UNLABELLED: Simulation programs based on the coalescent efficiently generate genetic data according to a given model of evolution. We present coala, an R package for calling coalescent simulators with a unified syntax. It can execute simulations with several programs, calculate additional summary statistics and combine multiple simulations to create biologically more realistic data. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The package is publicly available on CRAN and on https://github.com/statgenlmu/coala under the conditions of the MIT license. CONTACT: [email protected].

Abstract Motivation: Coalescent-based simulation software for genomic sequences allows the efficient in silico generation of short- and medium-sized genetic sequences. However, the simulation of genome-size datasets as produced by next-generation sequencing is currently only possible using fairly crude approximations. Results: We present the sequential coalescent with recombination model (SCRM), a new method that efficiently and accurately approximates the coalescent with recombination, closing the gap between current approximations and the exact model. We present an efficient implementation and show that it can simulate genomic-scale datasets with an essentially correct linkage structure. Availability and implementation: The open source implementation scrm is freely available at https://scrm.github.io under the conditions of the GPLv3 license. Contact: [email protected] or [email protected]. Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

SUMMARY: Synthetic Biology is advanced by many users and relies on the assembly of genetic elements to devices, systems and finally genomes. SynBioWave is a software suite that enables multiple distributed users to analyze and construct genetic parts in real-time collaboration. It builds on Google Wave and provides an extensible robot-robot-user communication framework, a menu driven user interface, biological data handling including DAS and an internal database communication. We demonstrate its use by implementing robots for gene-data retrieval, manipulation and display. The initial development of SynBioWave demonstrates the power of the underlying Google Wave protocol for Synthetic Biology and lays the foundation for continuous and user-friendly extensions. Specialized wave-robots with a manageable set of capabilities will divide and conquer the complex task of creating a genome in silico. AVAILABILITY: The robot is available at [email protected], the source code at http://synbiowave.sourceforge.net