[TOC]
# June 2023
Time to reboot this thing once again.
## 2023-06-18
Spilled coffee on my keyboard (Keebio Sinc Rev2), so I took the caps off to wash
them & it. While they're drying I figured I should try using the new keyboard
I got to use at school (Keebio Sinc Rev3), to get used to it and discover any
issues.
Had to remember (again) how to flash this new one with a fresh QMK
configuration, because of course the process completely changed between r2 and
r3 so I need to keep track of two different methods. Figured it out and added
a note in my repo so I'll remember for next time.
Once I was able to flash it, I had to figure out how to disable the RGB Gamer
Crud™ the stupid thing has enabled by default. Googled around and found plenty
about how to enable the RGB crap, but less about how to disable it. Eventually
I figured out the correct incantation to put into `rules.mk` and got it to look
like a normal keyboard.
Wanted to push those changes to GitHub but my GH personal access token seems to
have expired some time recently. Went to create a new one and somehow the list
of permissions doesn't manage to make it clear which goddamn box you have to
check to say "just let me push and pull code". For future reference: it's
`Contents`.
## 2023-06-21
Pushed some changes to `cl-digraph` I've had sitting around for a while after
writing up a couple of quick tests.
# July 2023
## 2023-07-15
Installing Debian LTS on my laptop so I don't have to do it again any time soon
while in grad school. Taking notes to remember for when I put it on my desktop.
First, back up everything:
* Faster on wired ethernet.
* Don't forget password-store!
* Don't forget hidden dotfiles!
Partitioned everything, installed nothing.
Boot into a command line as root (no `sudo` yet).
Add user account to groups:
usermod -a -G sudo sjl
usermod -a -G netdev sjl
Allow non-free packages:
vim /etc/apt/sources.list
edit to add non-free to lines, e.g.:
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian bookworm main contrib non-free
apt update
Install first round of stuff:
apt install \
nmtui sudo make
curl wget network-manager
fish rlwrap
mercurial git
xcape xautolock
pulseaudio alsa-utils
libzstd-dev libx11-dev libxft-dev
build-essential autoconf pkg-config
bzip2 udisks2 lm-sensors htop
fonts-ubuntu w3m atool psmisc
suckless-tools trash-cli
dunst
Make wired connection manageable by network manager (might not need this?)
* Remove from `/etc/network/interfaces`
* `sudo service NetworkManager restart`
`chsh` to `/usr/bin/fish`.
Set up `.ssh` and keys.
Bootstrap lisp:
sudo apt install sbcl
git clone https://github.com/sbcl/sbcl
git checkout sbcl-2.3.6
sh make.sh --with-sb-core-compression
sudo sh install.sh
sudo apt remove sbcl
curl -O https://beta.quicklisp.org/quicklisp.lisp
sbcl --load quicklisp.lisp
(quicklisp-quickstart:install :path "/home/sjl/.quicklisp/")
TODO CCL and others
Get dotfiles:
hg clone ssh://hsl/repos/dotfiles
cd dotfiles
./bin/bootstrap.sh
TODO build hg from scratch to get hg-git working maybe
TODO bootstrap script might fuck up the fish config because shit's already created, thanks a lot fish
git clone https://github.com/sjl/z-fish
Clone repos:
hg clone hsl://adopt adopt
cd adopt
llp
cd ..
etc
Build st:
git clone https://github.com/sjl/st
Get a desktop environment up and running:
sudo apt install xinit xdm
git clone https://github.com/stumpwm/stumpwm
(ql:quickload "clx")
(ql:quickload "cl-ppcre")
(ql:quickload "alexandria")
(ql:quickload "xembed")
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install
cd ~/.stumpwm.d/
git clone https://github.com/sjl/stumpwm-contrib modules
cd modules
git co sjl
Set up `pass`:
git clone sjl@redacted:password-store .password-store
sudo apt install pass scdaemon pinentry-gtk2
gpg -a --export 5D... > public-key.txt
copy over
gpg --import < public-key.txt
Add GPU stuff:
sudo apt install vainfo radeontop
Pulseaudio crap:
sudo apt install pulseaudio alsa-utils
pulseaudio --start
alsamixer
(m to unmute, up/down to change vol)
Set up Firefox:
wget 'https://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox&os=linux64&lang=en-US'
aunpack fi…
mv firefox /opt/
cd /opt/
chown -R root:root firefox
ln -s /usr/local/bin/firefox /opt/firefox/firefox
sudo apt install libgtk-3-0 libdbus-glib-1-2
finish the rest of this garbage https://wiki.debian.org/Firefox#Hardware_Video_Acceleration
VLC (installs the world, sigh):
sudo apt install vlc
View > Docked Playlist to unbreak the playlist
Figure out a graphical file manager solution (double commander?).
# August 2023
## 2023-08-21
First day of orientation as a PhD student. Here we go again, back to school one
final time.
Figured out the campus wifi despite the Linux jankery. Had to:
1. Register as a special device, the laptop registration link redirected to
nothing useful.
2. Use `nm-connection-editor` from `gnome-network-manager` to edit the
connection and manually set up the WPA2+PEAP+user/pass for the connection.
Finally fixed the dulwich errors from hg-git. Since I'm using Debian's hg now
instead of building from source, I needed to install dulwich somewhere that the
system python can find it. I almost installed `python3-pip` to do that, but
then realized I could just install `python3-dulwich` and be done. Cool.
## 2023-08-22
Day 2. Lots of getting talked at, meeting with advisors, etc. Still trying to
get all the moving parts settled down — hopefully it'll be a lot clearer once
classes and rotations start (though I'm sure it'll be busy in a different way).
First time trying the Ann Arbor bus system, the bus was 20 minutes late. This
bodes well.
## 2023-08-23
Got a presentation about things to do/see/eat in Ann Arbor. Lots of things to
try.
Advice from existing student panel:
* Keep in touch and make connections with folks in your cohort/community who are
going through the same stuff as you.
* Rotate with anyone your want, don't let anyone tell you not to.
* Don't forget to have a life. Don't spend every weekend in the lab.
* Don't compare yourself to each other. Lots of variety in the incoming people.
* Ask for help.
What to ask/think about when looking for a lab:
* Do you have funding to support me?
* Do you have plans to stay at the university?
* Talk to current and previous students (and where those ended up).
* Talk to multiple students (people have different experiences).
* Work ethic.
* Mentoring style.
* What are your expectations of me?
* Priorities toward students (high/low?).
* How did they handle difficult situations in the lab?
* Find a good PI, because they're the one that will be there the entire time
(students/etc can and will leave).
* Tell them what you want to do (e.g. go to conferences), and based on their
responses you'll know whether they're a good fit.
* Switching labs is possible (not ideal though).
* Listen when people tell you a place sucks.
* Alumni are great because they don't have the power dynamic to worry about and
can actually be honest.
* You can change rotations if you really need to, even if it's the second week
in.
* Ask how many slots there are vs how many rotations they're taking to judge how
competitive joining the lab will be.
## 2023-08-24
Did the Python pre-test so I don't have to take the introductory programming
class.
Did more online training.
More talks. Lots of meeting people after.
## 2023-08-25
Lost power last night because of the storms and DTE says I won't get it back til
tomorrow. This is… not great.
Doing more trainings and paperwork at a school building so I can plug in my
laptop.
## 2023-08-28
Turns out I didn't get power until *last night*, i.e. three of God's own full
days after it went out. Ann Arbor is… not feeling great right now.
Also, yesterday around 14:00 the university's network went down, entirely.
Unable to get online from the wifi, and any services hosted on the university
network are down, which is… not great. Of course, many of the services used
(e.g. Canvas) are third-party services not hosted on the university network.
Except they all use the university SSO (because Security™), which *is* hosted on
the network. So you can only use them if you're already logged in. And of
course sessions expire super quickly (because Security™) so, in summary: lol.
Starting to use my HP-15C clone(s) from Swissmicros again. Was getting
misleading results when trying to do some stuff with logarithms: it seemed like
it only had two digits of precision. But after some digging around I realized
I must have configured the *display* precision to 2 SD's at some point in the
past and forgotten about it. The full precision is there, it was only rounding
to display. I set it to 6 to avoid this, but also the `PREFIX` key will show
the full precision temporarily.
Figured out (again) how to program the calculator to do logs of arbitrary bases.
Essentially:
logₓ(y) = ln(y)/ln(x)
stack
LBL C x y
LN x ln(y)
x<->y ln(y) x
LN ln(y) ln(x)
÷ ln(y)/ln(x) = logₓ(y)
RTN
Trying out syncthing as a Dropbox replacement. Installing:
sudo apt install syncthing
systemctl --user enable syncthing.service
systemctl --user start syncthing.service
Then <https://localhost:8384> to access the admin.
