/ 
Bioinf-Basic-0.01-TRIAL
/ Bioinf::Basic

NAME

Bioinf::Basic - FASTA I/O in XS, BLAST hit ranking, and alignment plots and tables

VERSION

version 0.01

SYNOPSIS

use Bioinf::Basic ':all';

my $seqs = fasta2hash('proteome.fa.gz');        # { defline => sequence }
my $one  = fasta2hash('proteome.fa', 'P12345'); # just that sequence
hash2fasta_file($seqs, 'copy.fa');

my $hits = get_best_alignment_hit('blast.json', 'bit_score');

# one clustalo run: plot_msa keeps the guide tree, and plot_phylo draws it
plot_msa(
    fasta       => 'orthologs.fa',     # or { name => sequence }
    filename    => 'msa.svg',          # .png, .pdf, ... too
    'tree.file' => 'orthologs.newick',
    title       => 'EF-3',
);
plot_phylo('tree.file' => 'orthologs.newick', 'output.file' => 'tree.svg', title => 'EF-3');

DESCRIPTION

FASTA I/O in XS, BLAST hit ranking, and multiple-sequence-alignment plots and LaTeX tables, taken from the maintainer's bioinf.pm.

Nothing is exported by default; ask for functions by name or with :all. Every function dies (via Carp::croak) on bad arguments, with a message that starts with the name of the function that raised it, as in fasta2hash: couldn't find "four" in x.fa. plot_msa, plot_phylo, msa_quality_table and clustal_view_residues take name => value pairs, not a hash ref.

Alien::Bioinf

Clustal Omega, BLAST+ and the Python that draws the plots come from Alien::Bioinf, which installs them module-locally and never uses PATH. It is recommended rather than required, because it can only be installed where NCBI builds BLAST+ (Linux and macOS on x86_64 and aarch64, and Windows on x86_64) and it needs the network. fasta2hash, hash2fasta_file and get_best_alignment_hit work without it; plot_msa, plot_phylo, msa_quality_table, and clustal_view_residues given an unaligned file, die saying that they need it. From this repository, install it first:

cpanm ./alien/Alien-Bioinf
cpanm .

That downloads nothing it can reuse: archives are cached (ALIEN_BIOINF_CACHE, default ~/.cache/alien-bioinf), a clustalo or BLAST+ already on the machine at the newest version is copied instead (ALIEN_BIOINF_CLUSTALO, ALIEN_BIOINF_BLAST, or PATH), and pip installs only what the base Python lacks. To check for and apply updates:

perl -MAlien::Bioinf -MData::Dumper -e 'print Dumper(Alien::Bioinf->check_updates)'
perl -MAlien::Bioinf -e 'print "$_\n" for Alien::Bioinf->update'

Provenance in the images

Every PNG, SVG, PDF, PS or EPS image these functions draw carries its provenance as Creator metadata: the calling script (as the working directory plus the script's name, like Matplotlib::Simple), the function, this file and its version, the computer it ran on (hostname, operating system and perl version), and what drew it: msa_plot.py and the matplotlib version, and for a tree the Biopython version too. For example:

/home/me/work/run.pl called using "plot_msa" in /.../Bioinf/Basic.pm
version 0.01 on host myhost (linux, perl 5.44.0), drawn by /.../msa_plot.py
with matplotlib 3.10.0

An SVG holds it in <dc:creator>; exiftool or identify -verbose shows it in a PNG or PDF.

