Welcome to our Friday feature link dump: SNPpets. During the week we come across a lot of links and reads that we think are interesting, but don’t make it to a blog post. Here they are for your enjoyment…

• A bit of a dust-up at ScienceBlogs as they added a corporate blog (Pepsi writing about nutrition science) and several of the bloggers left or threatened to leave. The Pepsi blog is no more. I hope that’s resolved, ScienceBlogs is an excellent collection of science writing. [Trey]
• Pathway Tools Workshop 2010 held by the folks from BioCyc announced for October 21-25: http://bioinformatics.ai.sri.com/ptools10/ [Mary]
• Animal portraiture against a white background. It’s been done before, this time with birds. It always reminds me how amazingly beautiful life can be. [Trey]
• VectorBase announces that they have moved to the new style Ensembl browser with their current release–Yeah!  If you are interested in “Invertebrate Vectors of Human Pathogens”, this database may have species you want to know about. [Mary]
• A good discussion about the recent ‘longevity gene’ study and it’s possible flaws by Razib Khan of Gene Expression [Trey]
• Bandwidth-heavy, but really neat movies of tumor angiogenesis. You can open the Navigator menu to see the various movies listed, or you can migrate around the tumor yourself.  Hat tip to Jill!  [Mary]
• On the GBrowse mailing list people were looking for examples of GBrowse 2.0 in action. WormBase indicated they are up to that version, and there was another research group with a species I never heard of before that also has it running: Gardnerella vaginalis.  They have compared 2 strains: one from a healthy woman, one suffering from infection. They show divergence, interestingly.  You can check out their recent publication on it from their publication tab.  A nice demonstration of how to use GBrowse for your species of interest. [Mary]

Yes, I know, but I used to be resistant to blogging too….

I’m starting to get a number of announcements about Twitter feeds from bioinformatics resource groups.  I think it’s time to start a collection of those.  This post will have a couple to get started, but I’m going to use this as a collector for others that will inevitably come across over time.

WormBase: (announcement), their feed is http://twitter.com/wormbase

GO: (announcement), their feed is http://twitter.com/news4go

If you have others, let me know in the comments. Or for my co-bloggers feel free to edit this post to grow the list.

NHGRI recently pointed out our new set of tutorials on model organism databases (funded mainly by NHGRI on their home page, genome.gov. Always nice to be recognized .

And it gives me the opportunity to again point out that we do indeed have seven publicly available tutorials and training materials (slides, exercises, etc) on model organism databases including SGD, RGD, MGI, WormBase, FlyBase and ZFIN… and a seventh on GBrowse, a generic genome browser used by some of these and other genome databases.

Check them out (and fill out the new poll to the left .

For the tip of the week today, we’d like to point out a number of new (free to you) tutorials on model organism database resources. These seven tutorials (include flash movie tutorial, slides for downloading, exercises and handouts) were partly funded by a NHGRI grant. We just put out a press release on this, but I thought the Tip of the Week would be a great place to introduce you to these tutorials. We have seven tutorials that are (or will soon be) publicly available (this link takes you to a list and links to all these tutorials). The first four available are on GBrowse, WormBase, RGD (Rat Genome Database) and MGI (Mouse Genome Informatics. GBrowse (the tutorial linked to here), was developed by the Generic Model Organism Database (GMOD) project and is a great tool to develop genome browsers for model and research organisms. Many model organism databases use GMOD resources in full or part, including many of the ones we have tutorials on here. Three more will be coming very soon on ZFIN (Zebrafish), FlyBase (Drosophila) and SGD (yeast). Check them out .

OpenHelix today announced the free availability of tutorial suites on model organism databases and resources used extensively in research. The first tutorial suites available are GBrowse, Rat Genome Database (RGD), Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI), and WormBase. To be added in the coming weeks are Zebrafish Information Network (ZFIN), FlyBase and Saccharomyces (Yeast) Genome Database (SGD).

The tutorial suites, funded in part by a grant from the National Human Genome Research Institute of the National Institutes of Health, include a self run, narrated tutorial introducing the resource and how to use its feature and functions. Each suite also includes PowerPoint slides, handouts, and exercises that can be used for reference or for training others.

One of the first tutorials available is on GBrowse, developed by the Generic Model Organism Database (GMOD) project, a popular tool used by researchers to develop genome browsers for model organisms, species of interest, and particular topics. By learning how to use this “generic” genome browser, you can leverage that knowledge to use dozens of resources devoted to a wide range of research areas.

“The OpenHelix GBrowse user tutorial is very well done and will be an excellent resource for the many research communities that use GBrowse to visualize genomic data,” said Dave Clements of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center who runs the GMOD help desk.

