Advanced Practical Applications of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics: PACBB15

[Excerpt] The success of Bioinformatics in recent years has been prompted by research in Molecular Biology and Molecular Medicine in several initiatives. These initiatives gave rise to an exponential increase in the volume and diversification of data, including next generation sequencing data and their annotations, high-throughput experimental (omics) data, biomedical literature, among many others. Systems Biology is a related research area that has been replacing the reductionist” view that dominated Biology research in the last decades, requiring the coordinated efforts of biological researchers with those related to data analysis, mathematical modeling, computer simulation and optimization. [...]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Dissimilar Symmetric Word Pairs in the Human Genome

In this work we explore the dissimilarity between symmetric word pairs, by comparing the inter-word distance distribution of a word to that of its reversed complement. We propose a new measure of dissimilarity between such distributions. Since symmetric pairs with different patterns could point to evolutionary features, we search for the pairs with the most dissimilar behaviour. We focus our study on the complete human genome and its repeat-masked version.Comment: Submitted 13-Feb-2017; accepted, after a minor revision, 17-Mar-2017; 11th International Conference on Practical Applications of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics, PACBB 2017, Porto, Portugal, 21-23 June, 201

SAD_BaSe: a blood bank data analysis software

Publicado em "6th International Conference on Practical Applications of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (ISBN : 978-3-642-28838-8)"The main goal of this project was to build a Web-based information system – SAD_BaSe – that monitors blood donations and the blood production chain in a user-friendly way. In particular, the system keeps track of several data indicators and supports their analysis, enabling the definition of collection and production strategies and, the measurement of quality indicators required by the Quality Management System of blood establishments. Data mining supports the analysis of donor eligibility criteria

5th International Conference on Practical Applications of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (PACBB 2011)

The growth in the Bioinformatics and Computational Biology fields over the last few years has been remarkable and the trend is to increase its pace. In fact, the need for computational techniques that can efficiently handle the huge amounts of data produced by the new experimental techniques in Biology is still increasing driven by new advances in Next Generation Sequencing, several types of the so called omics data and image acquisition, just to name a few. The analysis of the datasets that produces and its integration call for new algorithms and approaches from fields such as Databases, Statistics, Data Mining, Machine Learning, Optimization, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. Within this scenario of increasing data availability, Systems Biology has also been emerging as an alternative to the reductionist view that dominated biological research in the last decades. Indeed, Biology is more and more a science of information requiring tools from the computational sciences. In the last few years, we have seen the surge of a new generation of interdisciplinary scientists that have a strong background in the biological and computational sciences. In this context, the interaction of researchers from different scientific fields is, more than ever, of foremost importance boosting the research efforts in the field and contributing to the education of a new generation of Bioinformatics scientists. PACBB‘11 hopes to contribute to this effort promoting this fruitful interaction. PACBB'11 technical program included 50 papers from a submission pool of 78 papers spanning many different sub-fields in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. Therefore, the conference will certainly have promoted the interaction of scientists from diverse research groups and with a distinct background (computer scientists, mathematicians, biologists). The scientific content will certainly be challenging and will promote the improvement of the work that is being developed by each of the participants

Designing an ontology tool for the unification of biofilms data

Publicado em "8th International Conference on Practical Applications of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (PACBB 2014)"The description of biofilm features presents a conceptual and practical challenge. Biofilm studies often encompass multidisciplinary approaches from Biology, Chemistry, Medicine, Material Science and Engineering, among other fields. Standardising biofilm data is essential to be able to accomplish large-scale collaborative and complementary analysis. To define a common standard format to exchange the heterogeneous biofilm data, it is first necessary to define a set of minimum information for the documentation of biofilm experiments. Then, data should be organised and semantically integrated. This paper describes the first ontology designed to share structured vocabulary for the annotation of the general biofilm experimental workflow – the Biofilm Ontology (BO). This ontology is intended for the broad research community, including bench microbiologists, clinical researchers, clinicians, curators and bioinformaticians