Got my budget scripts working and synced via syncthing (also shaved a couple of
yaks by making scripts to archive/create new hosts while I was at it). Seems to
work okay at the moment. Will gradually transition other stuff over time.
Going to spend some time learning about Nextflow while I wait to hear from
rotation folks. Nextflow is basically a DAG, where:
* Edges are FIFO queues (Nextflow calls them "channels")
* Vertices are things that consume input from their channels and produce output (Nextflow calls them "processes").
There are two types of channels. First: queue channels: asynchronous FIFO queues. Examples:
# emits sequence of given values
ch = Channel.of(1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8)
# emits a single file path (queue of size 1)
ch = Channel.fromPath('data/one-single-file.txt')
# emits multiple file paths
ch = Channel.fromPath('data/*.txt')
Value channels: like queue channels, but just emit the same value over and over.
Basically `(constantly val)`.
Processes: basically stages of a pipeline. Take input and output definitions,
plus something to run (e.g. `shell`). Example after a bit of poking around:
// allows you to define processes to be used for modular libraries
nextflow.enable.dsl = 2
workflow {
ids = Channel.fromPath('data/ids.txt') // single-item channel
chunksize = Channel.value(1000) // (constantly 1000) but will only ever be used once here
// The process below produces a list of outputs. It will only ever be
// run once, but nextflow doesn't know that -- you could potentially
// have a process run multiple times that each produces a list. So by
// default it groups all the outputs into a single emitted value. But
// here we want to flatted [[aa ab ac ad ae]] into [aa ab ac ad ae].
batched_ids = split_ids(ids, chunksize) | flatten
batched_ids.view() // .view() doesn't consume, good for debugging
result = reverse(batched_ids)
result.view()
}
process split_ids {
input:
path(ids)
val(chunksize)
output:
file('batch-*')
shell:
"""
split -l !{chunksize} !{ids} batch-
"""
}
process reverse {
input:
path(batch_file)
output:
file('result')
shell:
"""
tac !{batch_file} > result
"""
}
Nextflow seems to have the concept of a "run name", i.e. an identifier for
a particular run. It creates a `work/` directory with the output files, but
*also* seems to splat out a bunch of hidden `.nextflow/` and `.nextflow.log.*`
files in the current directory. `nextflow clean` removes `work` but not the
hidden files.
Can run with some basic reporting with some extra flags:
nextflow run example.nf -with-report report.html -with-dag graph.svg
Of course there appears to be some backwards-incompatible jank in the language
already. Reading through <https://www.nextflow.io/blog/2020/dsl2-is-here.html>
shows minor syntax changes I guess I'll need to be aware of when looking at
things a few years old.
Putting some things on the TODO list for learning mroe about nextflow:
* <https://github.com/seqeralabs/nextflow-tutorial> (uses old DSL)
* <https://carpentries-incubator.github.io/workflows-nextflow/index.html>
I also need to get some basic scratch VM infrastructure set up with qemu/vagrant
and Ansible so I can test out Nextflow/pipeline stuff without polluting my own
machines and/or any servers I eventually get access to with random testing
garbage. Maybe I'll put that on tomorrow's list too.
## 2023-08-29
First BIOSTAT-521 class. This one seems like it's going to be quite easy, but
given I have a crazily-hard class and lab rotation work to do, I think that's
fine with me. It *does* use R, which will be a good excuse to poke around at
that since it's used so heavily in the industry.
First lab meeting as well. It was good to meet everyone in person. Talked
about scheduling stuff and overall gist of my project, though we can't move
forward directly right now while the university network is still hosed. But
I did get some more information about things I'll want to look into:
* Snakemake (not Nextflow, oh well).
* Singularity containers (should probably read the UNIX book section on
containerization first).
* I still want to get Vagrant/libvirt/qemu/Ansible working to make scratch envs.
Going to meet again on Thursday to see if the network is available. If so I'll
dive in more then — until then I'll just poke around learning that stuff because
I know I'll need it eventually.
Don't have a lot of time before next class, but I went ahead and installed
Snakemake highlighting/etc for Vim.
## 2023-08-30
HG545 this morning. Class was mostly about how to succeed in the class.
Still trying to decide on how I want to take notes while I'm here. I read the
Zettelkasten book and was considering trying that. But after poking around at
it I'm not sure I like the overhead of having to link everything up all the
time. I tried creating some notes while studying and it was a pain to have to
try to link everything to something else. Sometimes I want to just jot down
something without worrying about its place in the graph. I think I might end up
going with this current format (stream-of-consciousness .plan file style notes)
for everything, but taking a few things from Zettelkasten than might help:
* Take fleeting notes as I read.
* Turn fleeting notes into permanent ones, but as text in my .plan instead of
linked entries in some other system.
That seems like something I might actually *do*, and hopefully with grep it'll
be good enough for what I need.
Installing JabRef to try as a reference manager. Zotero looks nicer (no stupid
flat UI) but syncing the DB requires sending it to their web thing. JabRef
seems to use a plain text file so I can probably just sync it with syncthing and
deal with conflicts manually. Spent some time adding a couple of papers to it.
Not sure it's great (it got the info wrong for 2/3 papers) but I guess that's
just typical open source jankery.
Apparently you can just `C-v` a DOI into JabRef and it'll import it. Hard to
discover, but seems to work okay. JabRef is complaining about capital letters
in the titles but I'll figure out that jankery later. At least I've got
something for now.
Had some wonkiness with my Syncthing budget stuff, but I think I just forgot to
reeval the location on my desktop. Will poke around more if anything else seems
to break.
Watched some snakemake videos and read through their paper. This smells a lot
more academic than Nextflow did, which is a little worrying. I'm sure it'll be
fine in the end though.
Send off the rest of my VA paperwork so things can get moving on that side.
Read the ULSAH section on containers to get a high-level overview. Started
looking into Singularity and it's already looking spicy. Apparently the project
forked a couple of years ago and there are now two competing versions? Great.
Also you have to install it from source, which requires installing Golang.
I thought I was free of Rob Pike's Googly Tendrils but I guess I never will be.
Installed Go, built Singularity. At least it installs to a prefix
(`/opt/singularity`), so I can remove it easily if I want.
Poked around a little to make sure it's working, e.g.:
singularity pull docker://debian:bookwork-slim
singularity shell debian_bookworm-slim.sif
Seems to be working as far as I can tell.
Also installing snakemake. Using pip with a venv for now even though the
documentation tries to convince you not to. If anything breaks I can revisit
it, but for now it's probably fine to go through some tutorials without pulling
in some giant slab of junk.
Started going through the Snakemake tutorial.
> Since the rule has multiple input files, Snakemake will concatenate them,
> separated by a whitespace [sic]
Oh boy.
Realized I'd need to install a pile of stuff to get through the tutorial,
decided to pause and shave the qemu yak first so I can do this without dumping
a ton of stuff on my laptop. So many yaks.
Shaved the qemu yak, now I've got a reliable VM setup. Committed the
instructions and a tiny script to a `vms` repo so I don't have to relearn this
again.
With that out of the way, installed Snakemake and all the prereqs from their
tutorial on the VM with wild abandon. Now I can *actually* do the tutorial.
The simple tutorial was straightforward for the most part, but for this:
rule bcftools_call:
input:
fa="data/genome.fa",
bam=expand("sorted_reads/{sample}.bam", sample=SAMPLES),
bai=expand("sorted_reads/{sample}.bam.bai", sample=SAMPLES)
output:
"calls/all.vcf"
shell:
"bcftools mpileup -f {input.fa} {input.bam}"
" | bcftools call -mv - > {output}"
It's not clear how the expanded input lists are ordered. Are they guaranteed to
always produce the same order given the same input list?
Finally realized I could put my pubkeys online so I can just `curl
https://stevelosh.com/pubkeys >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys`. No idea why I never
though of this before now. Also updated my site now that I've moved. Of course
everything just worked even though I haven't touched the site in months, because
it's written in Common Lisp which never changes. It's so nice to not have to
work with constantly-breaking shit.
Installed R and RStudio for tomorrow's class. Base R is `r-base` in Debian.
Unfortunately Debian 12 has only been out for a few months and the RStudio
Debian package only supports 11, but apparently the `deb` one for Ubuntu 22
works so I guess I'll just yolo it with that one for now.
Reading for tomorrow's BS521 class: chapter 1 of OpenIntro Statistics (probably
also want to real Holm's stats book again as a refresher). All pretty basic so
far.
## 2023-08-31
BS521 this morning. Still pretty straightforward.
