Search bioRxiv⌕ Search

Biology subjects

Ulyantsev, V.

Publications and source records attributed to Ulyantsev, V..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

MetaFX: feature extraction from whole-genome metagenomic sequencing data

MotivationMicrobial communities consist of thousands of microorganisms and viruses and have a tight connection with an environment, such as gut microbiota modulation of host body metabolism. However, the direct relationship between the presence of certain microorganism and host state often remains unknown. Toolkits using reference-based approaches are limited to microbes present in databases. Reference-free methods often require enormous resources for metagenomic assembly or results in many poorly interpretable features based on k-mers. ResultsHere we present MetaFX - an open-source library for feature extraction from whole-genome metagenomic sequencing data and classification of groups of samples. Using a large volume of metagenomic samples deposited in databases, MetaFX compares samples grouped by metadata criteria (e.g. disease, treatment, etc) and constructs genomic features distinct for certain types of communities. Features constructed based on statistical k-mer analysis and de Bruijn graphs partition. Those features are used in machine learning models for classification of novel samples. Extracted features can be visualised on de Bruijn graphs and annotated for providing biological insights. We demonstrate the utility of MetaFX by building classification models for 590 human gut samples with inflammatory bowel disease. Our results outperform the previous research disease prediction accuracy up to 17%, and improves classification results compared to taxonomic analysis by 9 {+/-} 10% on average. AvailabilityMetaFX is a feature extraction toolkit applicable for metagenomic datasets analysis and samples classification. The source code, test data, and relevant information for MetaFX are freely accessible at https://github.com/ctlab/metafx under the MIT License. Contactabivanov@itmo.ru

bioinformatics↗

GADMA2: more efficient and flexible demographic inference from genetic data

BackgroundInference of complex demographic histories is a source of information about events that happened in the past of studied populations. Existing methods for demographic inference typically require input from the researcher in the form of a parameterized model. With an increased variety of methods and tools, each with its own interface, the model specification becomes tedious and error-prone. Moreover, optimization algorithms used to find model parameters sometimes turn out to be inefficient, for instance, by being not properly tuned or highly dependent on a user-provided initialization. The open-source software GADMA addresses these problems, providing automatic demographic inference. It proposes a common interface for several likelihood engines and provides global parameters optimization based on a genetic algorithm. ResultsHere, we introduce the new GADMA2 software and provide a detailed description of the added and expanded features. It has a renovated core code base, new likelihood engines, an updated optimization algorithm and a flexible setup for automatic model construction. We provide a full overview of GADMA2 enhancements, compare the performance of supported likelihood engines on simulated data and demonstrate an example of GADMA2 usage on two empirical datasets. ConclusionsWe demonstrate the better performance of a genetic algorithm in GADMA2 by comparing it to the initial version and other existing optimization approaches. Our experiments on simulated data indicate that GADMA2s likelihood engines are able to provide accurate estimations of demographic parameters even for misspecified models. We improve model parameters for two empirical datasets of inbred species.

bioinformatics↗

A 4-lineage statistical suite to evaluate the support of large-scale retrotransposon insertion data to reconstruct evolutionary trees

Retrophylogenomics makes use of genome-wide retrotransposon presence/absence insertion patterns to resolve questions in phylogeny and population genetics. In the genomics era, evaluating high-throughput data requires the associated development of appropriately powerful statistical tools. The currently used KKSC 3-lineage statistical test for estimating the significance of retrophylogenomic data is limited by the number of possible tree topologies it can assess in one step. To improve on this, we have extended the analysis to simultaneously compare 4-lineages, enabling us to evaluate ten distinct presence/absence insertion patterns for 26 possible tree topologies plus 129 trees with different incidences of hybridization or introgression. The new tool provides statistics for cases involving multiple ancestral hybridizations/introgressions, ancestral incomplete lineage sorting, bifurcation, and polytomy. The test is embedded in a user-friendly web R-application (http://retrogenomics.uni-muenster.de:3838/hammlet/) and is available for use by the scientific community.

evolutionary biology↗

GADMA: Genetic Algorithm for Automatic Inferring Joint Demographic History of Multiple Populations from Allele Frequency Spectrum

The demographic history of any population is imprinted in the genomes of the individuals that make up the population. One of the most popular and convenient representations of genetic information is the allele frequency spectrum or AFS, the distribution of allele frequencies in populations. The joint allele frequency spectrum is commonly used to reconstruct the demographic history of multiple populations and several methods based on diffusion approximation (e.g.,{partial} a{partial}i) and ordinary differential equations (e.g., moments) have been developed and applied for demographic inference. These methods provide an opportunity to simulate AFS under a variety of researcher-specified demographic models and to estimate the best model and associated parameters using likelihood-based local optimizations. However, there are no known algorithms to perform global searches of demographic models with a given AFS. Here, we introduce a new method that implements a global search using a genetic algorithm for the automatic and unsupervised inference of demographic history from joint allele frequency spectrum data. Our method is implemented in the software GADMA (Genetic Algorithm for Demographic Analysis, https://github.com/ctlab/GADMA). We demonstrate the performance of GADMA by applying it to sequence data from humans and non-model organisms and show that it is able to automatically infer a demographic model close to or even better than the one that was previously obtained manually. Moreover, GADMA is able to infer demographic models at different local optima close to the global one, making it is possible to detect more biology corrected model during further research.

evolutionary biology↗