[DAS] DAS and bacterial genomes

[Ewan Birney]

On 18 Aug 2010, at 09:52, Adam Witney wrote:

>
> Hi Andy,
>
> Yes I am aware of the some of the idiosyncrasies of the Ensembl  
> Genomes naming conventions. But is there a reason that the DAS  
> registry should be constrained by Ensembl Genomes? Could the  
> Registry entry refer to a specific taxonomy iD and its corresponding  
> entry in EG, despite EG using a different taxonomy ID?
>
> I'd like to be able to export our microarray designs and data via  
> DAS for others to use (including EnsemblBacteria). This if for 16 or  
> so species with multiple strains thereof.
>

Just to say that I think we should get this as straight as we can;  
just to
state the obvious - EG is not trying to be deliberately complex here,  
it is
just that the concept of "one taxid == one species == one assembly  
series" just
breaks down in bacteria.


I've brought in the three key people here on the EG side - Eugene  
(does the web
side of this); Dan (main data production manager) and Paul Kersey (the  
EG PI) -
some of them are on holiday now, but I suggest perhaps setting up a  
phone
conference (and/or Adam could you come for a visit?) to get this as  
straight as
we can - I suspect there will both be short term fixes and more longer  
term
infrastructural fixes here.


> cheers
>
> Adam
>
>
> On 17 Aug 2010, at 18:07, Andy Jenkinson wrote:
>
>> Hi Adam,
>>
>> There are no coordinate systems yet as nobody has yet been brave  
>> enough to start using DAS with bacteria in anger. Eugene at Ensembl  
>> Genomes will have an interest in doing this, but they have issues  
>> with matching up their species/strain names with the NCBI taxonomy  
>> upon which DAS's coordinates are based. In essence if you will need  
>> to name the coordinate systems after which they will need to be  
>> added to the registry.
>>
>> For example when Ensembl Genomes manage to do this, the coordinate  
>> systems might end up looking like:
>> EB_1,Chromosome,Shigella flexneri 2a str. 301
>> EB_1,Plasmid,Shigella flexneri 2a str. 301
>>
>> This is for a specific shigella strain with taxonomy ID 198214. The  
>> authority and version parts of the DAS coordinate system are  
>> somewhat arbitrarily named, ideally they would be a standard that  
>> is used by the rest of the community for interoperability purposes.
>>
>> What exactly is it you'd like to be able to do? How many species'  
>> are we talking about?
>>
>> The reason I ask is that getting these coordinate systems into the  
>> DAS registry does require some work. Some of this is on the  
>> registry's side, but depending where your data come from there may  
>> be issues with identifying the correct coordinate system details  
>> such that others can reuse them meaningfully. To use the example  
>> above, Ensembl Genomes give the "301" strain a different name from  
>> NCBI and use the taxonomy ID not for the strain but for the parent  
>> species (Shigella flexneri). In fact the 2457T strain also uses the  
>> same taxonomy ID, which isn't helpful. Given the number of  
>> species', this adds up to a major headache.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Andy
>>
>> On 17 Aug 2010, at 16:49, Adam Witney wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> What would be the best approach to use DAS with bacterial genomes?  
>>> I can't seem to find any coordinate systems for these organisms in  
>>> the Registry.
>>>
>>> Thanks for any advice
>>>
>>> Adam
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> DAS mailing list
>>> DAS at lists.open-bio.org
>>> http://lists.open-bio.org/mailman/listinfo/das
>>
>
>
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