Parasite Focus – BigWig External Annotations

This is an example of attaching an external annotation file to the ParaSite browser.

As annotation, we will use a BigWig file containing a PhyloP profile of the Trichinella spiralis genome, which is available here. In addition we need to put it onto a public accessible HTTP server.

We will use BigWig as format, as the size of WIG files is limited to 5MB, which would only cover parts of the Trichinella spiralis genome (as the format contains a score for each base pair).

Disclaimer: this data is just an example and should not be used for a in depth study of conservation

We will start at the ParaSite main page and choose Trichinella spirlalis
ParaSite main page

From there we should end up on a species specific page, where we can search for, as example, EFV62134 (which is a INSDC identifier of an T.spiralis gene)
T.spiralis main page

This will return a gene page, which includes a genome track to which we can attach our annotation.
example gene page for T.spiralis

We can also switch to the genome location view and attach it there (but note: if you want to see it on both, you need to attach it to both)
example genome location view

both should contain a “Manage Your Data”, which we will use to attach the bigwig file using the “add custom track” link at the bottom of the view
data management view

from there we will pick “Trichinella spiralis” as genome, “BigWig” as file format and put “http://www.ebi.ac.uk/~mh6/tspiralis.phylop.wib” into the URL (which you potentially need to change to wherever you host it from).
data details view

You can also pick the colour scheme (the examples below use the cyan one) and then you should get on the gene view something like that
PhyloP track for EFV62134

and for the location view, respectively that
location view PhyloP

It is also possible to change the display of the track by clicking on the gear shaped icon next to it.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *