Highlights - 7/30/2011

In the highlights section, I plan to add papers and news that I feel compelled to bookmark. When I manage to read those same papers or try out their algorithms, there will be a longer post. Please feel free to suggest any interesting link for our highlights section. Even an interesting blog post or Seqanswers thread will be good for us.

1. BGI plans to offer bioinformatics cloud service

“The world’s largest DNA-sequencing outfit is looking to the clouds. The BGI (formerly the Beijing Genomics Institute) this month announced plans to roll out its cloud computing capabilities, which it hopes will help it to dominate bioinformatics in the same way it does the world of sequencing.”

This is an impressive move by BGI. The day I started to use Amazon cloud, I felt there would be a need for cloud service customized for bioinformatics applications.

2. Extensive genomic and transcriptional diversity identified through massively parallel DNA and RNA sequencing of eighteen Korean individuals

I am more interested in this paper to check their bioinformatics approaches than the actual results.

3. Principal component analysis-based filtering improves detection for Affymetrix gene expression arrays

4. Sequence-specific error profile of Illumina sequencers

“We identified the sequence-specific starting positions of consecutive miscalls in the mapping of reads obtained from the Illumina Genome Analyser (GA)…..The two major sequence patterns that trigger this sequence-specific error (SSE) are: (i) inverted repeats and (ii) GGC sequences.”

5. Comparative studies of de novo assembly tools for next-generation sequencing technologies

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Yesterday we were in the Olympic national park and watched the beauty of nature expressed in many fascinating ways. One example that especially caught my eye was a giant tree growing on top of another deceased giant tree -