Model organisms, such as yeast, mouse, rat, flies, and many others, have long been used by researchers to expand our understanding of biology and to assess the effectiveness and safety of therapies before going to human trial. Many of the genomes of these organisms have been completely sequenced, giving the scientific community even greater insight into the organisms and their relation to human biology. The genome data is now available and searchable on publicly available online databases and resources.

You can view the Model Organism tutorials at http://www.openhelix.com/model_organisms.shtml. OpenHelix provides over 60 other tutorial suites on a number of genomic databases and resources through an individual, group, or institutional subscription. Further information can be found at www.openhelix.com.

About OpenHelix
OpenHelix, LLC, (www.openhelix.com) provides the genomics knowledge you need when you need it. OpenHelix provides online self-run tutorials and on-site training for institutions and companies on the most powerful and popular free, web based, publicly accessible bioinformatics resources. In addition, OpenHelix is contracted by resource providers to provide comprehensive, long-term training and outreach programs.

I was reading a newsletter I get from Biotechniques, and their WebWatch often has some fun items. (You may need to get a free login to see the WebWatch.) This week they referred to the MaizeGDB database in the post Amaizing Base. Although I had been aware of MaizeGDB before, it was a nice reminder to go over and have a look to see what’s new.

When I went over there I was intrigued by the new browser they are about to launch (in mid-October). The link says “coming soon” and I went to check out the information there.

Currently that link goes to a page that describes their move to a more sequence-centric representation of their data. It was a fascinating look at their decision process to move to a new browser platform and what they decided to do. For database geeks like me, seeing their ranking of the importance of various features was very compelling.

And what they decided? GBrowse!

We have a tutorial available on GBrowse. Usually we do tutorials on specific sites, but as we kept seeing GBrowse over and over at different sites we created a tutorial for that. It helps me to understand the underlying basic browser when I visit any site that employs it. Even though the wrappings and the data types will vary at different sites, understanding how it works makes it much easier to use at any new site that uses it. HapMap, MGI, WormBase, FlyBase, TAIR, Watson’s personal genome, and a whole bunch of other sites use the GBrowse software.

Looking forward to checking out the MaizeGDB GBrowse version when it launches!

Usually, we do our own tips for the week (in fact, up till today, always) and today I was going to do one on the Firefox Biobar, an excellent Firefox addon that allows you to search and retrieve data from dozens of databases and resources at one time right on your browser bar. I just rediscovered the biobar since I’ve been using a different browser (not Firefox) for a long while and recently returned to Firefox for most of my browsing. I remember why I liked Biobar. Nice quick way to search a lot of databases from PubMed to Wormbase. Well, I was going to do a tutorial, but in my search about the BioBar, I see user Simont from Scivee already did an great tutorial on installing and using Biobar, so I’m linking to that here! Ok, so it saves me time, but why duplicate efforts? He did a fine job. Check it out.

Comprehensive tutorials on the model organism bioinformatics databases FlyBase, WormBase and MGI enable researchers to quickly and effectively use these invaluable resources.

OpenHelix today announced the availability of new tutorial suites on several model organism resources including FlyBase, WormBase and an update on the Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI) database. Model organisms are integral to our understanding of basic biology and modern biomedical research. Drosophila, C. elegans and mice are three highly researched model organisms. FlyBase and WormBase are the primary resources for molecular and genetic information on the Drosophilidae and on Caenorhabditis elegans and related species, respectively. MGI is a series of tools and databases that integrate genetics, genomics and biology for the laboratory mouse.

The tutorial suites, available for single purchase or through a low-priced yearly subscription to all OpenHelix tutorials, contain a narrated, self-run, online tutorial, slides, handouts and exercises. With the tutorials, researchers can quickly learn to effectively and efficiently use these resources. These tutorials will teach users to:

• perform Quick Searches and navigate gene summary pages
• browse genetic features within the context of the entire chromosome
• construct complex queries across various sets of data stored within FlyBase, WormBase or MGI
• perform nucleotide or amino acid sequence homology searches
• output data in various formats, or access large data reports
• investigate many related resources associated with MGI

To find out more about these and other tutorial suites visit OpenHelix.

We are in the process of developing a suite of tutorials on interactions software, so we’ll have a lot more to say about that over the next few months. But today I wanted to touch on an interactions tool embedded in a model organism browser. When we were developing the WormBase tutorial we found this fun tool–N-Browse–linked right from the gene pages. (N-Browse is also a stand-alone tool, but here I’ll just show the WormBase version). In this 3 minute movie I introduce you to where to find N-Browse in WormBase and show you how you can learn about interactions with your gene of interest right from the gene pages.

Sometimes the Google brings you things that surprise you. I have to say this link rattled me for a minute: