and understanding of biological systems.

BACKGROUND Bovine milk contains extracellular vesicles (EVs) that play a role in cellular communication, acting in either an autocrine, paracrine, or an exocrine manner. The unique properties of the EVs protect the cargo against degradation. We profiled the ncRNAs (non-coding RNA) present in the EVs from seven dairy products - raw whole milk, heat-treated skim milk, homogenized heat-treated skim milk, pasteurized homogenized skim milk, pasteurized heavy whipping cream, sweet cream buttermilk and cultured buttermilk with four replicates each, obtained at different processing steps from a commercial dairy plant. EVs and their cargo were extracted by using a validated commercial kit that has been shown to be efficient and specific for EVs. Further, to find the annotation of ncRNAs, we probed bovine and other organism repositories(such as miRBase, miRTarBase, Ensemble) to find homolog ncRNA annotation in case the annotations of ncRNA are not available in Bos Taurus database. RESULTS Specifically, 30 microRNAs (miRNAs), were isolated throughout all the seven milk samples, which later when annotated with their corresponding 1546 putative gene targets have functions associated with immune response and growth and development. This indicates the potential for these ncRNAs to beneficially support mammary health and growth for the cow as well as neonatal gut maturation. The most abundant miRNAs were bta-miR-125a and human homolog miR-718 based on the abundance values of read count obtained from the milk samples.bta-miR-125a is involved in host bacterial and viral immune response, and human homolog miR-718 is involved in the regulation of p53, VEGF, and IGF signaling pathways, respectively. Sixty-two miRNAs were up-regulated and 121 miRNAs were down-regulated throughout all the milk samples when compared to raw whole milk. In addition, our study explored the putative roles of other ncRNAs which included 88 piRNAs (piwi-interacting RNA), 64 antisense RNAs, and 105 lincRNAs (long-intergenic ncRNAs) contained in the bovine exosomes. CONCLUSION Together, the results indicate that bovine milk contains significant numbers of ncRNAs with putative regulatory targets associated with immune- and developmental-functions important for neonatal bovine health, and that processing significantly affects the ncRNA expression values; but statistical testing of overall abundance(read counts) of all miRNA samples suggests abundance values aren't much affected. This can be attributed to the breakage of exosomal vesicles during the processing stages. It is worth noting, however, that these gene regulatory targets are putative, and further evidence could be generated through experimental validation.

The article elaborates on the program highlights of the 3rd African Student Council Symposium 2019. The one-day symposium was held in Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana, on 11 November 2019 during the 6th joint international bioinformatics conference of the ISCB and ASBCB. It consisted of three sessions that included keynote talks by Prof Christine Orengo and Dr. Amel Ghouila, and seven selected student speaker talks from different areas of bioinformatics. The students benefited from networking and learning about ongoing research work by their peers hailing from different countries of the African region. The symposium proved to be pivotal to strengthen connections in the African bioinformatics student community.

Microalgae and cyanobacteria contribute roughly half of the global photosynthetic carbon assimilation. Faced with limited access to CO(2) in aquatic environments, which can vary daily or hourly, these microorganisms have evolved use of an efficient CO(2) concentrating mechanism (CCM) to accumulate high internal concentrations of inorganic carbon (C(i)) to maintain photosynthetic performance. For eukaryotic algae, a combination of molecular, genetic and physiological studies using the model organism Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, have revealed the function and molecular characteristics of many CCM components, including active C(i) uptake systems. Fundamental to eukaryotic C(i) uptake systems are C(i) transporters/channels located in membranes of various cell compartments, which together facilitate the movement of C(i) from the environment into the chloroplast, where primary CO(2) assimilation occurs. Two putative plasma membrane C(i) transporters, HLA3 and LCI1, are reportedly involved in active C(i) uptake. Based on previous studies, HLA3 clearly plays a meaningful role in HCO(3)(−) transport, but the function of LCI1 has not yet been thoroughly investigated so remains somewhat obscure. Here we report a crystal structure of the full length LCI1 membrane protein to reveal LCI1 structural characteristics, as well as in vivo physiological studies in an LCI1 loss-of-function mutant to reveal the C(i) species preference for LCI1. Together, these new studies demonstrate LCI1 plays an important role in active CO(2) uptake and that LCI1 likely functions as a plasma membrane CO(2) channel, possibly a gated channel.

