Biopython release 1.50

 Posted on April 20, 2009  |  peterc

We are pleased to announce Biopython release 1.50, featuring some significant additions since Biopython 1.49 was released late last year. GenomeDiagram by Leighton Pritchard has been integrated into Biopython as the Bio.Graphics.GenomeDiagram module. A new module Bio.Motif has been added, which is intended to replace the existing Bio.AlignAce and Bio.MEME modules. Also have a look at Bio.SwissProt and Bio.ExPASy and their revised parsers. As noted in a previous news posting, Bio. [Read More]

Biopython on twitter

 Posted on March 27, 2009  |  peterc

Just to let you all know, Biopython is now on twitter. And in case you missed the OBF announcement last month, so is the O|B|F News feed (and BioPerl). You are welcome to follow us (all) on twitter.

I’d also like to remind people there are news feeds for the Biopython news posts (as RDF, RSS, RSS2, or Atom format). We’re planning to have these automatically echoed onto twitter in future… (update) …and that seems to be working now :)

Biopython and next generation sequencing

 Posted on March 26, 2009  |  peterc

Those of you doing next generation sequencing may be pleased to know that the next release of Biopython is expected to include support for reading and writing FASTQ and QUAL files within our Bio.SeqIO interface. These formats are used for traditional Sanger capillary sequencing, and Roche 454 sequencing (Roche provide tools to convert from their binary SFF files) with PHRED quality scores. Solexa/Illumina sequencers produce a FASTQ variant where the quality scores are encoded differently, and this is also supported. [Read More]

Biopython paper published

 Posted on March 22, 2009  |  iddo

An Application Note describing Biopython has recently been accepted for publication in the Oxford Journal Bioinformatics. An advance copy of the Open Access article is available online:

P.J.A. Cock, T. Antao, J.T. Chang, B.A. Chapman, C.J. Cox, A. Dalke, I. Friedberg, T. Hamelryck, F. Kauff, B. Wilczynski and M.J.L. de Hoon (2009) Biopython: freely available Python tools for computational molecular biology and bioinformatics. Bioinformatics, doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btp163

Biopython and version control systems

 Posted on March 17, 2009  |  peterc

Initially for evaluation purposes only, Giovanni and Bartek have setup a mirror of Biopython on GitHub, which is automatically updated from the OBF hosted Biopython CVS repository. See our git migration wiki page for details. If this is favorably received, then moving Biopython from CVS to git seems likely at some point this year. Originally, all the OBF hosted projects used CVS for their source code repositories. At the start of 2008, BioPerl and BioJava moved over to Subversion (SVN), followed by BioSQL. [Read More]

BOSC 2009 Call for Abstracts

 Posted on February 24, 2009  |  kdahlquist

Please forward as appropriate and forgive multiple postings. Call for Abstracts for the 2009 Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) 2009 An ISMB 2009 Special Interest Group (SIG) Date: June 27-28, 2009 Location: Stockholm, Sweden URL: /wiki/BOSC_2009 Abstract submission via EasyChair: https://www.easychair.org/login.cgi?conf=bosc2009 Important Dates Monday, April 13: Abstract deadline May 1, 2009: Notification of accepted abstracts May 15, 2009: Early Registration Discount Cut-off date June 27-28, 2009: BOSC 2009 The Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC) is sponsored by the Open Bioinformatics Foundation (O|B|F), a non-profit group dedicated to promoting the practice and philosophy of Open Source software development within the biological research community. [Read More]

Google Summer of Code: Call for Bio* Volunteers

 Posted on February 13, 2009  |  hilmar

Google is committed to run the Summer of Code program again this year. It will be for the 5th time. In broad strokes, the program funds what you might call remote summer internships for students to contribute to an open-source software project. Projects (or umbrella organizations) wishing to participate in the program apply during the organization application period (March 9-13 in 2009). Those accepted into the program provide project ideas and supply mentors that guide the work on those. [Read More]