The release of Biopython 1.52 earlier this week marked the end of an era, it was our last release using CVS for source code control. As of now, Biopython is using a git repository, hosted on github.com who kindly provide git hosting for open source projects free of charge. The BioRuby project have been using github for some time, so we are in good company.

We are pleased to announce the availability of Biopython 1.52, a new stable release of the Biopython library. It may only have been one month since the last release, but in that time we’ve added enough useful features to warrant a new release. In particular, Biopython 1.52 includes more substantial support for population genetics, and adds new functions that will be useful for people working with next generation sequencing.

As per Peter’s recent post we are using this space to show of a couple of the new features in Biopython 1.52 before it is released.

The forthcoming release of Biopython 1.52 will include a couple of nice improvements to the Bio.SeqIO module, and here we’re going to introduce the new index function. This will of course be covered in the Biopython Tutorial & Cookbook ( PDF) once this code is released.

We are pleased to announce the release of BioRuby 1.3.1. This new release fixes many bugs existed in 1.3.0. Here is a brief summary of changes. Refactoring of BioSQL support. Bio::PubMed bug fixes. Bio::NCBI::REST bug fixes. Bio::GCG::Msf bug fixes. Bio::Fasta::Report bug fixes and added support for multiple query sequences. Bio::Sim4::Report bug fixes. Added unit tests for Bio::GCG::Msf and Bio::Sim4::Report. License of BioRuby is clarified.

We are pleased to announce the release of Biopython 1.51.This new stable release enhances version 1.50 (released in April) by extending the functionality of existing modules, adding a set of application wrappers for popular alignment programs and fixing a number of minor bugs.

Note: this is preliminary and needs some editing. OBF Business Meeting at BOSC 2009 Location: Rica Talk Hotel, Restaurant 2nd floor Present: current BoD members: Hilmar Lapp, Kam Dahlquist Guests: Called meeting to order at 7.05pm.

A beta release for Biopython 1.51 is now available for download and testing. In the two months since Biopython 1.50 was released, we have introduced support for writing features in GenBank files using Bio.SeqIO, extended SeqIO’s support for the FASTQ format to include files created by Illumina 1.3+, and added a new set of application wrappers for alignment programs, and made numerous tweaks and bug fixes.

Constructing complicated NCBI Entrez searches can be tricky, but it turns out one of the Entrez Programming Utilities called Entrez EInfo can help. For example, suppose you want to search for mitochondrial genomes from a given taxa - either just in the Entrez web interface, for use in a script with EFetch. I knew from past experience about using name[ORGN] in Entrez to search for an organism name - but how would you specify just mitochondria?

The BOSC 2009 schedule of speakers with links to abstracts has been posted at /wiki/BOSC_2009_Schedule.

Alan Ruttenberg of Science Commons and Robert Hanmer of the Hillside Group have been confirmed as Keynote Speakers for BOSC 2009.  For more information, see the BOSC 2009 web site at /wiki/BOSC_2009. Abstract acceptances went out today–stay tuned for the schedule, which will be posted once the speakers have confirmed their invitations.