Going to create a separate note repo for lab notes, so I can take those
privately. I'll still put public notes here, but for certain things (e.g. DB
table names, etc) I don't want to have to worry about which are okay to make
public.
Going to port the abortive attempt at a Zettelkasten into here in no particular
order (thank god for `grep`). Should have done this earlier but it's been
a hectic couple of days. Should I use heading more in this .plan for folding
purposes? Maybe. I still need to finish going through my fleeting notes that
I've got so far and getting them in here. I also should have already done this,
but I'll do that this weekend when I have some free time and try not to let it
pile up so much in the future.
### Short-Read Sequencing
Short-read sequencing aims to sequence long stretches of DNA (or RNA) by first
fragmenting them into small pieces, sequencing those pieces separately (usually
in parallel, for speed), then reassembling the fragments into contigs
computationally.
There are several forms of short-read sequencing, but the most popular by far
today is Illumina's sequencing by synthesis approach.
Short-read sequencing is often used for whole-genome sequencing.
The cost of sequencing, especially short-read sequencing, has fallen
*dramatically* in the past 20 years, which has started to enable its use as
a clinical tool. It was impractical to sequence someone's genome to learn about
their health when it cost $1 billion, but it is much more reasonable to do it
when it costs $1,000.
### Whole-Genome Sequencing
Whole-genome sequencing refers to sequencing an organism's entire genome,
instead of just a limited part of it.
This has the benefit of letting you get data on *all* of the genome at once,
without having to know what you're looking for in advance. But if you *do* know
what you're interested in, it can be much faster/cheaper to sequence just that
part (or can give you deeper coverage for the same cost). Like many things in
science and engineering, it's a tradeoff.
### Fragmentation
When sequencing DNA or RNA with short-read sequencing like Illumina, the strands
of nucleic acid need to be fragmented into shorter pieces. This usually happens
in one of a few ways:
* Mechanical fragmentation by forcing it through a small passage
* Enzymatic fragmentation
* Sonication
### Sequencing Alternatives
Although sequencing costs have fallen dramatically in the past 20 years, they
are not completely free. There are several alternatives to sequencing that are
still used for a number of reasons:
* They can provide the information more cheaply than sequencing.
* They can provide much deeper coverage than would be practical to get by sequencing.
* They can be done much faster than sequencing, allowing for rapid diagnostic use.
Some examples of alternatives are:
* Microarrays
* Nanostring
* qPCR
* Optical mapping
### Post-Transcriptional Modification
After RNA is transcribed from DNA, but before it goes on to do its actual job
(being translated into protein, or doing something on its own), it is sometimes
modified. There are a number of modifications that happen, some of the most
common are:
* Splicing out introns.
* Polyadenalation of the 3' tail.
* Adding a 5' cap.
### Post-Translational Modification
After RNA is translated into protein, but before the protein begins to do its
intended work, it is sometimes modified. Modifications come in many forms and
can affect the terminal ends or one of the amino acid side chains. One common
modification is phosphorylation.
### Chromatin
Chromatin structure varies in the genome. Chromatin that is uncoiled and
available for work is euchromatin (eu = useful). Chromatin that is tightly
coiled and not accessible for transcription is called heterochromatin.
Heterochromatin has two sub-types of its own:
* Facultative heterochromatin can temporarily become euchromatic.
* Constitutive heterochromatin is always condensed, and is usually found in
repetitive sections of the genome.
[ATAC-Seq](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATAC-seq): "Assay for
Transposase-Accessible Chromatin using sequencing" is used to determine which
parts of the genome's chromatin are accessible (and, implicitly, which are not).
It uses a mutant, hyperactive transposase to insert sequencing adapters
*everywhere* it can inside the genome. Those tagged fragments are then
extracted and sequenced.
[ChIP-seq](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChIP_sequencing):
"Chromatin-immunoprecipitation sequencing" is used to determine which parts of
genome particular proteins are interacting with, e.g. where a particular
transcription factor is binding to in the genome. The steps are roughly:
1. Crosslink the DNA and proteins to lock them together, so the protein can't
unbind from the DNA (usually using formaldehyde).
2. [Fragment](n/fragmentation.md) the DNA into small (~500bp) fragments.
3. Use immunoprecipitation to extract only the proteins you are interested in
(antibodies that bind to your protein of interest).
4. Unlink the DNA and proteins, extract the DNA, and sequence it (e.g. with
Illumina).
The resulting reads will be regions where the protein of interest was originally
bound to the DNA, allowing you to see (roughly) where a particular protein
interacts with the genome.
### Homopolymer
"Homopolymer" when used in the context of sequencing means a sequence of the
same base repeated, e.g. `AAAAA` or `CCC`.
Many sequencing technologies have trouble with these kinds of sequences. For
example, Oxford Nanopore sequencing uses the properties of the bases currently
inside the pore to determine the bases that enter/leave. But for homopolymers
it's hard to tell when one enters and another leaves if they're completely
uniform along the entire pore.
### Long-read sequencing
Long-read sequencing is a relatively new branch of technology that allows for
sequencing much longer reads than e.g. Illumina. This is useful because many
parts of many genomes have regions that are difficult for short-read sequencing
to deal with, e.g. repetitive elements and high-level structural variation.
Long-read sequencing can help assemble those sequences which would be difficult
to piece together from short reads.
### Oxford Nanopore Technologies
A long-read sequencing technology that can be used to directly read a strand of
DNA using a molecular pore that produces current as DNA passes through it. The
variations in current can be recorded and processed to determine the DNA
sequence being passed through.
---,
\
\
=============== DNA helix
/
/ ssDNA (unwound)
/
( | )
( | ) motor protein
( | )
[ | ]
[ | ] pore for sensing DNA
[ | ]
[ | ]
[ | ]
______[ | ]__________________________
|
|
vvvvv DNA is fed through the pore by the motor protein and current (picoamps) measured
ONT units are available as small devices that connect to a USB port on a laptop,
which makes them much more portable than other sequencers (though the library
prep equipment is not as portable, yet).
### 10X Genomics Linked Reads
A form of synthetic long-read sequencing from 10X. Long DNA fragments were
loaded into gel beads with barcodes. They were then fragmented and barcoded,
then sequenced on a normal sequencer. The barcodes allowed you to know which
short reads came from the same longer fragment (i.e. were "linked"), which helps
reconstruct the longer fragments from the short ones.
We discontinued this product while I was working at 10X. RIP.
### Non-uniform genotypes
An organism is a **mosaic** if it has cells with different genomes that stem from
a somatic mutation in one of the ancestral cells, which then divided and
resulted in a chunk of the organism having the mutation while the rest does not.
An organism is a **chimera** when it has cells with different genomes that are
caused by multiple zygotes combining early in development. The resulting
organism will have cells with completely different genomes depending on which
zygote they trace their ancestry back to.
### Kaelin 2017
Read this paper from intro materials. Main thrust was about broad vs narrow
claims in papers.
Scientific papers make and justify claims using evidence. Papers vary on how
many claims they make, and how well-supported each of those claims is with
evidence in the paper.
Because scientists have limited time and papers must be a finite size, there is
almost always a tradeoff between making a broad set or a narrow set of claims:
more claims will generally mean less evidence to support each claim.
The author claims that in biomedical research there is a growing trend toward
requiring papers with broader and more sweeping claims if you want to get
published. Reviewers want more and more claims, more "translatability" to the
real world. It is no longer enough to notice and document something is
happening, now you must also propose *why* it happens and experiment to
demonstrate this mechanism.
Requiring authors of scientific papers to make broader and broader claims in
order to get published has several (likely unintended) effects.
First, by adding more and more claims to a paper, each claim will likely have
less individual support behind it. Instead of a few claims supported by many
pieces of evidence:
------- -----
||||| |||
papers will end up with a collection of claims, each balancing precariously on
narrow support:
--------- ----- --- --- ----- ----
| | | | | | ||
This harms reproducibility because claims that are not supported by a robust set
of evidence are less likely to reproduce successfully.
Broad claims are also often harder for peer reviewers to deal will -- they often
need to be an expert in multiple fields just to be able to evaluate the paper.
### Recombination
Recombination is a step that happens during meiosis where homologous chromosomes
cross over pieces of themselves, effectively swapping random chunks of their
sequences. This provides much more genetic variation than random segregation of
chromosomes alone, allowing sexual reproduction to explore more of the genetic
space more quickly.
The number of recombination events (crossovers) per chromosome is random, but is
usually relatively low (3-5 per chromosome).
# September 2023
## 2023-09-01
HG545. Looked over the slides last night and was a little worried, but felt
okay after the lecture for the most part. Still a few things I need to look up
and I do still need to get my fleeting notes into this, but I feel okay.
Continuing the Snakemake tutorial.
