Seemay Chou, Kira E. Poskanzer, and Peter S. Thuy-Boun
SC
TD
BF
WH
KP
+6
Published: May 31, 2022
If you’re interested in generating proteomics data but your organism of interest doesn’t have a sequenced genome to use as a reference database, it is straightforward and useful to collect a transcriptome instead.
Researchers studying any organism with genomic data can follow this simple walkthrough to create sets of barcoded probes for the multiplexed FISH technique called MERFISH. We’re sharing interactive code notebooks that can be adapted to design barcoded FISH probes for any species.
Building on the open-source platform PubPub, we’re sharing the first iteration of our publishing website. In addition to posting our first set of research pubs, we’re documenting our progress in developing this new system for sharing science and hope you’ll provide feedback.
Cells can be highly motile, moving in and out of a microscope’s field of view. Understanding complex life cycles is difficult without continuous observation. To overcome this challenge, we’ve developed a 3D-printed microchamber device to confine cells for long-term visualization.
Quantifying movement is a powerful window into cellular functions. However, cells can generate movement through a variety of complex mechanisms. Here, we generate a flexible framework for comparing an especially variable type of motility: cellular crawling.
The process of deciding whether a candidate actin homolog represents a “true” actin is tricky. We propose clear and data-driven criteria to define actin that highlight the functional importance of this protein while accounting for phylogenetic diversity.
Long protrusions from several microalgal species appear to help cells move, capture prey, transport mitochondria and chloroplasts, and more. Are they filopodia that evolved abilities more like other actin- or microtubule-based structures, or are they something new?
Adair L. Borges, Atanas Radkov, and Peter S. Thuy-Boun
TR
+1
Published: Dec 19, 2022
This pub details a process for phage amplification and concentration, DNA extraction, and HPLC and MS analysis of phage nucleosides. We optimized the approach with model phages known to use non-canonical nucleosides in their DNA, but plan to apply it for other phages.
The sourmash Python package produces many outputs that describe the content and similarity of sequencing data. We developed a new R package, sourmashconsumr, that lets a wider range of users easily load, analyze, and visualize those outputs in R.
seqqc is a Nextflow pipeline for quality control of short- or long-read sequencing data. It quickly assesses the quality of sequencing data so that it can be posted to a public repository before analysis for biological insights. Faster open data, faster knowledge for everyone.
Feridun Mert Celebi, Elizabeth A. McDaniel, and Taylor Reiter
SC
+2
Published: Mar 07, 2023
A workflow orchestration framework can streamline repeatable tasks and make workflows broadly usable. From several options, we chose Nextflow due to the ease of deploying across platforms, vibrant nf-core community, and ability to manage and monitor workflows with Nextflow Tower.
Adair L. Borges, Rachel J. Dutton, Elizabeth A. McDaniel, Taylor Reiter, and Emily C.P. Weiss
RD
TR
Published: Mar 11, 2023
How do you approach getting a microbiome set up in a new lab? We’re sharing protocols for how we collected, stocked, and sequenced a set of cheese rind microbiomes and generated a high-quality metagenomics resource for future computational studies.
Januka Athukoralage, Adair L. Borges, and Taylor Reiter
TR
Published: Mar 14, 2023
We struggled to isolate enough phage mRNA for HPLC as we searched for new nucleoside chemistries. Ribodepleting the abundant extracted rRNA introduced contaminating DNA, and we were still left with more bacterial mRNA than phage transcripts. We suggest an alternative approach.
Seemay Chou, Kira E. Poskanzer, MaryClare Rollins, and Peter S. Thuy-Boun
SC
TD
BF
KP
TR
+2
Published: Mar 30, 2023
We generated a whole-genome assembly for the lone star tick to serve as a reference for downstream efforts where whole-genome maps are required. We created our assembly using pooled DNA from salivary glands of 50 adult female ticks that we sequenced using PacBio HiFi reads.
Prachee Avasthi, Cameron Dale MacQuarrie, and Atanas Radkov
PA
BB
Published: Mar 29, 2023
Treating P. tricornutum cells with serine endopeptidases or certain cytoskeletal inhibitors induces the formation of cell wall-free protoplasts and suggests a novel role for actin and myosin in preventing protoplast formation.
We want to swiftly generate genome assemblies and produce quality control statistics to gauge the need for more curation. We built a Nextflow pipeline that assembles Illumina, Nanopore, or PacBio sequencing reads for a single organism and runs QC checks on the resulting assembly.
Seeing how microbes are organized within a community can inspire hypotheses about how species interact with each other. We used HiPR-FISH spatial imaging to look at the distribution of microbes within five distinct microbial communities growing on the surface of aged cheeses.
Even with many tools available, categorizing species is tough. We used data from Raman spectroscopy, a form of label-free imaging, to infer phylogenetic patterns among several dozen diverse microbial taxa, offering a non-destructive and rapid way to dissect species relationships.
Prachee Avasthi, Tara Essock-Burns, Galo Garcia III, Jase Gehring, David Q. Matus, David G. Mets, and Ryan York
PA
TE
+3
Published: May 03, 2023
Constraining motile microorganisms for live imaging often requires costly microfluidics or optical traps to keep them in view. We used patterned stamps and agar to make versatile, inexpensive “microchambers” and offer a way to predict the right chamber size for a given organism.