FUNCTIONS

fasta2hash($file, $key)

Reads a FASTA file (gzip-compressed if its name ends in .gz). Returns a hash ref of defline (without the >) => sequence, or, with $key, just the sequence of that defline, reading no further than the record after it. A defline that appears twice is warned about and its sequences concatenated; with $key, only a repeat of $key is looked for. Line endings may be \n or \r\n. A .gz that gzip cannot read to its end, such as a truncated one, dies rather than returning the part that was read.

my $h = fasta2hash('DEG20010421.fa');

hash2fasta_file($hash, $filename, $order, $width)

Writes $hash as FASTA: the keys in @$order (default: sorted), sequences wrapped at $width columns (default 80; 0 for one line each). Returns $filename.

get_best_alignment_hit($json_file, $sort_criterion)

For a BLAST -outfmt 15 JSON report, a hash ref of query title => array ref of that query's hits, best first. Each hit is its best hsp plus accession, hit_len, id and title. $sort_criterion is an hsp field (default evalue): align_len, bit_score, evalue, gaps, identity, positive or score. Ties are broken on the bit score, then on BLAST's order. A report with two queries of one title dies, since only one of them could be returned.

plot_msa(%args)

Aligns sequences with Clustal Omega and draws the alignment. Returns a hash ref of the files made: filename, msa.file, and tree.file if it was given. Once the image is written it prints wrote and its file name to STDOUT, the name in black on yellow when STDOUT is a terminal.

plot_msa(
    fasta      => 't/data/DEG20010421.fa',
    filename   => 'DEG20010421.msa.svg',
);

  • fasta, filename (required): the sequences, as a FASTA file name or a hash ref of name => sequence (the function tells the two apart by whether it is a reference); and the image to draw, whose extension picks the format.

  • msa.file, tree.file: where to keep clustalo's alignment (FASTA; a temporary file otherwise) and its guide tree (newick; not made otherwise). Keep the tree to draw it with plot_phylo without aligning a second time.

  • order: names, first to last (default: the input order; for a hash, sorted). Only these are drawn, and the first is drawn at the bottom.

  • labels: a hash ref of name => label to show instead. matplotlib mathtext works: 'C.albicans' => '$\it{C. albicans}$'. Two sequences drawn under one label die, since they would be one row of the image.

  • active.site.aa, query: { His395 => 395, ... }, a dashed vertical line at each of these 1-based residue numbers of the sequence named by query. A number below 1 dies.

  • title, xlabel, ylabel, threads, clustal.args: the plot title; the axis labels (default "Amino Acid Residue" and "Protein & Species"); clustalo threads (default 1); and an array ref of extra clustalo arguments.

With fewer than two sequences it warns and returns an empty hash ref.

plot_phylo(%args)

Draws a guide tree, with Biopython's Bio.Phylo, from a FASTA (aligned with Clustal Omega first) or from a newick file that plot_msa kept. Returns a hash ref of the files made or used: output.file, and tree.file and msa.file as below.

plot_phylo(fasta => 't/data/DEG20010421.fa');   # writes phylo.svg
plot_phylo(
    'tree.file'   => 'DEG20010421.newick',
    'output.file' => 'DEG20010421.tree.png',
);

  • output.file: the image to draw (default phylo.svg, in the working directory); the extension picks the format.

  • fasta, tree.file: with fasta (as for plot_msa), the sequences are aligned with Clustal Omega and the guide tree drawn; tree.file and msa.file then say where to keep the tree and alignment, and threads and clustal.args are as for plot_msa. Without fasta, tree.file is an existing newick file to draw, such as one plot_msa kept, and no alignment is made.

  • labels, title: a hash ref of name => label for the tips, as for plot_msa; and the plot title.

With fasta of fewer than two sequences it warns and returns an empty hash ref.

Besides the Creator every image carries, a tree records where it came from in the image's own metadata, so the file can be traced and checked without the script that made it. An SVG holds all of this as Dublin Core in its <metadata>, and a PNG as text chunks:

  • Title, Date: the title (default "Phylogenetic tree"), and when it was drawn, to the second and with the UTC offset. Where SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH is set, matplotlib's date from it is kept instead, so a reproducible build stays reproducible.

  • Source: the input, with the full path and SHA-256 of each file: the FASTA file (or the number of sequences in a hash ref), the ungapped copy of it that Clustal Omega read, and the alignment Clustal Omega wrote; or the newick file drawn.