Threads can be specified for a given job with `threads: 8`, and you need to
propagate that to the command yourself with `{threads}`. Will be scaled down if
run with fewer cores than threads, otherwise will wait until that many are
available.
Snakemake has some support for noticing log files, but it seems like you have to
manually create them yourself? This seems… tedious?
rule bwa_map:
input:
"data/genome.fa",
lambda wc: SAMPLES[wc.sample]
output:
"mapped_reads/{sample}.bam"
threads: 8
params:
rg=r"@RG\tID:{sample}\tSM:{sample}"
log: "logs/bwa_map/{sample}.log"
shell:
"("
"bwa mem -R '{params.rg}' -t {threads} {input}"
" | samtools view -Sb - > {output}"
") >{log} 2>&1"
Do I really have to wrap everything in `(…) >{log} 2>&1` by hand myself?
You can get a summary of file provenance with `snakemake --summary`. The output
is a TSV, so I went down a rathole of pretty-printing TSVs and eventually found
that `| column -s $'\t' -t` works (mnemonic: `s$tt`). I love how every UNIX
program gets to invent its own bespoke command line interface for specifying
special characters. Really great.
Can mark outputs as `temp()` and `protected()`, which is nice.
Need to install singularity *inside* my VM:
# Ensure repositories are up-to-date
sudo apt-get update
# Install debian packages for dependencies
sudo apt-get install -y \
wget \
build-essential \
libseccomp-dev \
libglib2.0-dev \
pkg-config \
squashfs-tools \
cryptsetup \
runc
# Install Golang
export VERSION=1.21.0 OS=linux ARCH=amd64 && \
wget https://dl.google.com/go/go$VERSION.$OS-$ARCH.tar.gz && \
sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzvf go$VERSION.$OS-$ARCH.tar.gz && \
rm go$VERSION.$OS-$ARCH.tar.gz
echo 'export PATH=/usr/local/go/bin:$PATH' >> ~/.bashrc && \
source ~/.bashrc
# Install Singularity
export VERSION=3.11.4 && \
wget https://github.com/sylabs/singularity/releases/download/v${VERSION}/singularity-ce-${VERSION}.tar.gz && \
tar -xzf singularity-ce-${VERSION}.tar.gz && \
cd singularity-ce-${VERSION}
./mconfig && \
make -C builddir && \
sudo make -C builddir install
## 2023-09-02
It is time to shave the LaTeX yak again. Installed it with `texlive-latex-base`
to start, we'll see if I need to add some more crud in later. Going to go
through some guides for now.
Going to note some things to remember. Skeleton of document:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Basic text.
\end{document}
Math:
Inline math $y = 3 \sin x$ example.
Block equation:
\[
y = 3 \sin x
\]
With reference:
\begin{equation}\label{equa}
y' = 3 \cos x
\end{equation}
refer to it by label, e.g. equation (\ref{equa}).
More complicated: $x^2$ and $x^{2+\alpha}$ and $y_{n+1}$.
Verbatim:
Verbatim text: \verb"$x^{2+\alpha}$". Delimiter can be anything ala sed,
\verb_%%&_ or \verb+$$+.
Must escape special characters \&, \$, \%, \_, \{, \}, and \#.
\begin{verbatim}
A whole verbatim region.
(defun square (x)
(* x x))
\end{verbatim}
Comments:
Comments exist. % This is a comment.
Type styles:
Shapes:
\textup{Upright}
\textit{Italic}
\textsl{Slanted}
\textsc{Small}
Series (weight):
\textmd{Medium}
\textbf{Boldface}
Families:
\textrm{Roman}
\textsf{Sans}
\texttt{Typewriter}
Emphasis:
\emph{Never} do Foo!
"Environments" are sections that are treated differently, made with `\begin{…}`
and `\end{…}`.
Lists:
Unordered list:
\begin{itemize}
\item Foo
\item Bar
\item Baz
\end{itemize}
Ordered list:
\begin{enumerate}
\item One
\item Two
\item Three
\end{enumerate}
Customizable labels:
\begin{description}
\item[Rule 1.] Foo
\item[Rule 2.] Bar
\item[Rule 3.] Baz
\end{description}
Sizes (note the brace comes BEFORE the command!):
{\Huge Huge}
{\huge huge}
{\LARGE LARGE}
{\Large Large}
{\large large}
{\normalsize normalsize}
{\small small}
{\footnotesize footnotesize}
{\scriptsize scriptsize}
{\tiny tiny}
Centering:
\begin{center}
{\large\textbf{Assignment 1}}\\% The \\ linebreaks.
Steve Losh\\
BS521
\end{center}
Example table.
\begin{tabular}{l|rc} % lrc = cols should be left, right, centered, pipe for vertical line
Name & Mark & Grade \\
\hline\hline
Foo & 99 & A+ \\
Bar & 51 & C \\
Baz & 5 & F
\end{tabular}
Colspan with multicolumn command.
\begin{tabular}{|l||r|r|}
\hline
& \multicolumn{2}{c|}{Grades} \\
\cline{2-3}
Name & Class 1 & Class 2 \\
\hline\hline
Foo & 99 & 88 \\
Bar & 51 & 65 \\
Baz & 5 & 58 \\
\hline
\end{tabular}
Full example, with referencing and caption, e.g. `Table~\ref{tab:a} on page~\pageref{tab:a}`.
% b = try to put at Bottom. Also t top, h here, p separate page.
% Can do multiple in order of preference.
% [!t] ! = try harder
\begin{table}[b]
\begin{center}
\caption{An Example Table}
\label{tab:a}
\begin{tabular}{lr}
Name & Value \\
\hline
Foo & 1.0 \\
Bar & 15.9 \\
Baz & 6.2
\end{tabular}
% \caption{Caption at the end works too.}
\end{center}
\end{table}
Sections:
\section{Some section} % includes numbering
\subsection{Some subsection}
\section*{Some section} % no numbering
\subsection*{Some subsection}
Quotation marks (hilarious):
`Single quoted'
``Double quoted''
Change overall text size (simple):
\documentclass[11pt]{article} % only valid sizes are 10/11/12.
Palatino instead of Computer Modern:
\usepackage{mathpazo}
\linespread{1.05} % needs more leading (space between lines)
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
Vimtex stuff:
* Close thing with `]]` in insert mode.
Got about that far, which was enough to start my BIOSTAT-521 homework. Will dig
in again later, but it's nice to be able to use it for something real to
practice.
Puttered around a bit looking at other fonts, but didn't find anything new or
interesting.
## 2023-09-03
Spent most of today getting the reading room in my apartment ready. Went to
IKEA, looked around a lot and got some ideas, picked up a chair and bookshelf
for my still-boxed unread books. Not the most productive Sunday, but sitting in
my chair and reading at night felt good.
## 2023-09-04
Continuing the EdX genetics course over breakfast.
## 2023-09-05
BIOSTAT-521 and BIOINF-500 classes this morning.
Going to spend my non-class time looking into Unicycler today (and taking care
of paperwork if anything that needs my attention crops up) and Bandage to
visualize the results.
Grabbed the container from StaPH-B and tried to figure out where the executable
is. I think it's `/unicycler/unicycler-runner.py`. Grabbed the sample data
from the Unicycler repo and got something running:
singularity exec containers/unicycler.sif \
/unicycler/unicycler-runner.py \
--short1 sample_data/short_reads_1.fastq.gz \
--short2 sample_data/short_reads_2.fastq.gz \
--out assembly/
Pretty straightforward so far. The result directory contains a log and a bunch
of GFA files. GFA apparently stands for [Graphical Fragment
Assembly](https://gfa-spec.github.io/GFA-spec/GFA1.html), but I think it's
"graphical" in the "directed/undirected graph" sense and not in the "pixels"
sense. Text-based format which seems pretty straightforward to parse (maybe
I should have a go at parsing it for fun).
Installed Bandage and viewed the results. Not sure what exactly I'm looking at,
but it works and looks pretty enough I guess. [This
example](https://github.com/rrwick/Bandage/wiki/Simple-example) was helpful to
get a sense of what it's trying to show me.
Unicycler has some configuration knobs to tweak:
> Unicycler can be run in three modes: conservative, normal (the default) and
> bold, set with the --mode option. Conservative mode is least likely to produce
> a complete assembly but has a very low risk of misassembly. Bold mode is most
> likely to produce a complete assembly but carries greater risk of misassembly.
> Normal mode is intermediate regarding both completeness and misassembly risk.
Reran with both conservative and bold modes and looked at the difference in the
results for the sample data. They're not the same, but I can't visually detect
any major obvious differences. Maybe it's not a big deal on this sample.
