[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/bioperl/bioperl-live.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/bioperl/bioperl-live) [![Coverage Status](https://coveralls.io/repos/bioperl/bioperl-live/badge.png?branch=master)](https://coveralls.io/r/bioperl/bioperl-live?branch=master) [![DOI](https://zenodo.org/badge/doi/10.5281/zenodo.16344.svg)](http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16344) [![Documentation Status](https://readthedocs.org/projects/bioperl/badge/?version=latest)](https://readthedocs.org/projects/bioperl/?badge=latest) # Getting Started Please see the the [INSTALL](http://bioperl.org/INSTALL.html) or [INSTALL.WIN](http://bioperl.org/INSTALL.WIN.html) documents for installation instructions. # About BioPerl BioPerl is a package of public domain Perl tools for computational molecular biology. Our website (http://bioperl.org/) provides an online resource of modules, scripts, and web links for developers of Perl-based software for life science research. # Contact Information * BioPerl mailing list: bioperl-l@bioperl.org * Project website : http://bioperl.org/ * Bug reports : https://github.com/bioperl/bioperl-live/issues Please submit bugs, in particular about documentation which you think is unclear, or about problems in installation. We are also very interested in functions which don't work the way you think they do! # The Directory Structure The BioPerl directory structure is organized as follows: * **`Bio/`** - BioPerl modules * **`deobfuscator/`** - Code for tracing OOP relationships * **`examples/`** - Scripts demonstrating the many uses of BioPerl * **`ide/`** - Files for developing BioPerl using an IDE * **`maintenance/`** - BioPerl housekeeping scripts * **`models/`** - DIA drawing program generated OO UML for BioPerl classes (these are quite out-of-date) * **`scripts/`** - Useful production-quality scripts with POD documentation * **`t/`** - Perl built-in tests, tests are divided into subdirectories based on the specific classes being tested * **`t/data/`** - Data files used for the tests, provides good example data * **`travis_scripts/`** - script to customize Travis # Documentation For documentation on BioPerl see the **HOWTO** documents online at http://bioperl.org/howtos. Useful documentation in the form of example code can also be found in the **`examples/`** and **`scripts/`** directories. The current collection includes scripts that run BLAST, index flat files, parse PDB structure files, make primers, retrieve ESTs based on tissue, align protein to nucleotide sequence, run GENSCAN on multiple sequences, and much more! See `bioscripts.pod` for a complete listing. Individual `*.pm` modules have their own embedded POD documentation as well. A complete set of hyperlinked POD, or module, documentation is available at http://www.bioperl.org/. Remember that '`perldoc`' is your friend. You can use it to read any file containing POD formatted documentation without needing any type of translator (e.g. '`perldoc Bio::SeqIO`'). If you used the Build.PL installation, and depending on your platform, you may have documentation installed as man pages, which can be accessed in the usual way. # Releases BioPerl releases are always available from the website at http://www.bioperl.org/DIST or in CPAN. The latest code can be found at https://github.com/bioperl. * BioPerl currently uses a sematic numbering scheme to indicate stable release series vs. development release series. A release number is a three digit number like `1.2.0`. * The *first digit indicates the major release*, the idea being that all the API calls in a major release are reasonably consistent. * The *second number is the release series*. This is probably the most important number, and represents added functionality that is backwards-compatible. * The *third number is the point or patch release* and represents mainly bug fixes or additional code that doesn't add significant functionality to the code base. From the **1.0 release until the 1.6 release** even numbers (e.g. `1.4`) indicated stable releases. Stable releases were well tested and recommended for most uses. Odd numbers (e.g. `1.3`) were development releases which one would only use if one were interested in the latest features. The final number (e.g. in `1.2.1`) is the point or patch release. The higher the number the more bug fixes has been incorporated. In theory you can upgrade from one point or patch release to the next with no changes to your own code (for production cases, obviously check things out carefully before you switch over). The upcoming **1.7 release** will be the last release series to utilize the alternating 'stable'/'developer' convention. Starting immediately after the final 1.6 branch, we will start splitting BioPerl into several smaller easier-to-manage distributions. These will have independent versions, all likely starting with v1.7.0. **We do not anticipate major API changes in the 1.7.x release series, merely that the code will be restructured in a way to make maintenance more feasible.