Capitol Tech U Doctoral Presentation - April 2024.pptx
Bioinformatics&Databases.ppt
1. Unit 2.4: Bioinformatics and Databases
Objectives: At the end of this unit, students will
-have been introduced to ome basic concepts and considerations
in bioinformatics and computational biology
-know what a relational database is
-understand why databases are useful for dealing with large
amounts of data
-have been introduced to some of the major online biological
databases and their features
-have gained experience in extracting data from online
biological databases
Reading:
Stein, L.D. 2003. Integrating biological databases. Nat Rev
Genet 4: 337-345.
2. Assignments:
Read the excerpts from Current Protocols in
Bioinformatics on Entrez and the UCSC Browser.
Follow along with the examples in Protocol 1 of each
section.
3. “Genomic research makes it possible to look at biological
phenomena on a scale not previously possible: all genes in a
genome, all transcripts in a cell, all metabolic processes in a
tissue. One feature that all of these approaches share is the
production of massive quantities of data. GenBank, for example,
now accommodates >1010 nucleotides of nucleic acid sequence
data and continues to more than double in size every year. New
technologies for assaying gene expression patterns, protein
structure, protein-protein interactions, etc., will provide even
more data. How to handle these data, make sense of them, and
render them accessible to biologists working on a wide variety of
problems is the challenge facing bioinformatics—an emerging
field that seeks to integrate computer science with applications
derived from molecular biology. We are swimming in a rapidly
rising sea of data. . . how do we keep from drowning?”
—Roos (2001). Science. 291:1260
4. Bioinformatics is one solution to this problem—a way of coping
with large data sets and making sense of genomic-scale data. But
like with most approaches, it is important to have a sense of what
types of things are possible or not possible to achieve using
bioinformatics approaches.
Learn to know the difference—Bioinformatics is:
• sometimes a time-saver: you can automate common and/or
repetative tasks, and parse large files
• sometimes essential: how else would you analyze results from a
25,000 gene microarray experiment
• sometimes not helpful/not useful/unimportant: it can be easier
and more straightforward to do a simple wet-lab experiment than
to devise an elaborate computational approach
• sometimes not possible: computers can’t do everything!
5. It’s also important to have an understanding of the underlying concepts
and algorithms in bioinformatics, just as it’s important to understand the
basic concepts and chemical basis of molecular biology, or genetics, or
biochemistry, if you’re going to do wet-lab experiments.
“Many biologists are comfortable using algorithms like BLAST or
GenScan without really understanding how the underlying algorithm
works. . . . BLAST solves a particular problem only approximately and it
has certain systematic weaknesses. . . . Users that do not know how
BLAST works might misapply the algorithm or misinterpret the results it
returns.” [Pevzner (2004). Bioinformatics 20(14): 2159-2161.]
9. Algorithms
• An algorithm is a sequence of instructions that
one must perform in order to solve a well-
formulated problem
• First you must identify exactly what the problem
is!
• A problem describes a class of computational
tasks. A problem instance is one particular input
from that task
• In general, you should design your algorithms to
work for any instance of a problem (although
there are cases in which this is not possible)
10. Computer technology: memory, CPU speed, cost
• Dramatic improvements on yearly basis
• We do a lot of our work using desktop Macs out of the box
- 2 quad core 2.8 GHz processors, 500 GB disk space, 4 GB RAM for
~$3000
- 2 quad core 3.0 GHz processors, 2.5 TB disk space, 8 GB RAM for
~$6000
• CPU speed vs. memory: which is more important?
- for protein structure, might need many calculations but limited
memory
- for genome searches, might have few calculations but huge amounts
to store in memory
• Reading from memory is several orders of magnitude faster
than reading from disk
11. Databases
• What is a database?
– A collection of related data elements
• tables
• columns (fields)
• rows (records)
– Records retrieved using a query language
– Database technology is well established
12. Tables (entitites)
•basic elements of information to track, e.g., gene, organism,
sequence, citation
Columns (fields)
•attributes of tables, e.g. for citation table, title, journal,
volume, author
Rows (records)
•actual data
•whereas fields describe what data is stored, the rows of a table
are where the actual data is stored
Databases
13. A very simple form of (non-electronic) database is a filing
cabinet. In the filing cabinet, you can store many different records
(sheets of paper), each containing mulitple data elements.
Example: a filing cabinet of invoices
•the filing cabinet is a table
•the columns are the fields of data on the individual
invoices (customer, product, price, quantity)
•the rows (records) are the individual invoices
The biggest problem with a filing cabinet is that you can only
store your data one way (e.g., in alphabetical order of the
customer’s last name), and there’s no good way of searching your
files based on any other criteria (say, by product ordered).
Databases
14. Example: a filing cabinet of invoices
•the filing cabinet is a table
•the columns are the fields of data on the individual invoices
(customer, product, price, quantity)
•the rows (records) are the individual invoices
Databases
A flat-file database—a spreadsheet—is the electronic
analogue to the filing cabinet:
This is more easily searchable than a paper file cabinet, but
is still very unwieldly, especially for large amounts of data.
