Bioconductor

Bioconductor

Stable release	3.4 / 18 October 2016
Operating system	Linux, Mac OS X, Windows
Platform	R programming language
Type	Bioinformatics
License	Artistic License 2.0
Website	www.bioconductor.org

Bioconductor is a free, open source and open development software project for the analysis and comprehension of genomic data generated by wet lab experiments in molecular biology.

Bioconductor is based primarily on the statistical R programming language, but does contain contributions in other programming languages. It has two releases each year that follow the semiannual releases of R. At any one time there is a release version, which corresponds to the released version of R, and a development version, which corresponds to the development version of R. Most users will find the release version appropriate for their needs. In addition there are a large number of genome annotation packages available that are mainly, but not solely, oriented towards different types of microarrays.

The project was started in the Fall of 2001 and is overseen by the Bioconductor core team, based primarily at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, with other members coming from international institutions.

Packages

Most Bioconductor components are distributed as R packages, which are add-on modules for R. Initially most of the Bioconductor software packages focused on the analysis of single channel Affymetrix and two or more channel cDNA/Oligo microarrays. As the project has matured, the functional scope of the software packages broadened to include the analysis of all types of genomic data, such as SAGE, sequence, or SNP data.

Goals

The broad goals of the projects are to:

• Provide widespread access to a broad range of powerful statistical and graphical methods for the analysis of genomic data.
• Facilitate the inclusion of biological metadata in the analysis of genomic data, e.g. literature data from PubMed, annotation data from LocusLink/Entrez.
• Provide a common software platform that enables the rapid development and deployment of plug-able, scalable, and interoperable software.
• Further scientific understanding by producing high-quality documentation and reproducible research.
• Train researchers on computational and statistical methods for the analysis of genomic data.

Main features

• The R Project for Statistical Computing. R and the R package system provides a broad range of advantages to the Bioconductor project including:
  • It contains a high-level interpreted language in which one can easily and quickly prototype new computational methods.
  • It includes a well established system for packaging together software components and documentation.
  • It can address the diversity and complexity of computational biology and bioinformatics problems in a common object-oriented framework.
  • It provides access to on-line computational biology and bioinformatics data sources.
  • It supports a rich set of statistical simulation and modeling activities.
  • It contains cutting edge data and model visualization capabilities.
  • It has been the basis for pathbreaking research in parallel statistical computing.
  • It is under very active development by a dedicated team of researchers with a strong commitment to good documentation and software design.
• Documentation and reproducible research. Each Bioconductor package contains at least one vignette, which is a document that provides a textual, task-oriented description of the package's functionality. These vignettes come in several forms. Many are simple "How-to"s that are designed to demonstrate how a particular task can be accomplished with that package's software. Others provide a more thorough overview of the package or might even discuss general issues related to the package. In the future, the Bioconductor project is looking towards providing vignettes that are not specifically tied to a package, but rather are demonstrating more complex concepts. As with all aspects of the Bioconductor project, users are encouraged to participate in this effort.
• Statistical and graphical methods. The Bioconductor project aims to provide access to a wide range of powerful statistical and graphical methods for the analysis of genomic data. Analysis packages are available for: pre-processing Affymetrix and Illumina, cDNA array data; identifying differentially expressed genes; graph theoretical analyses; plotting genomic data. In addition, the R package system itself provides implementations for a broad range of state-of-the-art statistical and graphical techniques, including linear and non-linear modeling, cluster analysis, prediction, resampling, survival analysis, and time series analysis.
• Genome Annotation. The Bioconductor project provides software for associating microarray and other genomic data in real time to biological metadata from web databases such as GenBank, LocusLink and PubMed (annotate package). Functions are also provided for incorporating the results of statistical analysis in HTML reports with links to annotation WWW resources. Software tools are available for assembling and processing genomic annotation data, from databases such as GenBank, the Gene Ontology Consortium, LocusLink, UniGene, the UCSC Human Genome Project and others with the AnnotationDbi package. Data packages are distributed to provide mappings between different probe identifiers (e.g. Affy IDs, LocusLink, PubMed). Customized annotation libraries can also be assembled.
• Open source. The Bioconductor project has a commitment to full open source discipline, with distribution via a SourceForge.net-like platform. All contributions are expected to exist under an open source license such as Artistic 2.0, GPL2, or BSD. There are many different reasons why open-source software is beneficial to the analysis of microarray data and to computational biology in general. The reasons include:
  • To provide full access to algorithms and their implementation
  • To facilitate software improvements through bug fixing and plug-ins
  • To encourage good scientific computing and statistical practice by providing appropriate tools and instruction
  • To provide a workbench of tools that allow researchers to explore and expand the methods used to analyze biological data
  • To ensure that the international scientific community is the owner of the software tools needed to carry out research
  • To lead and encourage commercial support and development of those tools that are successful
  • To promote reproducible research by providing open and accessible tools with which to carry out that research (reproducible research is distinct from independent verification)
• Open development. Users are encouraged to become developers, either by contributing Bioconductor compliant packages or documentation. Additionally Bioconductor provides a mechanism for linking together different groups with common goals to foster collaboration on software, possibly at the level of shared development.

