The IPB has once again been recognized for its exemplary actions in terms of equal opportunity-oriented personnel and organizational policies and has received the TOTAL E-QUALITY certification for the…
The Plant Science Student Conference (PSSC) has been organised by students from the two Leibniz institutes, IPK and IPB, every year for the last 20 years. In this interview, Christina Wäsch (IPK) and…
Moreno, P.; Beisken, S.; Harsha, B.; Muthukrishnan, V.; Tudose, I.; Dekker, A.; Dornfeldt, S.; Taruttis, F.; Grosse, I.; Hastings, J.; Neumann, S.; Steinbeck, C.;BiNChE: A web tool and library for chemical enrichment analysis based on the ChEBI ontologyBMC Bioinformatics1656(2015)DOI: 10.1186/s12859-015-0486-3
BackgroundOntology-based enrichment analysis aids in the interpretation and understanding of large-scale biological data. Ontologies are hierarchies of biologically relevant groupings. Using ontology annotations, which link ontology classes to biological entities, enrichment analysis methods assess whether there is a significant over or under representation of entities for ontology classes. While many tools exist that run enrichment analysis for protein sets annotated with the Gene Ontology, there are only a few that can be used for small molecules enrichment analysis.ResultsWe describe BiNChE, an enrichment analysis tool for small molecules based on the ChEBI Ontology. BiNChE displays an interactive graph that can be exported as a high-resolution image or in network formats. The tool provides plain, weighted and fragment analysis based on either the ChEBI Role Ontology or the ChEBI Structural Ontology.ConclusionsBiNChE aids in the exploration of large sets of small molecules produced within Metabolomics or other Systems Biology research contexts. The open-source tool provides easy and highly interactive web access to enrichment analysis with the ChEBI ontology tool and is additionally available as a standalone library.
Publications
Kuhn, S.; Egert, B.; Neumann, S.; Steinbeck, C.;Building blocks for automated elucidation of metabolites: Machine learning methods for NMR predictionBMC Bioinformatics9400(2008)DOI: 10.1186/1471-2105-9-400
BackgroundCurrent efforts in Metabolomics, such as the Human Metabolome Project, collect structures of biological metabolites as well as data for their characterisation, such as spectra for identification of substances and measurements of their concentration. Still, only a fraction of existing metabolites and their spectral fingerprints are known. Computer-Assisted Structure Elucidation (CASE) of biological metabolites will be an important tool to leverage this lack of knowledge. Indispensable for CASE are modules to predict spectra for hypothetical structures. This paper evaluates different statistical and machine learning methods to perform predictions of proton NMR spectra based on data from our open database NMRShiftDB.ResultsA mean absolute error of 0.18 ppm was achieved for the prediction of proton NMR shifts ranging from 0 to 11 ppm. Random forest, J48 decision tree and support vector machines achieved similar overall errors. HOSE codes being a notably simple method achieved a comparatively good result of 0.17 ppm mean absolute error.ConclusionNMR prediction methods applied in the course of this work delivered precise predictions which can serve as a building block for Computer-Assisted Structure Elucidation for biological metabolites.