NCBI events at the Bioinformatics Open Science Conference 2021 (BOSC 2021)

Come visit us virtually to learn about new NCBI data access, tools and best practices at the Bioinformatics Open Science Conference part of the ISMB/ECCB online conference from July 29 – 30, 2021. We will be presenting virtual posters on NCBI resources, offering a Birds of a Feather discussion, and participating in the BOSC (CoFest) following the conference where you can take part in a hands-on evaluation of ElasticBLAST.

NCBI Posters, July 29, 2021, 11:20 – 12:20 PM EDT

All posters will be presented on Thursday afternoon. You can see complete abstracts on the ISMB/ECCB BOSC schedule.

Nuala O’Leary will talk about NCBI Datasets, a new resource for fast, easy access to NCBI sequence data. You will learn about the new interface and new tools to access reference genomes, genes, and orthologs using web-based and programmatic tools.

Adelaide Rhodes will present Open access NCBI cloud resources to accelerate scientific insights where you can learn about recent developments in transferring > 20 petabytes of NCBI Sequence Read Archive (SRA) data to the cloud.

Deacon Sweeney will describe the web RAPT service for assembling and annotating bacterial genomes at the click of a button in RAPT, The Read assembly and Annotation Pipeline Tool: building a prokaryotic genome annotation package for users of all backgrounds.

Roberto Vera Alvarez will talk about best practices for using cloud tools for transcriptomics in his poster Transcriptome annotation in the cloud: complexity, best practices, and cost.

Greg Boratyn will discuss improvements to the BLAST-based short read aligner, Magic-Blast, in Recent improvements in Magic-BLAST 1.6.

Visit Christiam Camacho’s poster ElasticBLAST: Using the power of the cloud to speed up science to get an introduction to ElasticBLAST, a Kubernetes-based approach for high throughput BLAST tasks. Join us following the conference in the CoFest to try out ElasticBLAST yourself and provide input. See the section on the CoFest below and our companion post.

Birds of a Feather, July 29, 2021, 11:20 – 12:20 PM EDT

We will host a Birds of Feather public feedback session on Thursday, where you can provide feedback and participate in discussions on all aspects of NCBI’s new data access options: NCBI Datasets, SRA, BLAST, and the Genome Data Viewer (GDV) — our genome browser for sequence visualization. We welcome your input! Come and see us!

CollaborationFest (CoFest), July 31 – August 1, 2021

The ElasticBlast team will attend the BOSC CoFest following the conference. Sign up to participate on July 31 and August 1 to get an in-depth orientation and opportunity to test the capabilities of ElasticBlast on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. You do not have to register for the conference to attend the CoFest. See our post on the CoFest for more information.

Participating labs contribute over 70 tests for COVID-19 to the NIH Genetic Testing Registry

During the COVID-19 pandemic, an often-heard refrain in the arena of public health was “Testing, testing, testing!”. Testing for the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in patients with symptoms or potential exposure, or for the presence of antibodies to the virus in patients who had recovered from the disease, took on vital importance in efforts to curb its spread. Last fall, the NIH Genetic Testing Registry (GTR) expanded its scope to include molecular and serology tests for microorganisms impacting human health and disease. It now contains 70+ tests for COVID-19.

There are 54 molecular genetic tests that detect viral RNA from individual samples or pools using nucleic acid amplification technologies. While most of the tests detect the SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA alone, 8 tests detect multiple bacterial or viral markers as part of a panel. Two tests detect viral variants in a targeted variant analysis of the whole viral genome. Sixteen serologic tests detect antibodies to SARS-CoV-2.

Continue reading “Participating labs contribute over 70 tests for COVID-19 to the NIH Genetic Testing Registry” →

New RefSeq annotations for human, zebra finch, great white shark and more!

In May and June, the NCBI Eukaryotic Genome Annotation Pipeline released new annotations in RefSeq for 27 organisms.

This release includes new annotations for human, zebra finch, golden eagle, sea urchin, snowfinch, Arctic fox, clawed frog, great white shark, and more:

Continue reading “New RefSeq annotations for human, zebra finch, great white shark and more!” →

RefSeq release 207 is available!

RefSeq release 207 is now available online, from the FTP site and through NCBI’s Entrez programming utilities, E-utilities.

This full release incorporates genomic, transcript, and protein data available as of July 12, 2021, and contains 285,425,070 records, including 209,035,492 proteins, 39,039,901 RNAs, and sequences from 112,462 organisms. The release is provided in several directories as a complete dataset and also as divided by logical groupings. Continue reading “RefSeq release 207 is available!” →

Introducing the new NCBI Datasets Genomes page

The updated NCBI Datasets Genomes page now has genome data for all domains of life, including bacterial and viral genomes.

The genomes table (Figure 1) now offers filters for:

Reference genomes — switch it on to only show reference or representative genomes
Annotated — switch it on to only show annotated genomes
Assembly level — use the assembly level slider to select higher-quality genomes
Year released — use the slider to limit your results to recent genomes

In addition, the new Actions column connects you to NCBI’s Genome Data Viewer, BLAST, and Assembly. The Text filter box lets you search by the name of the assembly, species/infraspecies, or submitter.Figure 1. The new Datasets Genomes page with primate assemblies showing the STATUS switches (reference genomes, annotated); expanded filters section with ASSEMBLY LEVEL and YEAR RELEASED sliding selectors; and the Actions column menu with access to Assembly details, BLAST, the Genome Data Viewer, and Download options. Continue reading “Introducing the new NCBI Datasets Genomes page” →

July 28 Webinar: An update on native NCBI password retirement

The password you set at NCBI to log in to My NCBI, SciENcv, My Bibliography, or submit data to NCBI, will be going away. You will soon have to link a third-party login (e.g. eRA Commons, Google, Microsoft, or a university or institutional log in) to access your account. Join us on July 28, 2021 at 12PM eastern time to learn learn what you need to do link a third-party login using our Wizards, get an updated timeline for the transition third-party logins, and get answers to your questions.

Date and time: Wed, July 28, 2021 12:00 PM – 12:45 PM EDT
Register

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email with information about attending the webinar. A few days after the live presentation, you can view the recording on the NCBI webinars playlist on the NLM YouTube channel. You can learn about future webinars on the Webinars and Courses page.

BLAST+ 2.12.0 now available with more efficient multithreaded searches

BLAST+ 2.12.0 programs feature better multithreaded searches and support a different threading model, threading by query, that can be more efficient in some situations. The new release is also fully compatible the increase in the numeric range for the GI identifier, which will take effect in the nucleotide database later this year. The list below shows details of the new features and bug fixes. You can download the new BLAST release from the FTP site.

Continue reading “BLAST+ 2.12.0 now available with more efficient multithreaded searches” →

Codeathon from the Couch — NCBI North Texas Workshops and Codeathon 2021

The NCBI North Texas Workshops and Codeathon 2021 finished with a three-day online, interactive codeathon. Codeathons help solve biological problems by fostering collaborative environments for attendees to create new computational tools and are a great learning, networking, and project development experience for scientists at any stage in their career. One team leader from the NCBI North Texas Codeathon described them as, “great platforms that bring together people from varied backgrounds to solve problems”. He further explained the importance of collaborating through codeathons by stating, “they provide the missing link by connecting clinicians with basic scientists, engineers, and computational experts”.

Sample materials generated by teams at the NCBI North Texas Codeathon held May 18^th-20^th.

Continue reading “Codeathon from the Couch — NCBI North Texas Workshops and Codeathon 2021” →