The Student Council of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB-SC) is a student-focused organization for researchers from all early career levels of training (undergraduates, masters, PhDs and postdocs) that organizes bioinformatics and computational biology activities across the globe. Among its activities, the ISCB-SC organizes several symposia in different continents, many times, with the help of the Regional Student Groups (RSGs) that are based on each region. In this editorial we highlight various key moments and learned lessons from the 14th Student Council Symposium (SCS, Chicago, USA), the 5th European Student Council Symposium (ESCS, Athens, Greece) and the 3rd Latin American Student Council Symposium (LA-SCS, Viña del Mar, Chile).

Regional Student Groups (RSGs) of the International Society for Computational Biology Student Council (ISCB-SC) have been instrumental to connect computational biologists globally and to create more awareness about bioinformatics education. This article highlights the initiatives carried out by the RSGs both nationally and internationally to strengthen the present and future of the bioinformatics community. Moreover, we discuss the future directions the organization will take and the challenges to advance further in the ISCB-SC main mission: "Nurture the new generation of computational biologists". ispartof: F1000Res vol:8 pages:ISCB Comm J-1574- ispartof: location:England status: Published online

In rice, ferric-chelate reductase-1 (FRO1) (LOC_Os04g36720) gene was present on chromosome number 4 and its beginning and ending coordinates where coding sequence lies are 22182599 and 22186943, respectively. It plays a vital role in metal homeostasis and iron transportation in plants. Based on the alignment results, location of single-nucleotide variants is located in open reading frame and their effects of variants were predicted using SIFT sequence tool. The non-synonymous variants at position 342 and 436 lies in helical and coil parts of the protein, respectively, as predicted by Psi-pred server. PSI-Blast which resulted in significant hits and the most similar protein sequence (Accession ID: NP_001052896) with available sequence features displayed 100 % identity with query cover of 99 %. Results suggest the non-synonymous variant at position 436 (Accession ID: TBGI204002) lies in FAD-binding domain and nsSNV at position 342 (Accession ID: TBGI203998) lies in periphery of NADP. The SNPs were also analyzed for the deleterious effect by PANTHER subPSEC scores and I-mutant score, and it was postulated that SNPs would be hampering on biological as well as molecular function of FRO 1 gene of rice. A cutoff of -3 corresponds to a 50 % probability that a score is deleterious. From this, the probability that a given variant will cause a deleterious effect on protein function is estimated by P deleterious, such that a subPSEC score of -4 corresponds to a P deleterious of 0.79. Hence, to study the phenotypic consequences of variant TBGI204002, we performed comparative molecular docking studies of native modeled protein and protein with induced mutation as receptors and FAD as ligand to be utilized for binding. The docking process was performed by AutoDock 4.2 software with Lamarckian Genetic algorithm as computational algorithm. Results suggest binding energies are higher in case of mutation-induced protein which suggests presence of variant TBGI204002 enhances binding of FAD ligand at FAD-binding domain site. In case of TBGI203998, similar comparative docking procedure was performed with FAD as binding ligand, which suggests presence of variant does not impact FAD binding at the domain site. We revealed impact of SNPs on the protein structure and its function using sequence-based tools.

International audience; This article describes the motivation, origin and evolution of the student symposia series organised by the ISCB Student Council. The meeting series started thirteen years ago in Madrid and has spread to four continents. The article concludes with the highlights of the most recent edition of annual Student Council Symposium held in conjunction with the 25th Conference on Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology and the 16th European Conference on Computational Biology, in Prague, in July 2017.

Regional Student Groups are groups established and managed by the ISCB-Student Council in different regions of the world. The article highlights some of the initiatives and management lessons from our 'top-performing' Spotlight Regional Student Groups (RSGs), RSG-Argentina and RSG-UK, for the current year (2016). In addition, it details some of the operational hurdles faced by RSGs and possible solutions. Fil: Shome, Sayane. Iowa State University; Estados Unidos Fil: Meysman, Pieter. Universiteit Antwerp; Bélgica Fil: Parra, Rodrigo Gonzalo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina. Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry; Alemania Fil: Monzón, Alexander. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. Departamento de Ciencia y Tecnología; Argentina Fil: Palopoli, Nicolás. Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. Departamento de Ciencia y Tecnología; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires. Fundación Instituto Leloir. Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas de Buenos Aires; Argentina Fil: White, Benjamen. Earlham Institute; Reino Unido Fil: Rahman, Farzana. University of South Wales; Reino Unido Fil: Hassan, Mehedi. University of South Wales; Reino Unido Fil: Özkeserli, Zeynep. Acibadem University; Turquía Fil: Ashano, Efejiro. National Biotechnology Development Agency; Nigeria. Covenant University; Nigeria Fil: Hughitt, V. Keith. University of Maryland; Estados Unidos Fil: Uzair Khan, Muhammad. CECOS University of Information Technology and Emerging Sciences; Pakistán Fil: Murphy, Denis J.. University of South Wales; Reino Unido

