[BioRuby] R: Alignment plugin

[Raoul Bonnal]

I think we can start discussing about the plug-in system, probably it will be discussed at the bosc2010.
I think that we should find inspiration from the Rail, I like to adopt something similar to MVC and perhaps introducing a different pattern than controller.


--
Raoul J.P. Bonnal
Life Science Informatics
Integrative Biology Program
Fondazione INGM
Via F. Sforza 28
20122 Milano, IT
phone: +39 02 006 623  26
fax: +39 02 006 623 46
http://www.ingm.it


> -----Messaggio originale-----
> Da: bioruby-bounces at lists.open-bio.org [mailto:bioruby-
> bounces at lists.open-bio.org] Per conto di Pjotr Prins
> Inviato: lunedì 26 aprile 2010 14:54
> Cc: bioruby at lists.open-bio.org
> Oggetto: [BioRuby] Alignment plugin
> 
> I am thinking of creating some new infrastructure for alignments.
> 
> The Bioruby alignment architecture is not great. It contains a lot of
> useful
> functionality, but it is purely sequence organized. I did a writeup on
> the
> Bioruby blog - on ALN support and colorized HTML - if you remember.
> 
> For completeness I checked the BioJAVA and BioPython implementations.
> 
> The BioJAVA alignment classes are in a deep tree:
> 
>   biojava/alignment/src/main/java/org/biojava/bio/alignment
> 
> the implementation troubles me. Partly it is JAVA itself - which makes
> code
> feel dispersed. Partly it is the implementation, which appears to be
> minimal. I
> guess it is a work in progress.
> 
> The BioPython version looks like it is the best of the three. Some
> separation of responsibilities. Good documentation, and good
> validation and testing. I like that. Otherwise, functionally it is
> mostly comparable to BioRuby.
> 
> The trick of designing good alignment classes is to make them small and
> fork
> out responsibilities. The BioJAVA version does not contain much. The
> BioRuby
> version has everything in one place, including the kitchen sink.
> BioPython goes
> some way towards what it should be, but it does not look more
> extensible than what we have (and I don't want to use Python).
> 
> It sucks. I don't feel like replicating all other code. At the same
> time I want
> something cleaner.
> 
> The PAML output adds information for each column of an alignment.
> Besides we deal with the translated alignment too. So PAML requires a
> dual alignment standard (NU+AA) with columnwise information (homology,
> evidence of positive selection). Add to that the phylogentic tree. For
> my current work I are going to add column-wise and row-wise 'meta'
> information, which is used for output (both HTML and graphics).
> 
> I guess the best option is to write two BioRuby plugins. One for the
> new alignment storage and one for PAML alignments, which will include
> meta-info and output functionality. Questions:
> 
> * What is the way to store alignments - should gaps be represented as
> dashes?
> * Should we use a String format?
> * How do we handle multi-value fields (e.g. degenerates)?
> * How do we handle quality scores (sequencers)?
> 
> I think the underlying storage format should not be String - as it
> allows
> toying with the data - say, by embedding HTML. Properties, like
> colors, should be added on top of the alignment structure, not within.
> We should also allow for (future) stronger type checking of
> nucleotides and amino acids.
> 
> If we can convert easily to the standard BioRuby alignment old
> functionality can be retained. Though it may not always be that
> natural.
> 
> With Ruby a string type may be the most obvious choice (a lists of
> lists of a special nucleotide object is probably overkill, though it
> should not be).
> 
> Anyone interested in participating?
> 
> With regard to plugins: for now I will merely create a separate
> 
>   pluginname/lib/bio/pluginname.rb
> 
> and add that to the include path. That should be OK for now. It will
> allow adding it as a gem too.
> 
> Pj.
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