Harvard:Biophysics 101/2007/Project

Editing Note (17:52 4/30/07): The below was based on (1) the (incomplete, since some people were absent) blackboard diagram that gave the steps and interconnections of the project, and (2) all actual scripts available on everyone's personal notebook. Since the organization was based on my understandings of the scripts (which might be - and very probably are - wrong), please change, add, or reorder as you see fit. ---TChan

Overview

• Project Goal: To develop tools to aid in analysis of personal DNA sequences.

We would like to develop software and documentation that will help people get from sequence to diagnosis. At the moment, we are focusing on identifying and classifying SNPs, but we will broaden this identification to other things like large deletions or insertions or repeats when we have more expertise. We are attempting to harness the power of other already existing tools, and we would also like to make this tool one that others can build upon. Specifically, our program will eventually be able to determine location based on BLAST, determine any SNPs based on NCBI SNP, and give a prognosis based on OMIM and online medical databases.

Path 1: Using OMIM

Sequence -> RS Number (BLAST SNP)

RS Number -> Disease Name (OMIM)

• Xiaodi: code prints and outputs to file pickled version of the OMIM output for our sequence
• Chris: quality checking code returns sequences back after dbSNP

RS Number -> Mesh Terms (PubMed)

• Cynthia

RS Number (OMIM) -> PubMed PMIDs

PubMed PMIDs -> Mesh Terms

• Resmi: code (1) parses OMIM XML to (2) get PubMed PMIDs to (3) get Mesh Terms

Mesh Terms -> Disease Name (in-house code)

• Deniz

Disease Name -> Prevalence (-> regulates Useful Patient Info)

• Zach: code returns incidence data (based on California data) of the disease name

Disease Name -> Useful Patient Info (Medical search engines)

• Deniz: examples of coding which returns news updates in several formats
• Tiff: code (a) displays relevant URLs (, (b) returns lists of drugs, clinical trials, experts, etc.
• Resmi: code displays PubMed review citations in text form
• Cynthia: code displays PubMed article citations in text form

All displayable data -> Web Interface

• Xiaodi: code and description displays (some - still need to integrate some remaining scripts) preceding data in a web interface

Path 2: Using GenBank and PolyPhen

Sequence -> Gene Name (BLAST)

• Zach(?): code returns relevant (normal) BLAST data, including the gene name/ID (?)

Gene Name -> Mutations (GenBank)

• Xiaodi
• Chris: quality checking code detects mismatches between our sequence and returned SNPs

Gene Name -> ??? (PolyPhen)

• Mike

Mutations -> Disease Name (OMIM)

• Xiaodi

Disease Name -> Useful Patient Info (Medical search engines)

• Deniz: examples of code which returns Google news updates and MedStory news updates in several formats
• Tiff: code (a) displays relevant URLs (, (b) returns lists of drugs, clinical trials, experts, etc.
• Resmi: code displays PubMed review citations in text form
• Cynthia: code displays PubMed article citations in text form

Diagram

Project-in-Progress

Project-in-Progress notes have been moved to their own page.

Project Ideas

Project ideas have been moved to their own page.