** We anticipate retaining semantic versioning until the 2.x release. # Caveats and Warnings When you run the tests with `./Build test` some tests may issue warnings messages or even fail. Sometimes this is because we didn't have anyone to test the test system on the combination of your operating system, version of perl, and associated libraries and other modules. Because BioPerl depends on several outside libraries we may not be able to test every single combination so if there are warnings you may find that the package is still perfectly useful. If you install the bioperl-run system and run tests when you don't have the program installed you'll get messages like `program XXX not found, skipping tests`. That's okay, BioPerl is doing what it is supposed to do. If you wanted to run the program you'd need to install it first. Not all scripts in the `examples/` directory are correct and up-to-date. If you find an issue with a script please submit a bug report to https://github.com/bioperl/bioperl-live/issues and consider helping out in their maintenance. If you are confused about what modules are appropriate when you try and solve a particular issue in bioinformatics we urge you to look at HOWTO documents first. # A simple module summary Here is a quick summary of many of the useful modules and how the toolkit is laid out: All modules are in the **`Bio/`** namespace, * **`Perl`** is for *new users*, and gives a functional interface to the main parts of the package. * **`Seq`** is for *Sequences* (protein and DNA). * `Bio::PrimarySeq` is a plain sequence (sequence data + identifiers) * `Bio::Seq` is a fancier `PrimarySeq`, in that it has annotation (via `Bio::Annotation::Collection`) and sequence features (via `Bio::SeqFeatureI` objects, attached via `Bio::FeatureHolderI`). * `Bio::Seq::RichSeq` is all of the above, plus it has slots for extra information specific to GenBank/EMBL/SwissProt files. * `Bio::Seq::LargeSeq` is for sequences which are too big for fitting into memory. * **`SeqIO`** is for *reading and writing Sequences*. It is a front end module for separate driver modules supporting the different sequence formats * **`SeqFeature`** represent *start/stop/strand-based localized annotations (features) of sequences* * **`Bio::SeqFeature::Generic`** is basic catchall * **`Bio::SeqFeature::Similarity`** a similarity sequence feature * **`Bio::SeqFeature::FeaturePair`** a sequence feature which is pairwise such as query/hit pairs * **`SearchIO`** is for *reading and writing pairwise alignment reports*, like BLAST or FASTA * **`Search`** is where the *alignment objects for `SearchIO` are defined* * **`Bio::Search::Result::GenericResult`** is the result object (a blast query is a `Result` object) * **`Bio::Search::Hit::GenericHit`** is the `Hit` object (a query will have 0 to many hits in a database) * **`Bio::Search::HSP::GenericHSP`** is the High-scoring Segment Pair object defining the alignment(s) of the query and hit. * **`SimpleAlign`** is for *multiple sequence alignments* * **`AlignIO`** is for *reading and writing multiple sequence alignment formats* * **`Assembly`** provides the start of an *infrastructure for assemblies* and **`Assembly::IO`** *IO converters* for them * **`DB`** is the namespace for *all the database query classes* * **`Bio::DB::GenBank/GenPept`** are two modules which query NCBI entrez for sequences * **`Bio::DB::SwissProt/EMBL`** query various EMBL and SwissProt repositories for a sequences * **`Bio::DB::GFF`** is Lincoln Stein's fast, lightweight feature and sequence database which is the backend to his GBrowse system (see www.gmod.org) * **`Bio::DB::Flat`** is a fast implementation of the OBDA flat-file indexing system (cross-language and cross-platform supported by O|B|F projects see http://obda.open-bio.org). * **`Bio::DB::BioFetch/DBFetch`** for OBDA, Web (HTTP) access to remote databases. * **`Bio::DB::InMemoryCache/FileCache`** (fast local caching of sequences from remote dbs to speed up your access). * **`Bio::DB::Registry`** interface to the OBDA specification for remote data sources * **`Bio::DB::Biblio`** for access to remote bibliographic databases. * **`Bio::DB::EUtilities`** is the initial set of modules used for generic queried using NCBI's eUtils. * **`Annotation`** collection of *annotation objects* (comments, DBlinks, References, and misc key/value pairs) * **`Coordinate`** is a system for *mapping between different coordinate systems* such as DNA to protein or between assemblies * **`Index`** is for *locally indexed flatfiles* with BerkeleyDB * **`Tools`** contains many *miscellaneous parsers and functions* for different bioinformatics needs * Gene prediction parser (Genscan, MZEF, Grail, Genemark) * Annotation format (GFF) * Enumerate codon tables and valid sequences symbols (CodonTable, IUPAC) * Phylogenetic program parsing (PAML, Molphy, Phylip) * **`Map`** represents *genetic and physical map representations* * **`Structure`** - parse and represent *protein structure data* * **`TreeIO`** is for reading and writing *Tree formats* * **`Tree`** is the namespace for **all associated Tree classes** * **`Bio::Tree::Tree`** is the basic tree object * **`Bio::Tree::Node`** are the nodes which make up the tree * **`Bio::Tree::Statistics`** is for computing statistics for a tree * **`Bio::Tree::TreeFunctionsI`** is where specific tree functions are implemented (like `is_monophyletic` and `lca`) * **`Bio::Biblio`** is where *bibliographic data and database access objects* are kept * **`Variation`** represent *sequences with mutations and variations* applied so one can compare and represent wild-type and mutation versions of a sequence. * **`Root`**, basic objects for the *internals of BioPerl* # Upgrading from an older version If you have a previously installed version of BioPerl on your system some of these notes may help you. * Some modules have been removed because they have been superceded by new development efforts. They are documented in the **`DEPRECATED`** file that is included in the release. * Some methods, or the Application Programming Interface (API), have changed or been removed. You may find that scripts which worked with BioPerl 1.4 may give you warnings or may not work at all (although we have tried very hard to minimize this!). Send an email to the list and we'll be happy to give you pointers.