  • Description: how the tree was made: the Clustal Omega version and the exact command line; how many negative branch lengths were drawn as 0; the tips, with the label each was shown as; and the whole newick tree that was drawn.

  • Identifier, Relation: the SHA-256 of the newick file drawn, and the msa.file and tree.file kept with the image, if any.

  • Contributor: each piece of software that took part, with its version and, where it runs as a program, its path: Clustal Omega, Bioinf::Basic, Alien::Bioinf, perl, Python, matplotlib, Biopython and NumPy.

  • Keywords: "phylogenetic tree", "newick" and the tip names.

A PDF keeps the Title, the Description (as its Subject) and the Keywords; PS and EPS keep only the Creator, and other formats nothing.

msa_quality_table(%args)

Draws an all-against-all BLAST score table with matplotlib, and returns filename. The simplest call is

msa_quality_table(
    fasta      => 't/data/DEG20010421.fa',  # or { name => sequence }, aligned or not
    filename   => 'DEG20010421.scores.png',
);

  • fasta, filename (required): the sequences, as a FASTA file name or a hash ref of name => sequence, as for plot_msa; they are aligned all against all with blastp. Gaps are stripped first, so an aligned FASTA, such as the one plot_msa keeps, will do. Names must look like Genus.species[.strain]. fasta is not needed when an existing alignment.json is given. unaligned.fa is its old name.

  • alignment.json: the blastp -outfmt 15 report, as a parsed hash ref or a file name. An existing file is read, and nothing is aligned; otherwise blastp is run on fasta and its report kept there for next time. Without it, the report is a temporary file.

  • metric: the hsp field to show (default score).

  • normalize: divide every value by the largest, after adding logscale.add to both, so the scale runs to 1. A largest value of 0 or less, as evalue has when BLAST has rounded every e-value to 0, dies.

  • order, logscale.add, default_undefined, title, cb_label, cb_min, cb_max, cblogscale, show.numbers: the sequences to show, in order; a number added to every value; the value of a pair with no hit (otherwise drawn grey); the title; the colour bar's label, lower and upper ends, and whether it is logarithmic; and whether each cell shows its number.

msa.file is accepted and ignored, for old callers.

clustal_view_residues(%args)

Writes an alignment as LaTeX tables with chosen residues coloured, and returns output.tex.file, printing wrote and that file name to STDOUT, the name in black on cyan when STDOUT is a terminal. Protein names are written so that LaTeX prints them as they are, _, ^, { and the like included.

  • msa.file (required): a FASTA file. If its sequences are all one length (such as the alignment plot_msa keeps) it is shown as it is; if not, it is first aligned with Clustal Omega into a temporary file, and msa.file itself is never written.

  • output.tex.file (required): the LaTeX file to write, meant to be \input into a document.

  • color.residues: { protein => { residue number => colour } }, where residue numbers are 1-based and a colour is an xcolor name or [r, g, b]; a coloured column is coloured in every protein.

  • track: a protein that gets a row under it showing its coloured residue numbers.

  • order: an array ref of the proteins to show, top to bottom (default: sorted, ignoring case).

  • row.width: alignment columns per block (default 100).

  • split: blocks per LaTeX table (default 4); further tables are captioned "(continued)".

  • caption: the table caption (default empty).

  • label: written as \label{tab:label}, or as tab:label0, tab:label1, ... when there is more than one table.

  • table.text.size: the LaTeX size command put at the start of each table (default \footnotesize).

  • threads, clustal.args: clustalo threads (default 1) and an array ref of further clustalo arguments, when msa.file has to be aligned.

Thanks

A lot of this work (not all!) used Claude AI, which was paid for by the University of Idaho's IMCI

AUTHOR

David E. Condon <dcondon@uidaho.edu>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2026-present by David E. Condon.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.