Once I got that running in a shell, I got it ported into Snakemake, shaving
a bunch of yaks along the way.
I noticed that Snakemake can take a JSON config file instead of YAML. Fantastic,
switched over to that right away:
{
"containers": {
"fastqc": "docker://staphb/fastqc:0.12.1",
"unicycler": "docker://staphb/unicycler:0.5.0"
},
"samples": {
"short_read_example": [
"sample_data/short_reads_1.fastq.gz",
"sample_data/short_reads_2.fastq.gz"
]
}
}
Got the containers downloading via snakemake as well, so it's snakes all the way
down:
rule containers:
input:
expand("containers/{name}.sif", name=config["containers"].keys()),
rule container:
output:
"containers/{name}.sif",
params:
source=lambda wc: config["containers"][wc.name],
shell:
"singularity pull {output} {params.source}"
Got `snakefmt` working with Neoformat so I can `F6` in Vim to reformat. Had to
fuck around with the config because it was just emptying out the file — I think
the key was that:
* `snakefmt` edits in-place by default (gross).
* Need to use `replace`: `1` in the Neoformat config to deal with this.
And finally we can assemble:
def get_input_fastqs(wildcards):
return config["samples"][wildcards.sample]
rule unicycler_assemble:
log:
"logs/unicycler_assemble/{sample}.log",
container:
"containers/unicycler.sif"
threads: 8
input:
"containers/unicycler.sif",
get_input_fastqs,
output:
"assemblies/{sample}/assembly.gfa",
"assemblies/{sample}/assembly.fasta",
shell:
logged(
"/unicycler/unicycler-runner.py"
" --threads {threads}"
" --short1 {input[0]}"
" --short2 {input[1]}"
" --out assemblies/{wildcards.sample}/"
)
Puttered around changing my StumpWM and terminal colors/borders/etc a bit to
make them a little easier on my eyes. We'll see if it sticks.
## 2023-09-06
HG545 in the morning. Mostly understood things.
Asked the professor after about a question I had while reading the paper. One
of the things the paper did to confirm the region of interest was to use a PAC
(P1-derived artificial chromosome) to "rescue" the golden embryos. The
resulting fish showed mosaic rescue, confirming that the wild-type gene was
likely on that PAC, i.e. in the region of interest.
What I didn't understand is how injecting the plasmid into the embryos resulted
in the expression of the genes farther down the developmental line, e.g. does it
somehow get incorporated into the cells' genomes? It turns out to be messy.
First: you don't inject "a PAC" into the embryos, you inject "a shitload of
copies of the PAC" into the embryo. So all of the embryo's cells will have
copies of the PAC floating around inside. As the cell divides, those will get
diluted in daughter cells over time. Some of these copies will, by chance, make
it into the nucleus of their cells. And some of those (rarely) will get
randomly incorporated into the cell's genome, and from then on mitosis takes
over and the gene gets propagated normally. So the mosaic region from that
point forward will have the gene (and if the region happens to contain some
melanophores, also the rescued wild-type phenotype).
Got my Armis access at some point during class, so it's time to figure out how
to log into the various HPC clusters today.
Doubled checked exam schedule to make sure nothing conflicts. I think it's
fine.
Changed my school password after the network clusterfuck last week. Sigh.
Wanted to print something in the lab, realized I never installed any printing
support on this laptop, lol. `apt install cups` will hopefully Just Work. CUPS
interface is at `http://localhost:631/`. It did not Just Work. Surely 2024
will be The Year of Linux on the Desktop. Printer wouldn't configure itself,
driver didn't appear in the list when I tried to manually configure it through
CUPS. `apt install printer-driver-all` got me more drivers but not this one.
Tracked it down on the brother site and downloaded some `.deb` packages but
they're 32-bit instead of 64. Gave up at this point, what a janky shitshow of
an OS. If only everything else didn't suck in even worse ways.
Tried getting the VPN running. Installed with the script into `/opt/cisco`
(good). Got mysterious errors when trying to connect. Tried the GUI connection
manager, which runs, but gave a more informative error message I could search
for. Looks like I need to install `libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37`. Installed that, now
I get the login screen, but I can't 2FA because I only have Yubikeys set up but
that requires a real browser, not this jank webkitgtk thing, so now I need to
set up *another* 2FA method just for this. Good god. Tried to add a new 2FA
device via Duo, but that requires 2FAing *again*, but *this* time it's through
the Duo site which doesn't actually fucking work on Linux, so I can't add it
here, I'll need to use the Windows shitbox at home. God, I hate two-factor
authentication so much. It's *always* miserable.
Tried to do the homework for BIOINF-500 (creating a pubmed search alert). To do
this you need an NCBI account. Tried to log in via my UM account and managed to
500 the NCBI site. Incredible. Poked around and eventually got it working (I
think)? Created the alert, took a screenshot. Uploaded the PNG into Canvas for
the assignment. Canvas shows an error trying to retrieve it. Uploaded it to
the Canvas "My Files" and used *that* to submit the assignment, instead of
uploading the file directly, and that worked. *Incredible*. Why does *nothing*
ever work correctly?
Came home, tried to add the 2FA with the Windows box, but it failed in the same
way (hanging on the popup after successfully touching the yubikey). But
I finally figured out a workaround (in retrospect, I vaguely recall having to do
this when I added the extra yubikeys originally): log out of everything, then go
to log back into something (e.g. Wolverine Access), but **before** you 2FA in
*that* login process there will be a link to add a new device on the left side
of the screen. That will then require you to 2FA, but doing it *here* does
actually work. It seems absolutely wild to me that you need to *not* be logged
in if you want to manage 2FA, but here we are.
Now that I have the Duo app thing on my phone and connected, logging into the
VPN seems to work great. Yak shaved successfully.
## 2023-09-07
BS521 and its lab this morning.
Got my dotfiles synced to GL. One tricky thing: my remote `.bash_profile`
sources `/etc/profile` if it exists, but that causes problems on the cluster
because there's some read-only variable set in there that it doesn't like.
Commented out that line and everything looks okay. `ControlMaster` does work,
so I won't have to auth a billion times a day (thank god).
BS521 lab. Of course the AC isn't working so it's a billion degrees, lovely.
Installing tidyverse failed with inscrutable errors. After some googling it
[looks like](https://blog.zenggyu.com/posts/en/2018-01-29-installing-r-r-packages-e-g-tidyverse-and-rstudio-on-ubuntu-linux/index.html)
there's *extra* dependencies you need to install on Linux (C programming is
wonderful):
sudo apt install libcurl4-openssl-dev libssl-dev libxml2-dev \
libfontconfig1-dev libharfbuzz-dev libfribidi-dev libfreetype6-dev \
libpng-dev libtiff5-dev libjpeg-dev
Still fucked, so I manually trawled through the tons of log output, googled
around more, and found that I need to configure an env variable:
Sys.setenv(PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig")
And finally it works. Started going through the lab stuff but then time was up
— will come back to it later.
Moving on to rotation lab work. Working from home today, so I wanted to get my
laptop working with my external monitor and keyboard and such. Had to swap out
the USB-C cable I was using previously because apparently that one doesn't work
for video ("universal" serial bus my ass) and then adjust my StumpWM `xrandr`
commands, but I did get it working, so now I can use the laptop at my desk,
which is nice.
Note to self: I can probably use the text-mode VPN UI now that I've got the 2FA
sorted out, and maybe remove the webkit crap I installed for it originally.
Finished BS521 lab 0. Wasn't too bad once I shaved the tidyverse yak. Getting
it written up with Latex required more Latex derusting, this time for code
listings and images (pulled some of this from the MS thesis). First, preamble
stuff:
% Listing package for code listings.
\RequirePackage{listings}
\lstdefinestyle{default}{
basicstyle=\footnotesize\ttfamily,
showtabs=true,
frame=lines,
aboveskip=10pt,
}
\lstset{
language=,
style=default,
}
% Used to embed plots.
\usepackage{graphicx}
% No paragraph indentation for homework, just looks awkward.
\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
% Inline code.
\def\code#1{\small\texttt{#1}}
I really need to split these up into actual files I can include instead of
copypasting them a million times, but maybe I'll wait for one more practice
round first.
Usage:
% Code listings.
\begin{lstlisting}
prop.table(table(DATA$Race))
Black MexicanAmerican Other OtherHispanic White
0.22921790 0.23954747 0.04230202 0.03885883 0.45007378
\end{lstlisting}
% Graphics.
\includegraphics[]{figures/bmi-hist}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[width=0.45\textwidth]{figures/hist-age}
\includegraphics[width=0.45\textwidth]{figures/hist-log-age}
\end{center}
To actually save PDF plots with R:
pdf("figures/foo.pdf", height=6, width=6)
hist(DATA$Foo, main = "Distribution of Foo", xlab="Foo")
dev.off()
Went to the poster session. Lots of stuff I don't understand, and a tiny bit
that I do.
