AlexsLemonade / AlexsLemonade/refinebio
Handle taxonomy id edge cases for strains
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- Dominant language
- Python
- Stars
- 135
- Forks
- 21
- PR merge metrics
- No merged PRs in 30d
Description
Context
#1722
https://github.com/AlexsLemonade/refinebio/pull/2035
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/SRS663100&display=xml
We now support organisms with strains by using a single strain's transcriptome index for the whole species. Which strain to use is chosen by an expert. However this is complicated because NCBI has a different organism with a different taxonomy id for each strain.
Problem or idea
It seems like generally ENA returns the taxonomy id for the organism rather than the strain, but I found some edge cases where the only information we have on the species is:
<TAXON_ID>511145</TAXON_ID>
<SCIENTIFIC_NAME>Escherichia coli str. K-12 substr. MG1655</SCIENTIFIC_NAME>
(https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/SRS663100&display=xml)
This means that we can't easily tell that this sample has the organism "E. coli", so we end up thinking that we don't have a transcriptome index for it.
Solution or next step
@jaclyn-taroni has agreed that trying to use the above metadata to map to "E. coli" via some manipulation of the SCIENTIFIC_NAME would be messy and bug prone. Therefore the only solution we have at the moment is to create a mapping from strain-specific-taxonomy-ids to the taxonomy id for the organism (i.e. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser/wwwtax.cgi?mode=info&id=562 rather than https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Taxonomy/Browser/wwwtax.cgi?mode=info&id=511145)
Contributor guide
No contributing guide indexed for this repository
First steps
- Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
- Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
- Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
- Open a pull request that references the issue number.
Research direction
Start with the ENA XML example for SRS663100 and compare its TAXON_ID 511145 and SCIENTIFIC_NAME with the NCBI taxonomy entry for organism ID 562. Review the context in #1722 and pull request #2035, then define the strain-specific taxonomy mapping needed so the sample resolves to the organism's transcriptome index.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Assessment
- Tech stack
- python
- Domain
- bioinformatics, data
- Issue type
- Feature
- Difficulty
- 4/5
- Estimated time
- 3-5 days
- Activity status
- Stale
- Clarity
- Mostly clear
- Newbie friendliness
- 28/100