Background EPHB2 (Ephrin Receptor B2) are instrumental in signaling pathways like MAPK mediating tumour suppression, progenitor cell proliferation etc. [1,2]. Previous research has investigated the possibility that disrupted EphB2NMDA R binding is relevant to the development of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), a condition that is characterized by severe synaptic impairment. Hence it can be inferred the role of EPHB2 and associated single nucleotide polymorphism is essential in studying the signaling pathways as well as neurodevelopmental processes associated with it. Studying the impact of the protein and the associated non-synonymous SNPS can also decode the role of genetic variations with respect to the role of the protein in the signaling pathway as well as susceptibility towards the disease. Materials and methods The protein sequence data for EPHB2 [Accession ID: P29323.5] was collected from NCBI protein sequence database. SNP information for the computational analysis was obtained from NCBI dbSNP and Ensemble Gene Browser. Structure of EPHB2 protein was obtained from RCSB Protein Data Bank. (PDB ID:2QBX). A point mutation in native EPHB2 protein at position 80, Arginine (R) to Histidine (H) was introduced using SPDB Viewer package (Figure 1). We used SIFT, Polyphen, PhD-SNP and MutPred tools in order to examine the lethal nsSNPs occurring in the EPHB2 coding region. We filtered the most pathological mutation by combining the scores of then above servers. We implemented SNP Effect 4.0 to examine the possible phenotypic consequences at molecular, cellular, and individual level. Volume of the recep

Background BCL2 and Bax are two members of BCL2 family which is responsible for the regulation of apotosis [1,2]. BCL2 protein duels with its counteracting twin, a partner known as Bax (Figure 1). When Bax is in excess, cells execute a death command. When BCL2 dominates, the program is inhibited and cells survive. The intent is to propose a drug complex which aids in regulation of the BCL2 and Bax levels, aiding in treatment of autism. Navitoclax is known drug responsible for inhibiting BCL2 production for the treatment of cancer. We suggest a drug formulation of navitoclax with a Bax channel locker. Materials and methods The structures of Navitoclax (Pubchem ID : 923564-51-6) and Bax channel locker (Pubchem ID :335165-68-9) were taken from Pubchem database. Their binding affinity and energies with target components were analysed using Autodock 4.0.The active site residues in the target proteins BCL2 (Figure 2) and BAX were determined by literature studies and using CastP and Sp align software. The admet properties and pharmacological properties of the drug were calculated using Discovery studio software.

As part of the International Society for Computational Biology Student Council (ISCB-SC), Regional Student Groups (RSGs) have helped organise workshops in the emerging fields of bioinformatics and computational biology. Workshops are a great way for students to gain hands-on experience and rapidly acquire knowledge in advanced research topics where curriculum-based education is yet to be developed. RSG workshops have improved dissemination of knowledge of the latest bioinformatics techniques and resources among student communities and young scientists, especially in developing nations. This article highlights some of the benefits and challenges encountered while running RSG workshops. Examples cover a variety of subjects, including introductory bioinformatics and advanced bioinformatics, as well as soft skills such as networking, career development, and socializing. The collective experience condensed in this article is a useful starting point for students wishing to organise their own tailor-made workshops.

Poster for the 5th International Workshop on Bio-Design Automation London UK 2013

Poster for the 5th International Workshop on Bio-Design Automation London UK 2013

Poster for the 5th International Workshop on Bio-Design Automation London UK 2013

One of the key regulatory proteins in apoptosis, B-Cell Lymphoma 2 and its family exhibit irregular levels in autistic cerebellum. The objective of this research study is to formulate a drug which aids in regulation of the protein expression levels of B-cell CLL/lymphoma 2 (BCL-2) family. A novel drug was designed with Navitoclax and BAX Channel inhibitor as primary components. The novel drug displayed satisfactory binding properties with the regulatory proteins. The novel drug displayed non-carcinogenic and nonmutagenic properties when tested with TOPKAT pipeline. Computational analysis suggested some symptoms of mild irritancy and predicted drug as not readily aerobic biodegradable. The entire set of calculated absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicity (ADMET) and the pharmacological properties of the drug suggest it can be tested for experimental studies as a candidate drug.