## 2023-09-08
HG545 this morning.
Papers never say what *could* have gone wrong with what they did — you have to
just read between the lines and actively think about that (and what it would
have meant, and what you would have done if it did).
Learned about nonsense-mediated decay: a mechanism where mRNA with premature
stop codons is degraded, instead of expressing a (probably truncated) protein.
Without this, if you have a mutation that creates a stop codon in the middle of
the gene, you would see truncated protein expressed. But because of NMD, the
mRNA is degraded and doesn't express the broken protein (as much). This is good
not only to reduce wasted translation, but because the truncated proteins can be
actively bad.
One important control that was left out of the study where they wanted to find
where in the organism the target gene is being expressed: inject a probe with
GFP that intentionally shouldn't match *anything*, and expect it to show up
vaguely all over (or not at all).
Another example covered during class: if you suspected a phenotype was caused by
a mutation in a promoter (instead of in an exon), how would you test this?
There were a couple of things folks came up with:
* Could sequence the region in the mutant and wild-type population, compare to
see if the mutation segregates the two reliably.
* Old school: "reporter genes". I'm a bit fuzzy on this, but I think you insert
the promoter into a vector with some easily observable gene (e.g. luciferase,
a bioluminescent protein). Then you see if that product is expressed more or
less with the different variants of the promoter. This is a bit janky because
just yanking the promoter completely out of context can be problematic (e.g.
loses the chromatin structure around it, nearby enhancers/repressors, etc).
* Could use RNAseq to see if the mutants with the variants are producing more of
the RNA for that gene.
* Could use CHIPseq, if you know the transcription factors that bind to that
promoter. Fix, fragment, attach antibodies to the TFs, precipitate them out,
unfix, extract the DNA (all the remaining is whatever was bound to the
transcription factors), and then do the sequencing. You would expect to see
a larger signal if the mutation in the promoter is causing transcription
factors to be more likely to bind.
Got back and tried VPN'ing with the command-line client. It seemed to hang
after entering my password, but then I realized it had just silently tried to
2FA with my phone and I didn't notice. Trying again and being ready with Duo
let me log in, so I think I can probably ditch the webkit crap I installed for
the graphical thing.
Desktop machine wouldn't take input from my USB hub all of a sudden. Found some
bullshit in the logs, probably not worth debugging Yet More Linux Jank if I'm
just going to wipe this machine and install Debian on it soon anyway. Tried to
reboot and systemd hung at the end, so I just powercycled the damn thing. If
I could just have one single day where no computer broke for me, that would be
so nice.
Flu shots are available, need to get one so PI doesn't get pinged all the time.
Read for BS521 class. All still pretty basic. Cleaned up and turned in lab 0.
Finished homework 2 as well, just to get it out of the way. Or at least
I thought I did, except there are apparently Surprise Questions™ not in the book
to do with R. I'll do that this weekend.
## 2023-09-09
Actually finished BS521 homework 2. Realized my Latex `\code` shortcut was
broken:
% Broken, doesn't scope the \small so later text is changed.
\def\code#1{\small\texttt{#1}}
% Fixed v v
\def\code#1{{\small\texttt{#1}}}
Did a first draft of the HG545 assignment 1. This one is a lot harder than the
stats homework. Need to polish it up and submit it tomorrow.
## 2023-09-10
Polished and submitted the HG545 homework. We'll see how it goes, I guess.
## 2023-09-11
HG545 discussion. This paper was pretty straightforward.
Met with PIBS peer mentor.
HG545 second paper was posted, need to do an initial read of that tonight.
## 2023-09-12
BS521 again. Mostly basic linear regression stuff, but got a few interesting
tidbits out of it, mostly about the coefficient of determination, also called
`R²` or `r²`. This is the square of the correlation coefficient `r`, and it is
said to mean "the fraction of the variability in the data that is explained by
the linear model". So an `r²` of `0.7` would mean "70% of the variation in the
data is explained by the model".
*Intuitively* what this means would be to look at the total variability in the
data, i.e.:
(- (reduce #'max y) (reduce #'min y))
Then convert the data to residuals by subtracting out the model:
(mapcar #'- (mapcar #'model x) y)
and look at home much variability remains:
(- (reduce #'max residuals) (reduce #'min residuals))
Compare the two to see the fraction that remains after accounting for the model.
₂
Looked into some "R for actual programmers" resources so maybe I can feel like
I'm flailing less:
* <https://arrgh.tim-smith.us/>
* <https://r4ds.hadley.nz/>
* <https://adv-r.hadley.nz/>
* <https://www.burns-stat.com/documents/books/the-r-inferno/>
* <https://www.burns-stat.com/documents/tutorials/impatient-r/>
* <https://www.burns-stat.com/documents/books/tao-te-programming/>
Lunch at a place called Maizie's. Was actually pretty good!
Doing Yet Another Round of Paperwork for the VA. So much red tape. Did what
I could here, but there's a bunch I can't do until I get home after class today.
So far I'm loving the look of the stumpwm config changes I made the other day.
Shouldn't have waited this long to clean things up. TODO: use
`select-from-menu` to implement a better screen-switching shortcut in stump.
Figured out how to print. Use <https://mprint.umich.edu/maps?sites> to find
a reasonable printer nearby, then Print Here to use it. You upload a PDF or
whatever through the web UI. Good enough, it works. One color paper cost
$3.22 of my (apparent) $24 print budget. Welp.
PIBS800. Getting… another lecture about how to use the library? Didn't we
already do this in the other class?
Spent a bit more time tracking down my white whale font from that 1979 Science
issue. Identifont came to the rescue and I think I finally have an answer, or
at least something very close: "Rotation" by Arthur Ritzel from 1971.
Unfortunately a 50-year old font still has ghastly licensing options, so I'll
probably never be able to *use* it, but at least I have peace of mind, I guess.
## 2023-09-13
HG545. This module is focusing on how to create physical maps of chromosomes,
especially the bizarre human Y chromosome.
There's a difference between a genetic map and a physical map. A genetic map
can be created with e.g. linkage analysis, and can tell you relative distances
but not necessarily the exact locations of things. A physical map shows the
actual locations. Note that physically linked genes might not necessarily be
genetically linked if they're far enough apart that the recombination chance is
50%.
We can't use genetic mapping for the Y chromosome because there's not
recombination with another chromosome.
In the paper they used hierarchical shotgun sequencing to sequence the
Y chromosome, which goes roughly like this:
1. Fragmented the human genome into ~200kb fragments.
2. Cloned those into BACs
3. You want to retrieve *only* the fragments from the Y chromosome, not from the others.
4. Start with a known gene on Y (e.g. a well-known gene like Sry, the
sex-determining gene) and you PCR that to amplify the fragment(s) that
contain it.
5. Sequence those fragments (split into 20kb and shotgun sequence).
6. Design more PCR primers that *start* at the ends of *those* fragments, use
those to amplify things next to it.
7. Repeat to get overlapping tiles.
You end up with overlapping tiles:
---------Sry---------- ----------Zry--------------
>>> <<<
-----------------
>>>
-------------------
Nowadays we can take advantage of long read tech to eliminate a lot of the grunt
work in the process, e.g.:
* Oxford Nanopore: 50-500kb, 90% accuracy.
* PacBio: 20kb, >99% accuracy.
Oxford is still pretty bad accuracy, but is useful to resolve things when PacBio
still runs into trouble with some of the crazy-long repeats.
Also learned about some kind of "bionano" thing that was glossed over very
quickly. Looks like it's a company? Need to ask someone about this.
Next talked about content of the human genome:
Human Genome
Unique DNA (1/3)
Repetative DNA (2/3)
Dispersed Repeats
Transposable Elements (e.g. LINEs, Alu)
Retrogenes (e.g. CDY)
Transposed Genes (e.g. DAZ)
tDNA
Local Repeats
Segmental Duplication (e.g. palindromes)
Satellite Duplication
rDNA
Repeats are challenging to assemble, e.g. if you have:
Unique A | LINE1 | Unique B | LINE 1 | Unique C
You might get reads like:
A1
1B1
1C
It's hard to tell which direction the `1B1` should go, or whether `A` should go
directly to `C`. `LINE1` specifically can be resolved with PacBio because it's
only ~6.5kb, far less than the 20kb you get from PacBio, but other segments
still cause problems.
Example of problematic things are the large palindromes from the paper:
1.45mb arm
<------------------------ Unique -------------------------->
arms have ~99.97% nucleotide identity
Even if there are a few SNPs on the arms, if the segments right around the
unique part happen to be identical it's hard to tell which arm goes where.
