Development

This post is about paired end data (FASTA or FASTQ) and manipulating it with Biopython’s Bio.SeqIO module (see also FASTQ conversions & speeding up FASTQ). [Read More]

Running a bit late on this, so just a quick note that the first alphas for BioPerl-Run, BioPerl-DB, and BioPerl-Network have been uploaded to CPAN: BioPerl-Run BioPerl-DB BioPerl-Network They can also be downloaded from the BioPerl website: http://bioperl.org/DIST/RC/ This is the first run where we’ve switched to a regular Module::Build installation, so expect some initial bumps! There are a few initial problems that I plan on addressing soon, the main one being none of the modules are assigned version numbers (this may be a consequence of not pulling the version from a specific module). [Read More]

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of BioPerl 1.6.1, the latest release of BioPerl’s core code. You can grab it here: Via CPAN: http://search.cpan.org/~cjfields/BioPerl-1.6.1/ Via the BioPerl website: http://bioperl.org/DIST/BioPerl-1.6.1.tar.bz2 http://bioperl.org/DIST/BioPerl-1.6.1.tar.gz http://bioperl.org/DIST/BioPerl-1.6.1.zip The PPM for Windows should also finally be available this week, ActivePerl problems permitting (we will post more information when it becomes available). Tons of bug fixes and changes have been incorporated into this release. For a more complete change list please see the ‘Changes’ file included with the distribution. [Read More]

Biopython 1.51 onward includes support for Sanger, Solexa and Illumina 1.3+ FASTQ files in Bio.SeqIO, which allows a lot of neat tricks very concisely. For example, the tutorial ( PDF) has examples finding and removing primer or adaptor sequences. However, because the Bio.SeqIO interface revolves around SeqRecord objects there is often a speed penalty. For example for FASTQ files, the quality string gets turned into a list of integers on parsing, and then re-encoded back to ASCII on writing. [Read More]

The release of Biopython 1.52 earlier this week marked the end of an era, it was our last release using CVS for source code control. As of now, Biopython is using a git repository, hosted on github.com who kindly provide git hosting for open source projects free of charge. The BioRuby project have been using github for some time, so we are in good company. Our existing OBF hosted CVS repository will be maintained in the short to medium term as a backup, but will not be updated. [Read More]

We are pleased to announce the availability of Biopython 1.52, a new stable release of the Biopython library. It may only have been one month since the last release, but in that time we’ve added enough useful features to warrant a new release. In particular, Biopython 1.52 includes more substantial support for population genetics, and adds new functions that will be useful for people working with next generation sequencing. Tiago Antao’s work on the Population Genetics module brings a command line wrapper for GenePop which allows the estimation of F-statistics, null allele frequencies and migration rates as well as tests for isolation by distance (IBD) and deviation from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. [Read More]

As per Peter’s recent post we are using this space to show of a couple of the new features in Biopython 1.52 before it is released. In this post we’ll look at the new convert() function that both Bio.SeqIO and Bio.AlignIO will get in Biopython 1.52. No one has ever complained that bioinformatics just doesn’t have enough file formats - you probably frequently find yourself converting sequence files to suit particular applications with Bio. [Read More]

The forthcoming release of Biopython 1.52 will include a couple of nice improvements to the Bio.SeqIO module, and here we’re going to introduce the new index function. This will of course be covered in the Biopython Tutorial & Cookbook ( PDF) once this code is released. Suppose you have a large sequence file with many many individual sequences in it. This could be next generation sequence data for example, maybe a FASTQ, FASTA or QUAL file. [Read More]