Compressed indexing data structures for biological sequences

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

The Longest Common Subsequence via Generalized Suffix Trees

Given two strings S1 and S 2, finding the longest common subsequence (LCS) is a classical problem in computer science. Many algorithms have been proposed to find the longest common subsequence between two strings. The most common and widely used method is the dynamic programming approach, which runs in quadratic time and takes quadratic space. Other algorithms have been introduced later to solve the LCS problem in less time and space. In this work, we present a new algorithm to find the longest common subsequence using the generalized suffix tree and directed acyclic graph.;The Generalized suffix tree (GST) is the combined suffix tree for a set of strings {lcub}S1, S 2, ..., Sn{rcub}. Both the suffix tree and the generalized suffix tree can be calculated in linear time and linear space. One application for generalized suffix tree is to find the longest common substring between two strings. But finding the longest common subsequence is not straight forward using the generalized suffix tree. Here we describe how we can use the GST to find the common substrings between two strings and introduce a new approach to calculate the longest common subsequence (LCS) from the common substrings. This method takes a different view at the LCS problem, shading more light at novel applications of the LCS. We also show how this method can motivate the development of new compression techniques for genome resequencing data

Algoritmos de compressão sem perdas para imagens de microarrays e alinhamento de genomas completos

Doutoramento em InformáticaNowadays, in the 21st century, the never-ending expansion of information is a major global concern. The pace at which storage and communication resources are evolving is not fast enough to compensate this tendency. In order to overcome this issue, sophisticated and efficient compression tools are required. The goal of compression is to represent information with as few bits as possible. There are two kinds of compression, lossy and lossless. In lossless compression, information loss is not tolerated so the decoded information is exactly the same as the encoded one. On the other hand, in lossy compression some loss is acceptable. In this work we focused on lossless methods. The goal of this thesis was to create lossless compression tools that can be used in two types of data. The first type is known in the literature as microarray images. These images have 16 bits per pixel and a high spatial resolution. The other data type is commonly called Whole Genome Alignments (WGA), in particularly applied to MAF files. Regarding the microarray images, we improved existing microarray-specific methods by using some pre-processing techniques (segmentation and bitplane reduction). Moreover, we also developed a compression method based on pixel values estimates and a mixture of finite-context models. Furthermore, an approach based on binary-tree decomposition was also considered. Two compression tools were developed to compress MAF files. The first one based on a mixture of finite-context models and arithmetic coding, where only the DNA bases and alignment gaps were considered. The second tool, designated as MAFCO, is a complete compression tool that can handle all the information that can be found in MAF files. MAFCO relies on several finite-context models and allows parallel compression/decompression of MAF files.Hoje em dia, no século XXI, a expansão interminável de informação é uma grande preocupação mundial. O ritmo ao qual os recursos de armazenamento e comunicação estão a evoluir não é suficientemente rápido para compensar esta tendência. De forma a ultrapassar esta situação, são necessárias ferramentas de compressão sofisticadas e eficientes. A compressão consiste em representar informação utilizando a menor quantidade de bits possível. Existem dois tipos de compressão, com e sem perdas. Na compressão sem perdas, a perda de informação não é tolerada, por isso a informação descodificada é exatamente a mesma que a informação que foi codificada. Por outro lado, na compressão com perdas alguma perda é aceitável. Neste trabalho, focámo-nos apenas em métodos de compressão sem perdas. O objetivo desta tese consistiu na criação de ferramentas de compressão sem perdas para dois tipos de dados. O primeiro tipo de dados é conhecido na literatura como imagens de microarrays. Estas imagens têm 16 bits por píxel e uma resolução espacial elevada. O outro tipo de dados é geralmente denominado como alinhamento de genomas completos, particularmente aplicado a ficheiros MAF. Relativamente às imagens de microarrays, melhorámos alguns métodos de compressão específicos utilizando algumas técnicas de pré-processamento (segmentação e redução de planos binários). Além disso, desenvolvemos também um método de compressão baseado em estimação dos valores dos pixéis e em misturas de modelos de contexto-finito. Foi também considerada, uma abordagem baseada em decomposição em árvore binária. Foram desenvolvidas duas ferramentas de compressão para ficheiros MAF. A primeira ferramenta, é baseada numa mistura de modelos de contexto-finito e codificação aritmética, onde apenas as bases de ADN e os símbolos de alinhamento foram considerados. A segunda, designada como MAFCO, é uma ferramenta de compressão completa que consegue lidar com todo o tipo de informação que pode ser encontrada nos ficheiros MAF. MAFCO baseia-se em vários modelos de contexto-finito e permite compressão/descompressão paralela de ficheiros MAF

Patterns and Signals of Biology: An Emphasis On The Role of Post Translational Modifications in Proteomes for Function and Evolutionary Progression

After synthesis, a protein is still immature until it has been customized for a specific task. Post-translational modifications (PTMs) are steps in biosynthesis to perform this customization of protein for unique functionalities. PTMs are also important to protein survival because they rapidly enable protein adaptation to environmental stress factors by conformation change. The overarching contribution of this thesis is the construction of a computational profiling framework for the study of biological signals stemming from PTMs associated with stressed proteins. In particular, this work has been developed to predict and detect the biological mechanisms involved in types of stress response with PTMs in mitochondrial (Mt) and non-Mt protein. Before any mechanism can be studied, there must first be some evidence of its existence. This evidence takes the form of signals such as biases of biological actors and types of protein interaction. Our framework has been developed to locate these signals, distilled from “Big Data” resources such as public databases and the the entire PubMed literature corpus. We apply this framework to study the signals to learn about protein stress responses involving PTMs, modification sites (MSs). We developed of this framework, and its approach to analysis, according to three main facets: (1) by statistical evaluation to determine patterns of signal dominance throughout large volumes of data, (2) by signal location to track down the regions where the mechanisms must be found according to the types and numbers of associated actors at relevant regions in protein, and (3) by text mining to determine how these signals have been previously investigated by researchers. The results gained from our framework enable us to uncover the PTM actors, MSs and protein domains which are the major components of particular stress response mechanisms and may play roles in protein malfunction and disease

Information Theory and Machine Learning

The recent successes of machine learning, especially regarding systems based on deep neural networks, have encouraged further research activities and raised a new set of challenges in understanding and designing complex machine learning algorithms. New applications require learning algorithms to be distributed, have transferable learning results, use computation resources efficiently, convergence quickly on online settings, have performance guarantees, satisfy fairness or privacy constraints, incorporate domain knowledge on model structures, etc. A new wave of developments in statistical learning theory and information theory has set out to address these challenges. This Special Issue, "Machine Learning and Information Theory", aims to collect recent results in this direction reflecting a diverse spectrum of visions and efforts to extend conventional theories and develop analysis tools for these complex machine learning systems

Holography

Holography - Basic Principles and Contemporary Applications is a collection of fifteen chapters, describing the basic principles of holography and some recent innovative developments in the field. The book is divided into three sections. The first, Understanding Holography, presents the principles of hologram recording illustrated with practical examples. A comprehensive review of diffraction in volume gratings and holograms is also presented. The second section, Contemporary Holographic Applications, is concerned with advanced applications of holography including sensors, holographic gratings, white-light viewable holographic stereograms. The third section of the book Digital Holography is devoted to digital hologram coding and digital holographic microscopy