Looked into the PACCAR thing from yesterday, but the application form is
extremely long and I already have enough red tape to deal with through the VA,
so I'm not going to add more paperwork for myself. Oh well.
Met with John Prensner about possibly rotating in his lab. Next steps for
rotations are pretty clearly to set up some chats with his students and some
from Boyle/Parker labs to make a choice for the next 1-2 slots. I'll try to do
that for next week I think. Also want to talk to Shavit again — I really liked
chatting with him, and I think if I wanted to rotate there I would need him to
join the department as an affiliate of some kind, so I'd need to see if he's
okay with doing that.
## 2023-09-14
I am going to `mark` every time I have to log in and/or 2FA for school for at
least a week, so I can graph it and be sad. Adjusted my `marks` thing to go to
my Syncthing dir.
Sped up my shell prompt by wrapping the Mercurial prompt in a basic `.hg`
existence check. Had to relearn how to write a fish function.
BS521. Chatted with the professor at office hours a bit to ask a couple of
things.
Made a TODO list with all the homework/exam/lab stuff for school. Hopefully
this will make it easier to see what's coming up since Canvas is barely usable.
Started reaching out to set up chats with folks in a few labs I might be
interested in for my next rotation.
## 2023-09-15
HG545 this morning.
## 2023-09-16
BS521 reading.
Z-score means "number of standard deviations above the mean".
Successes-based distributions:
* Geometric: number of trials before observing a success.
* Binomial: number of successes in a fixed number of trials.
The chapters of this book are getting sloppier as they go on — I'm noticing
a lot more typos now than in the first couple of chapters.
Went back to John D Cook's R for Programmers post when the `pnorm` function was
mentioned. R has several of these functions with veyr confusing names:
<func><dist>
<func>: d: PDF ("density")
p: CDF ("probability")
q: Quantile, i.e. CDF⁻¹
r: Random sample
<dist>: norm: Normal aka gaussian
unif: Uniform
So `pnorm` is "the CDF of a normal distribution".
Found a way to view which fonts a PDF file embeds and/or references: `pdffonts`.
Nice.
Tired of CACL crashing on my laptop because I don't have CCL, so I'll just
install CCL.
git clone https://github.com/Clozure/ccl.git ccl
curl -L -O https://github.com/Clozure/ccl/releases/download/v1.12.2/linuxx86.tar.gz
cd ccl
tar xf ../linuxx86.tar.gz
./lx86cl64
(rebuild-ccl :full t)
sudo ln -s /home/sjl/src/ccl/lx86cl64 /usr/local/bin/ccl64
Finally discovered the reason my bash prompt gets mangled sometimes:
non-printing characters in `PS1` have to be wrapped in `\[…\]`. So I need to do
something ugly like this:
export PS1='\n\[${PINK}\]\u \[${D}\]at \[${HOST_COLOR}\]\h \[${D}\]in \[${GREEN}\]\w\[${D}\] $(last_return_value)$ '
But at least it works properly now and won't drive me crazy.
Did a bit more font hunting. Looking for something to use for figures that
looks plotter-esque, but isn't something with a couple of scattered glyphs and
no weights like the plotter fonts I've found. Licensing is a minefield, but
Google Fonts has a bunch of stuff that's under the open font license, and
I think I found a couple that might work: Quicksand and Nunito. Of the two,
Nunito seems a little nicer to me. Will need to try it in some graphs and see
how it works.
## 2023-09-17
Trying to get ahead of classwork for the next couple of weeks, since I've got so
many other things going on.
Did the reading for BS521 for the next two weeks.
Finished BS521 homework 3.
## 2023-09-18
HG545. Feeling better about this module than the last, which is surprising
because I enjoyed this paper less.
Chatted with someone about one of the labs I'm thinking about rotating in.
Cleaned up HW2 for HG545 a bit. Still not done, but at least I'm getting it
into shape.
## 2023-09-19
BS521.
Meeting with two more grad students to chat about their labs.
BI500.
DCMB has full time IT staff: `DCMB-IT-Services@umich.edu`. Might email them
about Ethernet connection?
Chat widget on <https://michmed.service-now.com/sp> is a decent way to get help.
Also walk-in help in THSL 4020. ARC support: <arc-support@umich.edu>.
Slurm tutorial. Learned a couple of interesting things:
* `sq` is an alias for `squeue --me`. Nice.
* `my_job_header` can help debug weird Slurm shit, handy.
* Emails will include core/mem high-water marks. Need to figure out if I can
get this programatically, might be more accurate than the Snakemake benchmarks
(or at least worth comparing).
Chatted about Boyle lab with a current grad student.
PIBS 800.
Finished HG545 homework 2.
## 2023-09-20
HG545 discussion. Talked a lot about the Y chromosome paper.
## 2023-09-21
BS521. Went over the binomial distribution. Seeing this yet another time gave
me an actual intuitive understanding this time, which is nice.
BISTRO seminar.
## 2023-09-22
Retreat.
Lightning talks.
Breakout panel with current grad students. Lots of stuff, probably not going to
write it all down here.
## 2023-09-23
Finished HW 4 for BS521.
Got some random Latex shit to remember for next time. Aligned equations:
\begin{eqnarray*}
foo &=& bar \\
meow &=& wow \\
\end{eqnarray*}
References to figures:
(See figure~\ref{fig:g-a})
…
\begin{figure}[H]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.65\textwidth]{figures/g-a}
\caption{Graph for exercise 4.1 part a.}
\label{fig:g-a}
\end{figure}
Units:
\usepackage{units}
Drink 500 \unit{ml} of water at lunch.
And some random R shit to remember for next time:
dbinom = Binomial PDF
pbinom = Binomial CDF
Came up with some absolutely cursed code to made shaded normal graphs.
Surprised that's not already a thing.
## 2023-09-25
HG545. Need to retype all my notes for this module here when I get some time so
I don't lose them.
Today started with a description of RNAseq. Something vaguely familiar was
a nice change for this class. Then reviewed STARR-seq which I think I mostly
understand now.
Talked about the similarity between enhancers and promoters. Polymerase can
sometimes actually sit down at enhancers and produce small RNAs, but
transcription doesn't ever elongate. But this might be an example of how genes
could evolve.
Then talked about heat shock proteins and heat shock factor as an example of how
rapid transcription can happen.
* HSE: "Heat Shock Element", an enhancer sequence located upstream of a gene,
e.g. hsp90.
* hsp90: "Heat Shock Protein 90", a protein that's used in cells to help other
proteins fold in the presence of heat that might otherwise prevent it. The 90
is from its weight in kilodaltons (lol).
* HSF1: "Heat Shock Factor 1", a transcription factor that trimerizes, binds to
HSE, and recruits another thing to activate the transcription of hsp90.
There's a self-regulation loop here where, when things are cold, hsp90 binds to
HSF1 outside the nucleus and prevents it from enhancing transcription of hsp90
(i.e. of itself). But when heat is applied, other proteins unfold and hsp90
starts chaperoning them more, which leaves HSF1 free to enter the nucleus and
enhance transcription of hsp90.
Remembering how to create a local Postgres DB for testing:
sudo -u postgres psql
CREATE DATABASE example;
CREATE USER testuser WITH PASSWORD 'pass';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE example TO testuser;
\c example
GRANT ALL ON SCHEMA public TO testuser;
\q
psql postgresql://testuser:pass@localhost:5432/example
## 2023-09-26
BS521. Exam is on Thursday. Today is about sampling distributions and
statistical inference.
BIOINF500. Fire alarm for the first half of class, nice. Rest of the class
will be recorded, need to remember to watch it later.
## 2023-09-27
HG545 this morning. Did an initial pass on the homework, then met up with some
other grad students later to chat about it and now I'm even less confident, lol.
Welp.
## 2023-09-28
BS521 exam. Did okay, though I really should have had a couple of more things
on my note sheet than I did. Next time I need to go through the slides too, not
just the book — there were things on the test from class only, not in the book.
I think I did alright though.
Finished HG545 homework. I think I did alright, but my brain is now fried.
## 2023-09-29
HG545 discussion this morning.
Sent a few emails to try to nail down my next three rotations. I think at this
point I have a pretty good idea of where I want to try, so if I can just get
them all nailed down now it'll be less stuff to deal with later.
Signed up for the 503 discussion sections. What a painful process to get
registered. I should have waited til I was home on my large monitor because
trying to flip back and forth between the 90%-whitespace-filled list of sessions
and my calendar/TODO list was extremely tedious. I think I've got it all mapped
out now though.
# October 2023
## 2023-10-01
Put up a bunch of stuff for sale on the PIBS list. Need to declutter my
apartment now that I've mostly moved in.
