[Bioperl-l] preparing nexus files for Mr. Bayes

[Heikki Lehvaslaiho]

FYI,

According  http://search.cpan.org/dist/Bio-NEXUS/, the Bio::NEXUS modules have 
been recently updated (Apr 23 2008). It would definitely be worth testing 
them and possibly create subclasses to handle PAUP and MrBayes command 
blocks.

   -Heikki


On Wednesday 11 June 2008 17:13:20 Jason Stajich wrote:
> Giovanni -
>
> Bits and pieces already exist, there is little to handle the text
> blocks that exist in NEXUS files because BioPerl has has been focused
> on the alignment data not the analysis.  Arlin Stolzfus has started a
> Bio::NEXUS project that is supposed to fully parse all NEXUS data in
> and out but I don't know what the status is right now.
>
> If you look at the Bio::AlignIO::nexus documentation you need to turn
> off symbols and endblock when writing for MrBayes NEXUS.
>
> my $out = Bio::AlignIO->new(-format => 'nexus',
> 			    -show_symbols => 0,
> 			    -show_endblock => 0);
>
>
> # after you have written out the alignment
> $out->write_aln;
> # you can then print out whatever execution blocks you want with
> standard print statements.
> print $out->_fh "begin mrbayes;\n"; ...
>
>
> As for the other things, the Bio::SimpleAlign module lets you swap
> the match character (see map_char and gap_char methods).
>
> For joining alignments and setting up partitions, you can join
> multiple alignments by making a new Bio::SimpleAlign and adding
> concatenated sequences together.
>
> my %matrix;
>   for my $aln ( @alns ) {
>    for my $seq ( $aln->each_seq ) {
>              my $id = $seq->id;
>              $matrix{$id} .= $seq->seq;
>    }
>   }
>   my $bigaln = Bio::SimpleAlign->new;
>   while( my ($id,$seq) = each %matrix ) {
>       $bigaln->add_seq(Bio::LocatableSeq->new(-id  => $id,
>                                                  -seq => $seq));
>   }
>
>
> In general there is not a single solution to a lot of these tasks
> (although there should be one that concatenates a set of  alignments)
> so there are not ready-to-use functions.  I have my custom code I use
> to join datasets and establish partitions but much is specific to how
> I organize the data on my system so I don't know how informative it
> would be.
>
> I'm not sure python code would be much good here... =) if you jump
> ship you should talk to Frank Kauff who has written some python code
> to manipulate alignments for biopython.
>
> -jason
>
> On Jun 11, 2008, at 2:46 AM, Giovanni Marco Dall'Olio wrote:
> > Hi,
> > I was wondering whether there is any bioperl module I can use to
> > handle nexus files for Mr.Bayes.
> >
> > mr. Bayes is a program for bayesian estimation of phylogeny, which
> > uses an alignment file in a customized nexus format as input.
> > I would need a module to prepare these files, doing tasks like:
> > - joining more than an alignment in a single file/line
> > - substitute matching chars with '.'
> > - customizing parameters displayed in the headers of the output
> > nexus file
> > - manage mrbayes' extensions, like adding information about
> > partitions and taxas
> > - adding batch instructions for the mr bayes interpreter
> > - and similar stuff.
> >
> > I have tried Bio::AlignIO but I see it doesn't handle all of this,
> > what I am looing for is bit more specific.
> > Moreover, I found a bug in the way mrbayes recognizes the output from
> > Bio::AlignIO (https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?
> > func=detail&aid=1990655&group_id=129302&atid=714418).
> >
> > Is there any existing module already available?
> > If there is not, I am going to have to write such scripts anyway.
> > I would like to contribute them to bioperl, even if I am not a very
> > good perl programmer, I prefer python.
> >
> > --
> > -----------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > My Blog on Bioinformatics (italian): http://bioinfoblog.it
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bioperl-l mailing list
> > Bioperl-l at lists.open-bio.org
> > http://lists.open-bio.org/mailman/listinfo/bioperl-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bioperl-l mailing list
> Bioperl-l at lists.open-bio.org
> http://lists.open-bio.org/mailman/listinfo/bioperl-l



-- 
______ _/      _/_____________________________________________________
      _/      _/
     _/  _/  _/  Heikki Lehvaslaiho    heikki at_sanbi _ac _za
    _/_/_/_/_/  Senior Scientist    skype: heikki_lehvaslaiho
   _/  _/  _/  SANBI, South African National Bioinformatics Institute
  _/  _/  _/  University of Western Cape, South Africa
     _/      Phone: +27 21 959 2096   FAX: +27 21 959 2512
___ _/_/_/_/_/________________________________________________________