Milestones

Version	Release Date	Package Count	Dependency
1.0	1 May 2001	15	R 1.5
1.1	19 Nov 2002	20	R 1.6
1.2	29 May 2003	30	R 1.7
1.3	30 Oct 2003	49	R 1.8
1.4	17 May 2004	81	R 1.9
1.5	25 Oct 2004	100	R 2.0
1.6	18 May 2005	123	R 2.1
1.7	14 Oct 2005	141	R 2.2
1.8	27 Apr 2006	172	R 2.3
1.9	4 Oct 2006	188	R 2.4
2.0	26 Apr 2007	214	R 2.5
2.1	8 Oct 2007	233	R 2.6
2.2	1 May 2008	260	R 2.7
2.3	22 Oct 2008	294	R 2.8
2.4	21 Apr 2009	320	R 2.9
2.5	28 Oct 2009	352	R 2.10
2.6	23 Apr 2010	389	R 2.11
2.7	18 Oct 2010	418	R 2.12
2.8	14 Apr 2011	466	R 2.13
2.9	1 Nov 2011	517	R 2.14
2.10	2 Apr 2012	554	R 2.15
2.11	3 Oct 2012	610	R 2.15
2.12	4 Apr 2013	671	R 3.0
2.13	15 Oct 2013	749	R 3.0
2.14	14 Apr 2014	824	R 3.1
3.0	14 Oct 2014	934	R 3.1
3.1	17 Apr 2015	1024	R 3.2
3.2	14 Oct 2015	1104	R 3.2
3.3	4 May 2016	1211	R 3.3
3.4	18 Oct 2016	1296	R 3.3

Resources

• Gentleman, R.; Carey, V.; Huber, W.; Irizarry, R.; Dudoit, S. (2005). Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Solutions Using R and Bioconductor. Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-25146-2.
• Gentleman, R. (2008). R Programming for Bioinformatics. Chapman & Hall/CRC. ISBN 1-4200-6367-7.
• Hahne, F.; Huber, W.; Gentleman, R.; Falcon, S. (2008). Bioconductor Case Studies. Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-77239-4.

See also

• Computational Biology
• Bioinformatics
• List of open source bioinformatics software
• List of sequence alignment software
• R (programming language)
• DNA Microarray
• Affymetrix, a microarray technology platform

External links

• Official website
• Genome Biology 2004 article: Bioconductor: open software development for computational biology and bioinformatics
• The R Project GNU R is a programming language for statistical computing.
• The community of the Debian GNU/Linux distribution strives towards an automated building of BioConductor packages for their distribution. BioKnoppix and Quantian are projects extending Knoppix that have contributed bootable Debian GNU/Linux CDs providing BioConductor installations.