News
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Swarm v3: towards tera-scale amplicon clustering
Aug. 16, 2021 2:43 PM
"The new version 3 of the Swarm software is a major step towards clustering extremely large amplicon datasets used in microbiome studies. It includes extensive improvements that make it about 10 times faster and twice as memory efficient as the previous version. Swarm makes it possible to cluster a huge dataset in reasonable time at one go, unlike other approaches where a large dataset needs to analysed in smaller portions," says Torbjørn Rognes, professor at the Centre for Bioinformatics.
The work was carried out in an international collaboration and was recently published in the journal Bioinformatics. The open-source tool is freely available on GitHub.
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A reference material for the genetic structure of Norway published
Aug. 11, 2021 8:49 AM
In a collaboration with deCODE Genetics, we were able to genotype a relatively representative cohort of the Norwegian population to generate a reference material for the genetic structure of Norway. “Somewhat surprisingly, no such study has previously characterized the genetic structure of Norway to any significant detail, and we are thrilled to provide this for future reference”, says professor Eivind Hovig. Among the novel findings is that historically there has been more limited genetic variation in the southern Norwegian counties of Agder, Telemark and Rogaland, indicating a level of genetic isolation.
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Reporting the clinical impact of germline variants in human cancers
Aug. 10, 2021 11:41 AM
“Many human cancers are rooted in rare germline mutations, but identifying them and understanding their clinical impact is a considerable challenge. We have created a comprehensive bioinformatics workflow that successfully prioritizes cancer-predisposing DNA variants detected from high-throughput sequencing. Importantly, our reporting tool also highlights any variant with implications for prognosis or treatment options”, says Eivind Hovig, Professor and leader of the Centre for Bioinformatics.
The study, financed by the Norwegian Research Council, was recently published in the International Journal of Cancer and can be found here. The bioinformatics tool is named Cancer Predisposition Sequencing Reporter (CPSR), and was established in collaboration with researchers at Oslo University Hospital and researchers from the University of Melbourne in Australia.
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Ten simple rules for quick and dirty scientific programming
June 16, 2021 10:48 AM
“We argue that a quick and dirty style of programming is not necessarily bad: the quicker you code, the more scientific ideas you can potentially test and publish. However, if coding quickly means coding sloppily, then bugs, false conclusions, and article retractions may be the result. Furthermore, if your code becomes increasingly complex and messy over time, then adapting it to new tasks will be difficult, potentially stalling your research progress” says Geir Kjetil Sandve, Professor at the Centre for Bioinformatics.
The study was recently published in the popular ten simple rules series of PLOS Computational Biology and can be found here.
Events
Sven Furberg Seminars in Bioinformatics and Statistical Genomics
Dr. Bart Deplancke, Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland, will present his current research.
The latest publications from the Centre
Novel insights into stroke risk beyond resting and maximal bicycle exercise systolic blood pressure
J Hypertens, 39 (10), 2022-2029
DOI 10.1097/HJH.0000000000002894, PubMed 34102659
Characterising the shared genetic determinants of bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and risk-taking
Transl Psychiatry, 11 (1), 466
DOI 10.1038/s41398-021-01576-4, PubMed 34497263
Genome-wide analysis reveals genetic overlap between alcohol use behaviors, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and identifies novel shared risk loci
Addiction (in press)
DOI 10.1111/add.15680, PubMed 34472679
Software developed at the centre
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CARMA
Software for extraction of DNA copy number motifs in cancer
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Chimeraviz
Chimeraviz manages data from fusion gene finders and provides useful visualization tools.
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CompAIRR
Comparison of Adaptive Immune Receptor Repertoires
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Genomic HyperBrowser
Statistical methodology and computing power to handle a variety of biological inquires on genomic datasets
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immuneML
immuneML: an ecosystem for machine learning analysis of adaptive immune receptor repertoires
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ScaR
ScaR — a tool for sensitive detection of known fusion transcripts: establishing prevalence of fusions in testicular germ cell tumors
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Swarm
Highly-scalable and high-resolution amplicon clustering
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VSEARCH
A versatile open source tool for metagenomics
Collaborations
ELIXIR Norway
ELIXIR Norway is the Norwegian national node of ELIXIR, the pan-European infrastructure for biological information, supporting life science research and its translation to medicine, environment, the bioindustries and society. This organization is a virtual organization where the Center of Bioinformatics hosts the regional Oslo node. It participates to the national help-desk user support, and in that activity also collaborates and coordinates closely with the Helse Sør-Øst-funded Bioinformatics Core facility.
Partners and collaborating organizational units
