BACKGROUND: The development of whole genome bisulfite sequencing has made it possible to identify methylation differences at single base resolution throughout an entire genome. However, a persistent challenge in DNA methylome analysis is the accurate identification of differentially methylated regions (DMRs) between samples. Sensitive and specific identification of DMRs among different conditions requires accurate and efficient algorithms, and while various tools have been developed to tackle this problem, they frequently suffer from inaccurate DMR boundary identification and high false positive rate. RESULTS: We present a novel Histogram Of MEthylation (HOME) based method that takes into account the inherent difference in the distribution of methylation levels between DMRs and non-DMRs to discriminate between the two using a Support Vector Machine. We show that generated features used by HOME are dataset-independent such that a classifier trained on, for example, a mouse methylome training set of regions of differentially accessible chromatin, can be applied to any other organism's dataset and identify accurate DMRs. We demonstrate that DMRs identified by HOME exhibit higher association with biologically relevant genes, processes, and regulatory events compared to the existing methods. Moreover, HOME provides additional functionalities lacking in most of the current DMR finders such as DMR identification in non-CG context and time series analysis. HOME is freely available at https://github.com/ListerLab/HOME . CONCLUSION: HOME produces more accurate DMRs than the current state-of-the-art methods on both simulated and biological datasets. The broad applicability of HOME to identify accurate DMRs in genomic data from any organism will have a significant impact upon expanding our knowledge of how DNA methylation dynamics affect cell development and differentiation.

MOTIVATION: The size and complex nature of mass spectrometry-based proteomics datasets motivate development of specialized software for statistical data analysis and exploration. We present DanteR, a graphical R package that features extensive statistical and diagnostic functions for quantitative proteomics data analysis, including normalization, imputation, hypothesis testing, interactive visualization and peptide-to-protein rollup. More importantly, users can easily extend the existing functionality by including their own algorithms under the Add-On tab. AVAILABILITY: DanteR and its associated user guide are available for download free of charge at http://omics.pnl.gov/software/. We have an updated binary source for the DanteR package up on our website together with a vignettes document. For Windows, a single click automatically installs DanteR along with the R programming environment. For Linux and Mac OS X, users must install R and then follow instructions on the DanteR website for package installation. CONTACT: [email protected].

Shotgun proteomic data are affected by a variety of known and unknown systematic biases as well as high proportions of missing values. Typically, normalization is performed in an attempt to remove systematic biases from the data before statistical inference, sometimes followed by missing value imputation to obtain a complete matrix of intensities. Here we discuss several approaches to normalization and dealing with missing values, some initially developed for microarray data and some developed specifically for mass spectrometry-based data.

MOTIVATION: Quantitative mass spectrometry-based proteomics requires protein-level estimates and associated confidence measures. Challenges include the presence of low quality or incorrectly identified peptides and informative missingness. Furthermore, models are required for rolling peptide-level information up to the protein level. RESULTS: We present a statistical model that carefully accounts for informative missingness in peak intensities and allows unbiased, model-based, protein-level estimation and inference. The model is applicable to both label-based and label-free quantitation experiments. We also provide automated, model-based, algorithms for filtering of proteins and peptides as well as imputation of missing values. Two LC/MS datasets are used to illustrate the methods. In simulation studies, our methods are shown to achieve substantially more discoveries than standard alternatives. AVAILABILITY: The software has been made available in the open-source proteomics platform DAnTE (http://omics.pnl.gov/software/).

MOTIVATION: LC-MS allows for the identification and quantification of proteins from biological samples. As with any high-throughput technology, systematic biases are often observed in LC-MS data, making normalization an important preprocessing step. Normalization models need to be flexible enough to capture biases of arbitrary complexity, while avoiding overfitting that would invalidate downstream statistical inference. Careful normalization of MS peak intensities would enable greater accuracy and precision in quantitative comparisons of protein abundance levels. RESULTS: We propose an algorithm, called EigenMS, that uses singular value decomposition to capture and remove biases from LC-MS peak intensity measurements. EigenMS is an adaptation of the surrogate variable analysis (SVA) algorithm of Leek and Storey, with the adaptations including (i) the handling of the widespread missing measurements that are typical in LC-MS, and (ii) a novel approach to preventing overfitting that facilitates the incorporation of EigenMS into an existing proteomics analysis pipeline. EigenMS is demonstrated using both large-scale calibration measurements and simulations to perform well relative to existing alternatives. AVAILABILITY: The software has been made available in the open source proteomics platform DAnTE (Polpitiya et al., 2008)) (http://omics.pnl.gov/software/), as well as in standalone software available at SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net).

UNLABELLED: We introduce a simple-to-use graphical tool that enables researchers to easily prepare time-of-flight mass spectrometry data for analysis. For ease of use, the graphical executable provides default parameter settings, experimentally determined to work well in most situations. These values, if desired, can be changed by the user. PrepMS is a stand-alone application made freely available (open source), and is under the General Public License (GPL). Its graphical user interface, default parameter settings, and display plots allow PrepMS to be used effectively for data preprocessing, peak detection and visual data quality assessment. AVAILABILITY: Stand-alone executable files and Matlab toolbox are available for download at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/prepms

BACKGROUND: Matlab, a powerful and productive language that allows for rapid prototyping, modeling and simulation, is widely used in computational biology. Modeling and simulation of large biological systems often require more computational resources then are available on a single computer. Existing distributed computing environments like the Distributed Computing Toolbox, MatlabMPI, Matlab*G and others allow for the remote (and possibly parallel) execution of Matlab commands with varying support for features like an easy-to-use application programming interface, load-balanced utilization of resources, extensibility over the wide area network, and minimal system administration skill requirements. However, all of these environments require some level of access to participating machines to manually distribute the user-defined libraries that the remote call may invoke. RESULTS: mGrid augments the usual process distribution seen in other similar distributed systems by adding facilities for user code distribution. mGrid's client-side interface is an easy-to-use native Matlab toolbox that transparently executes user-defined code on remote machines (i.e. the user is unaware that the code is executing somewhere else). Run-time variables are automatically packed and distributed with the user-defined code and automated load-balancing of remote resources enables smooth concurrent execution. mGrid is an open source environment. Apart from the programming language itself, all other components are also open source, freely available tools: light-weight PHP scripts and the Apache web server. CONCLUSION: Transparent, load-balanced distribution of user-defined Matlab toolboxes and rapid prototyping of many simple parallel applications can now be done with a single easy-to-use Matlab command. Because mGrid utilizes only Matlab, light-weight PHP scripts and the Apache web server, installation and configuration are very simple. Moreover, the web-based infrastructure of mGrid allows for it to be easily extensible over the Internet.