Bringing named entity recognition on Drupal content management system

Publicado em "8th International Conference on Practical Applications of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (PACBB 2014)"Content management systems and frameworks (CMS/F) play a key role in Web development. They support common Web operations and provide for a number of optional modules to implement customized functionalities. Given the increasing demand for text mining (TM) applications, it seems logical that CMS/F extend their offer of TM modules. In this regard, this work contributes to Drupal CMS/F with modules that support customized named entity recognition and enable the construction of domain-specific document search engines. Implementation relies on well-recognized Apache Information Retrieval and TM initiatives, namely Apache Lucene, Apache Solr and Apache Unstructured Information Management Architecture (UIMA). As proof of concept, we present here the development of a Drupal CMS/F that retrieves biomedical articles and performs automatic recognition of organism names to enable further organism-driven document screening

A study on the robustness of strain optimization algorithms

5th International Conference on Practical Applications of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (PACBB 2011), ISBN 978-3-642-19913-4In recent years, there have been considerable advances in the use of genome-scale metabolic models to provide accurate phenotype simulation methods, which in turn enabled the development of efficient strain optimization algorithms for Metabolic Engineering. In this work, we address some of the limitations of previous studies regarding strain optimization algorithms, mainly its use of Flux Balance Analysis in the simulation layer.We perform a thorough analysis of previous results by relying on Flux Variability Analysis and on alternative methods for phenotype simulation, such as ROOM. This last method is also used in the simulation layer, as a basis for optimization, and the results obtained are also the target of thorough analysis and comparison with previous ones.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - project MIT-PT/BS-BB/0082/200

Networking the way towards antimicrobial combination therapies

Publicado em "8th International Conference on Practical Applications of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (PACBB 2014)"The exploration of new antimicrobial combinations is a pressing concern for Clinical Microbiology due to the growing number of resistant strains emerging in healthcare settings and in the general community. Researchers are screening agents with alternative modes of action and interest is rising for the potential of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). This work presents the first ever network reconstruction of AMP combinations reported in the literature fighting Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections. The network, containing 193 combinations of AMPs with 39 AMPs and 154 traditional antibiotics, is expected to help in the design of new studies, notably by unveiling different mechanisms of action and helping in the prediction of new combinations and synergisms. The challenges faced in the attempted text-mining approaches and other considerations regarding the manual curation of the data are pointed out, reflecting about the future automation of this type of reconstruction as means to widen the scope of analysis

A Rare Disease Patient Manager

ABSTRACT publicado: 6th International Conference on Practical Applications of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics (PACBB. Salamanca, 28-30 Março 2012The personal health implications behind rare diseases are seldom considered in widespread medical care. The low incidence rate and complex treatment process makes rare disease research an underrated field in the life sciences. However, it is in these particular conditions that the strongest relations between genotypes and phenotypes are identified. The rare disease patient manager, detailed in this manuscript, presents an innovative perspective for a patient-centric portal integrating genetic and medical data. With this strategy, patient’s digital records are transparently integrated and connected to wet-lab genetics research in a seamless working environment. The resulting knowledge base offers multiple data views, geared towards medical staff, with patient treatment and monitoring data; genetics researchers, through a custom locus-specific database; and patients, who for once play an active role in their treatment and rare diseases research

A systematic approach to the interrogation and sharing of standardised biofilm signatures

Publicado em "6th International Conference on Practical Applications of Computational Biology & Bioinformatics", ISBN 978-3-642-28838-8The study of microorganism consortia, also known as biofilms, is associated to a number of applications in biotechnology, ecotechnology and clinical domains. A public repository on existing biofilm studies would aid in the design of new studies as well as promote collaborative and incremental work. However, bioinformatics approaches are hampered by the limited access to existing data. Scientific publications summarise the studies whilst results are kept in researchers’ private ad hoc files. Since the collection and ability to compare existing data is imperative to move forward in biofilm analysis, the present work has addressed the development of a systematic computer-amenable approach to biofilm data organisation and standardisation. A set of in-house studies involving pathogens and employing different state-of-the-art devices and methods of analysis was used to validate the approach. The approach is now supporting the activities of BiofOmics, a public repository on biofilm signatures (http://biofomics.org).The authors thank, among others, Rosario Oliveira, Maria Joao Vieira, Idalina Machado, Nuno Cerca, Mariana Henriques, Pilar Teixeira, Douglas Monteiro, Melissa Negri, Susana Lopes, Carina Almeida and Helder Lopes, for submitting their data. The financial support from IBB-CEB, Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT) and European Community fund FEDER (Program COMPETE), project PTDC/SAU-ESA/646091/2006/FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-007480, are also gratefully acknowledged