15. Databases
Suppose you now want to be able to send an advertisement to
every customer who bought the Acme Snow Machine. You could
add a column to your table that includes the address for each
customer, but this is very inefficient—you will keep repeating
information for customers (like Elmer) who make multiple
purchases. Plus, as the number of rows and columns grows,
searching a flat file becomes more and more time consuming.
Also, it is difficult to construct complex queries (e.g., customers
who bought the Snow Machine and who like opera or live in the
Southwest desert)
16. Relational Databases
The solution is the relational database. A relational database contains multiple
tables and defines the relationships between them. Thus you might also have a
customer table and a product table, like this:
18. Relational Databases
Now only three items need to be filled in for an invoice: a customer, a
product, and a quantity. The price and total fields can be filled in
automatically: price from a product_table “lookup” and total by “calculation”
(price * qty).
19. Relational Databases
Now we can send our advertisement to every customer who bought the Acme
Snow Machine by getting their addresses from the customer_table table.
To do this, we use Structured Query Language (SQL):
SELECT customer_table.name, customer_table.address
FROM customer_table, invoice
WHERE invoice.product = “Acme Snow Machine”
AND invoice.customer = customer_table.name
20. Relational Databases
We can also make our complex query
“customers who bought the Snow Machine and who like opera or live in the
Southwest desert)”:
SELECT customer_table.name
FROM customer_table, invoice
WHERE invoice.product = “Snow Machine”
AND invoice.customer = customer_table.name
AND (customer_table.notes LIKE %opera% OR
cutomer_table.address = “Southwest desert”)
21. Online Databases
When you query an online database, your query is translated
into SQL, the database is interrogated, and the answer displayed
on your web browser.
Your computer and
browser (the “client”)
Software to receive
and translate the
instructions you enter
into your browser (on
the “server”)
The database itself
Image source: David Lane and Hugh E. Williams. Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL. O’Reilly (2002).
22. Biological Databases
•Over 1000 biological databases
•Vary in size, quality, coverage, level of interest
•Many of the major ones covered in the annual
Database Issue of Nucleic Acids Research
•What makes a good database?
•comprehensiveness
•accuracy
•is up-to-date
•good interface
•batch search/download
•API (web services, DAS, etc.)
23. “The Ten Commandments When Using
Servers”
•Remember the server, the database, and the program version used
•Write down sequence identification numbers
•Write down the program parameters
•Save your internet results the right way
(use screenshots or PDFs if necessary)
•Databases are not like good wine
(use up-to-date builds)
•Use local installs when it becomes necessary
Source: Bioinformatics for Dummies
24. “Ten Important Bioinformatics Databases”
GenBank www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov nucleotide sequences
Ensembl www.ensembl.org human/mouse genome (and others)
PubMed www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov literature references
NR www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov protein sequences
SWISS-PROT www.expasy.ch protein sequences
InterPro www.ebi.ac.uk protein domains
OMIM www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov genetic diseases
Enzymes www.chem.qmul.ac.uk enzymes
PDB www.rcsb.org/pdb/ protein structures
KEGG www.genome.ad.jp metabolic pathways
Source: Bioinformatics for Dummies
25. NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology
Information)
• over 30 databases including
GenBank, PubMed, OMIM, and
GEO
• Access all NCBI resources via
Entrez
(www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Entrez/)
26.
27.
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30.
31.
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35.
36.
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38. GenBank® is the NIH genetic
sequence database, an annotated
collection of all publicly available
DNA sequences. There are
approximately 65,369,091,950
bases in 61,132,599 sequence
records in the traditional GenBank
divisions and 80,369,977,826
bases in 17,960,667 sequence
records in the WGS division as of
August 2006.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/GenBank
40. The Reference Sequence (RefSeq) database is
a non-redundant collection of richly annotated
DNA, RNA, and protein sequences from diverse
taxa. Each RefSeq represents a single, naturally
occurring molecule from one organism. The goal
is to provide a comprehensive, standard dataset
that represents sequence information for a
species. It should be noted, though, that RefSeq
has been built using data from public archival
databases only.
RefSeq biological sequences (also known as
RefSeqs) are derived from GenBank records
but differ in that each RefSeq is a synthesis of
information, not an archived unit of primary
research data. Similar to a review article in the
literature, a RefSeq represents the consolidation
of information by a particular group at a
particular time.
45. The MOD squad
•Most model organism communities have established organism-
specific Model Organism Databases (MODs)
•Many of these databases have different schemas and implementations,
although there is movement toward harmonizing many features via the
Generic Model Organism Database project.
46. The MOD squad
SGD: yeast (www.yeastgenome.org)
Wormbase: C. elegans (www.wormbase.org)
FlyBase: Drosophila (flybase.bio.indiana.edu)
Zfin: zebrafish (zfin.org)
and many others (Xenopus, Dictyostelium,
Arabisdopsis…)
47. The MOD squad: what about Homo sapiens?
There is not a true “model organism” database for Human.
The two main sources of genome information that have
evolved are the UCSC Genome Browser and Ensembl.
EnsEMBL www.ensembl.org
UCSC genome.ucsc.edu