Genetic models of complex traits often rely on incorrect assumptions that drivers of trait variation are additive and independent. An information theoretic framework for analyzing trait variation can better capture phenomena like allelic dominance and gene-gene interaction.
Prachee Avasthi, Feridun Mert Celebi, and Elizabeth A. McDaniel
PA
BB
+3
Published: Oct 06, 2023
Only some bacteria accumulate substantial amounts of polyphosphate (polyP). We thought that despite sequence divergence, polyP synthesis enzymes in these bacteria might have similar structures. We found this is sometimes true but doesn’t fully explain the phenomenon.
We want to seamlessly process and summarize metagenomics data from Illumina or Nanopore technologies. We built a Nextflow workflow that handles common metagenomics tasks and produces useful outputs and intuitive visualizations.
Prachee Avasthi, Ben Braverman, Tara Essock-Burns, Galo Garcia III, Cameron Dale MacQuarrie, David Q. Matus, David G. Mets, and Ryan York
PA
BB
TE
+7
Published: Jun 23, 2023
We’re crossing C. reinhardtii and C. smithii algae for high-throughput genotype-phenotype mapping. In preparation, we’re comparing the parents to uncover unique species-specific phenotypes.
Adair L. Borges, Rachel J. Dutton, Elizabeth A. McDaniel, Atanas Radkov, Taylor Reiter, and Emily C.P. Weiss
RD
+4
Published: Jul 19, 2023
We sampled cheese microbial communities to discover bacteriophages with unusual genome chemistries. We isolated 114 bacterial host strains and 17 phages, and identified one phage with a probable arabinose hypermodification of hydroxymethylcytosine.
The increasingly large number of sequences available in public databases makes searches slower and slower. We clustered the NCBI non-redundant protein database and calculated taxonomic info for each cluster. This collapses similar sequences and reduces the database by over half.
Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) is the exchange of DNA between species. It can lead to the acquisition of new gene functions, so finding HGT events can reveal genome novelty. preHGT is a pipeline that uses multiple existing methods to quickly screen for transferred genes.
Prachee Avasthi, Rachel J. Dutton, Taylor Reiter, and Emily C.P. Weiss
PA
RD
KP
TR
Published: Jul 20, 2023
We are interested in neuroactive metabolites that influence animal behavior. Some fungi have horizontally transferred neuroactive metabolite pathways between species. We used a horizontal gene transfer detection pipeline to screen for novel fungal genes tied to neuroactivity.
Feridun Mert Celebi, Seemay Chou, Erin McGeever, Austin H. Patton, and Ryan York
SC
+4
Published: Sep 29, 2023
We want to find and use evolutionary innovations to solve present-day problems. We developed NovelTree, an efficient phylogenomic workflow that will empower us to decode the evolutionary traces of these innovations across the tree of life.
Rachel J. Dutton, Elizabeth A. McDaniel, and Manon Morin
RD
MM
DS
Published: Aug 15, 2023
Hoping to find proteins that alter physiology in useful ways, we screened venom data sets for toxins fused to domains with additional functionality. We identified candidates, but struggled to infer any novel functions, and none seem well-conserved across venomous species.
Adair L. Borges, Feridun Mert Celebi, Kira E. Poskanzer, and Taylor Reiter
RD
KP
TR
Published: Aug 25, 2023
We implemented a lightweight method to identify viruses in 342 human brain bulk and single-cell sequencing data sets, and identified two glioblastoma cells from a single patient that contained deltapolyomavirus sequences.
Prachee Avasthi, Brae M. Bigge, Feridun Mert Celebi, Jase Gehring, Erin McGeever, Atanas Radkov, and Dennis A. Sun
PA
BB
RD
+12
Published: Sep 29, 2023
The ProteinCartography pipeline identifies proteins related to a query protein using sequence- and structure-based searches, compares all protein structures, and creates a navigable map that can be used to look at protein relationships and make hypotheses about function.
It is commonly assumed that phenotypes arise from the cumulative effects of many independent genes. However, we show that by accounting for dependent and nonlinear biological relationships, we can generate models that predict phenotypes with great accuracy.
Feridun Mert Celebi, Keith Cheveralls, Seemay Chou, Tara Essock-Burns, and Galo Garcia III
KC
SC
TE
Published: Nov 17, 2023
We distilled label-free microscopy data by comparing and implementing feature-detection algorithms. Sobel and Laplacian methods outperformed pixel intensity variance in accuracy.
Adair L. Borges, Seemay Chou, and Megan L. Hochstrasser
SC
Published: Nov 02, 2023
Our "icebox" is where we share the projects that we've decided not to continue. We surveyed our company to understand resulting cultural shifts and how others are carrying our iced work forward.
Prachee Avasthi, Feridun Mert Celebi, Keith Cheveralls, Seemay Chou, Ilya Kolb, and David Q. Matus
PA
KC
SC
AH
+5
Published: Dec 02, 2023
Machine learning is a powerful tool for classifying images in a time series, such as the developmental stages of embryos. We built a classifier using only bright-field microscopy images to infer nematode embryonic stages at high throughput.
Oligo pools can contain millions of unique sequences, but they’re limited by length, error rate, and bias. We propose methods to scalably screen synthetic DNA libraries, so an individual researcher can obtain thousands of error-free synthetic DNA assemblies at low cost.