316results about "Evolutionary biology" patented technology

Methods, computer program(s) and database(s) to analyze and make use of gene haplotype information. These include methods, program, and database to find and measure the frequency of haplotypes in the general population; methods, program, and database to find correlation's between an individual's haplotypes or genotypes and a clinical outcome; methods, program, and database to predict an individual's haplotypes from the individual's gen type for a gene; and methods, program, and database to predict an individual's clinical response to a treatment based on the individual's genotype or haplotype.

Methods and systems for providing biological results in the form of systematically varied libraries of sequences or as data representing sequences or physical preparations of systematically varied libraries and / or selections from systematically varied libraries.

The present invention relates to methods for identifying novel genes comprising: (i) generating one and / or more specialized databases containing information on gene / protein structure, function and / or regulatory interactions; and (ii) searching the specialized databases for homology or for a particular motif and thereby identifying a putative novel gene of interest. The invention may further comprise performing simulation and hypothesis testing to identify or confirm that the putative gene is a novel gene of interest. The present invention also relates to natural language processing and extraction of relational information associated with genes and proteins that are found in genomics journal articles. To enable access to information in textual form, the natural language processing system of the present invention provides a method for extracting and structuring information found in the literature in a form appropriate for subsequent applications.

Determining relative relationship includes receiving recombinable deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) information of a first user and recombinable DNA information of a second user, determining, based at least in part on the recombinable DNA information of the first user and recombinable DNA information of the second user, a predicted degree of relationship between the first user and the second user, and in the event that the expected degree of relationship between the first user and the second user at least meets the threshold, notifying at least the first user about a relative relationship with the second user.

The invention is directed to methods for determining clonotypes and clonotype profiles in assays for analyzing immune repertoires by high throughput nucleic acid sequencing of somatically recombined immune molecules. In one aspect, the invention comprises generating a clonotype profile from an individual by generating sequence reads from a sample of recombined immune molecules; forming from the sequence reads a sequence tree representing candidate clonotypes each having a frequency; coalescing with a highest frequency candidate clonotype any lesser frequency candidate clonotypes whenever such lesser frequency is below a predetermined value and whenever a sequence difference therebetween is below a predetermined value to form a clonotype. After such coalescence, the candidate clonotypes is removed from the sequence tree and the process is repeated. This approach permits rapid and efficient differentiation of candidate clonotypes with genuine sequence differences from those with experimental or measurement errors, such as sequencing errors.

The invention relates to improved methods for directed evolution of polymers, including directed evolution of nucleic acids and proteins. Specifically, the methods of the invention include analytical methods for identifying "crossover locations" in a polymer. Crossovers at these locations are less likely to disrupt desirable properties of the protein, such as stability or functionality. The invention further provides improved methods for directed evolution wherein the polymer is selectively recombined at the identified "crossover locations". Crossover disruption profiles can be used to identify preferred crossover locations. Structural domains of a biopolymer can also be identified and analyzed, and domains can be organized into schema. Schema disruption profiles can be calculated, for example based on conformational energy or interatomic distances, and these can be used to identify preferred or candidate crossover locations. Computer systems for implementing analytical methods of the invention are also provided.

The subject invention provides systems and methods that facilitate AIDS vaccine cocktail assembly via machine learning algorithms such as a cost function, a greedy algorithm, an expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm, etc. Such assembly can be utilized to generate vaccine cocktails for species of pathogens that evolve quickly under immune pressure of the host. For example, the systems and methods of the subject invention can be utilized to facilitate design of T cell vaccines for pathogens such HIV. In addition, the systems and methods of the subject invention can be utilized in connection with other applications, such as, for example, sequence alignment, motif discovery, classification, and recombination hot spot detection. The novel techniques described herein can provide for improvements over traditional approaches to designing vaccines by constructing vaccine cocktails with higher epitope coverage, for example, in comparison with cocktails of consensi, tree nodes and random strains from data.

The subject invention provides systems and methods that facilitate AIDS vaccine cocktail assembly via machine learning algorithms such as a cost function, a greedy algorithm, an expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm, etc. Such assembly can be utilized to generate vaccine cocktails for species of pathogens that evolve quickly under immune pressure of the host. For example, the systems and methods of the subject invention can be utilized to facilitate design of T cell vaccines for pathogens such HIV. In addition, the systems and methods of the subject invention can be utilized in connection with other applications, such as, for example, sequence alignment, motif discovery, classification, and recombination hot spot detection. The novel techniques described herein can provide for improvements over traditional approaches to designing vaccines by constructing vaccine cocktails with higher epitope coverage, for example, in comparison with cocktails of consensi, tree nodes and random strains from data.

A computer-assisted method for identifying functionalities to add to an organism-specific metabolic network to enable a desired biotransformation in a host includes accessing reactions from a universal database to provide stoichiometric balance, identifying at least one stoichiometrically balanced pathway at least partially based on the reactions and a substrate to minimize a number of non-native functionalities in the production host, and incorporating the at least one stoichiometrically balanced pathway into the host to provide the desired biotransformation. A representation of the metabolic network as modified can be stored.

Estimating parental contribution of ancestry includes: obtaining a set of ancestry assignment data associated with an individual's genotype data, at least some of the ancestry assignment data indicating that one or more segments of the individual's genotype data is deemed to be associated with a specific ancestry; determining whether in the individual's genotype data there is at least one confirmed region of overlapping ancestry assignment associated with the specific ancestry; in the event that it is determined that there is at least one confirmed region of overlapping ancestry assignment associated with the specific ancestry: specifying that parental contribution of the specific ancestry is made by both parents of the individual; in the event that it is determined that there is no confirmed region of overlapping ancestry assignment associated with the specific ancestry: statistically determining whether the parental contribution to the specific ancestry is made by only one parent of the individual or by both parents of the individual, the determination being based at least in part on one or more lengths of the one or more segments deemed to be associated with the specific ancestry; and outputting information pertaining to the parental contribution to the specific ancestry.

The invention relates to methods for clustering gene and protein sequences. In particular, it involves generation of networks of sequences where the interconnections are based upon a measure of similarity. The invention also provides methods of optimizing and improving the networks by re-wiring of the network based upon overlap of the nearest neighbors of given pairs of nodes. The invention further provides methods of identifying clusters of sequences within the networks and the optimized networks based upon the topology of the network. The clusters identified represent groups of sequences that are related by function and / or evolution. The invention has particular applicability in annotation of sequences in databases and identification of functional homologs which can be very useful for novel therapeutic and diagnostic targets based upon such targets belonging to a cluster or family that contains a known sequence such as a diagnostic sequence, antigen or other therapeutic target.

In particular, this invention provides novel methods of populating data structures for use in evolutionary modeling. In particular, this invention provides methods of populating a data structure with a plurality of character strings. The methods involve encoding two or more a biological molecules into character strings to provide a collection of two or more different initial character strings; selecting at least two substrings from the pool of character strings; concatenating the substrings to form one or more product strings about the same length as one or more of the initial character strings; adding the product strings to a collection of strings; and optionally repeating this process using one or more of the product strings as an initial string in the collection of initial character strings.

A genealogical research and record keeping system and method for identifying commonalities in haplotypes and other genetic characteristics of a biological sample of two or more individual members. Chromosomal fragments identical by descent identify family ties between siblings, parents and children and ancestors and progeny across many generations. It is particularly useful in corroborating and improving the accuracy of genealogical data and identifying previously unknown genetic relationships.