Did a few hours of work on Lab 1 for BS521. Too much unproductive screwing
around in R trying to figure out how to get decent fonts. Should be able to
finish it up tomorrow though. Random notes jotted down from the process follow.
Side-by-side figures in LaTeX:
\begin{figure}[h]
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.48\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{figures/bp-histogram}
\caption{Distribution of blood pressure among participants.}
\label{fig:bp-histogram}
\end{minipage}
\hfill
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.48\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{figures/bp-nqq}
\caption{Normal QQ plot of blood pressure values.}
\label{fig:bp-nqq}
\end{minipage}
\end{figure}
Reasonable quantile plot in R:
qplot <- function(filename, data, label, main, ...) {
n = length(data)
plot(((1:n - 1)/(n - 1)), sort(data),
type = "l",
main = main,
xlab = "Quantile",
ylab = label,
...)
}
QQ plot with the damn line in R:
nqqplot <- function(data, ...) {
qqnorm(data, ...)
qqline(data)
}
Reading in a CSV with specific column types:
data <- read_csv("EPID_521_lab_data.csv", col_types="iddfiffdffdd")
Note that this seems to give you a "tibble", whatever the hell that is. Some
kind of tidyverse thing? It's very confusing that everywhere you look there's
a hairball of a mess of base R, tidyverse, and ggplot2 and everyone just assumes
you understand which is part of what.
Reordering levels:
data <- mutate(data, diet=factor(data$diet, levels=c("Poor", "Fair", "Good", "VeryGood", "Excellent")))
Removing rows with `NA`s for e.g. the `cot` column:
data <- data[complete.cases(data$cot),]
Histograms with specific bin widths, rather than a number of bins:
hist(data$age, breaks=seq(from=15, to=90, by=1), main="", xlab="Age")
Multiple box plots in one image:
boxplot(bmi~sex, data=data)
Marking and/or filtering on a boolean condition:
data$locot <- data$cot <= 0.011
locot <- subset(data, cot <= 0.011)
hicot <- subset(data, cot > 0.011)
## 2023-10-02
HG545 review this morning. Need to go back and review the first module again
tomorrow since it's been a while.
Finish BS521 lab 1, finally. That was a lot more work than I expected.
Met with a professor about possible rotation. Need to chat with my advisor to
see if there's special paperwork I'll need.
## 2023-10-03
BS521. Confidence intervals.
BI500. Research writing.
Finally got around to splitting my Vimrc into minimal and extra files, so I can
sync the minimal one to servers and not hate myself when trying to edit. There's
some jank involved around the colorschemes and `set termguicolors` but I think
have have something that should work.
PIBS800. Mentor/mentee relationships.
## 2023-10-04
Advising meeting. Need to do a couple of things in EdM and register for 602,
but I'm currently blocked on both by other folks so I'm good for now.
HG545 exam.
## 2023-10-05
Finished the HG545 exam last night. That was… deeply unpleasant.
BS521. Hypothesis testing.
BS521 reading.
Read the paper for HG545. I get the general idea, and it seems like a pretty
clear experiment. I wonder how much we'll stick to the paper vs going off topic
this time.
Needed to convert some PDF graphs to PNG to put in a presentation, but `convert`
was whining about some security crap:
><((°> convert n50.pdf n50.png
convert-im6.q16: attempt to perform an operation not allowed by the security policy `PDF' @ error/constitute.c/IsCoderAuthorized/421.
Turns out there was a bug in ghostscript, which was fixed, but convert still
doesn't trust it so won't convert stuff. Great. Have to edit
`/etc/ImageMagick-6/policy.xml` and comment out these lines to make it behave:
<!-- disable ghostscript format types -->
<policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="PS" />
<policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="PS2" />
<policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="PS3" />
<policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="EPS" />
<policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="PDF" />
<policy domain="coder" rights="none" pattern="XPS" />
Skimmed through the slides for HG545 tomorrow. It's nice to be able to get
a preview of things again.
## 2023-10-06
HG545, class was about splicing. I feel much better about this module thanks to
being able to prepare a bit with the preview last night.
## 2023-10-07
Installed <https://github.com/numcommand/num> — might come in handy here and
there.
## 2023-10-08
Reread the paper for HG545. It's… a little clearer now? Though honestly it
wasn't too bad before compared to the other papers. Just a lot of acronyms.
Got a list of things to ask.
## 2023-10-09
HG545 this morning, about co/post-transcriptional modification. The downside of
having slides is that people put a ton of things on them and you can't take
notes fast enough. Need to go back over the slides and write down things once
I get home so I don't forget them.
## 2023-10-10
BS521, hypothesis testing, p values, t distribution.
BI500, code quality tips. Checked with Prof. Sartor and submitting a LaTeX PDF
for the references homework is fine.
Pinged a few students in a lab I'm interested in to see if they're willing to
chat about their experience. Just need to nail down my third rotation and then
I'll be all set.
Ordered a used copy of the Grammar of Graphics book. I've read enough in the
ebook copy from the library that I know I want the entire thing, even though
it's quite expensive.
Read chapter 4 of the book while the straggler genomes finish in the last batch,
about variables and basic transformations on them. The book uses the ridiculous
terms "homoscedasticity" and "heteroscedasticity" to mean "homogeneous variance"
and "heterogeneous variance", which I *think* is the same idea as Cleveland's
"monotone spread" (or possibly a more general version of it).
I really wish the book wouldn't omit the axis-drawing code from the diagrams
— it makes it unclear where each piece of the output is coming from. I think
I *mostly* understand it, but would prefer if it were all explicit (even if it
would make things a bit longer).
Read chapter 5 too, on algebras. This was much, much more confusing and would
have been much clearer with more explicit examples. Need to read this at least
one more time to get it, I'm sure.
Going back to take some notes for HG545 while they're still (vaguely) fresh in
my mind. First: notes from the class on splicing.
The "R-loop" terminology is confusing. It's inspired by the name "D-loop",
which notes how DNA will unzip to show a loop when it's being duplicated (and
there's a complementary strand bound to one side). "R-loop" *also* refers to
the loop *in the DNA* when it's bound *to RNA* (e.g. when it's being
transcribed). Again: the actual loop in an "R-loop" is a loop of DNA.
An RNA molecule has 3 relevant sites when considering splicing:
```
5' exon | intron | 3' exon
======AG|GUAAGU============================YNYURAY====Y₁₁NCAG|G==============
↑
5' Splice Site Branch Site 3' Splice Site
```
Note that in this case the branch site is specifically an adenine. That's
important (reason comes later).
One important aspect of RNA that allows it to be spliced (contrasted with DNA)
is the hydroxyl group on the 2' carbon in RNA, which is not present in DNA
(that's why it's *deoxy*ribose). That hydroxyl group is what attacks the
phosphate bond at the 5' splice site and cleaves it apart (after being brought
close to it by the spliceosome). That leaves a hydroxyl group exposed hanging
off of the 5' exon, and in the next step *that* group is brought close to the 3'
splice site and attacks it. Once that bond is broken the intron (as
a lariat-shaped thing) floats away, and the exons are spliced together.
The chemistry of the breaks is called "transesterification": two
phosphodi*ester* bonds are broken (at intron/exon and exon/intron boundaries),
and two more are created (one in the lariat, and the splice between exons).
(Of course like everything in biology, in reality it's all a giant mess and there
are multiple kinds of splicing, including self-splicing.)
The spliceosome is a giant thing made of a bunch of different proteins and also
5 RNAs that mediates splicing. The RNAs are important because those are what
recognize the splice and branch sites through complementary pairing, e.g. at the
5' splice site we have:
____________
/ U1 \ U1 component of spliceosome
\ /
\__CAUUCA__/
┆┆┆┆┆┆
==GUAAGU== RNA
In a similar way, the U2 component binds to the branch site, but the binding
sequence specifically skips the adenine at the site, which "extrudes" it from
the RNA a little bit:
extruded adenine
↓
A
======U A C U A C======= RNA
┆ ┆ ┆ ┆ ┆ ┆
.——C A U U C A——.
/ \
/ U2 \ U2 component of spliceosome
\___________________/
Alternate splicing is also a big deal, because it allows the creation of many
different mRNAs from the same gene by bringing together different exon/intron
boundaries to be spliced instead of always splicing the closest one.
Of course there's other complications too, like splicing enhancers and silencers
that can recruit/block the splicing machinery.
Skimmed over tomorrow's HG545 slides so I don't have to go in blind again. Seems
pretty reasonable, though the end seems pretty rushed and I *think* it's
relevant to one of the questions in the homework. Need to pay attention at the
end.
PIBS800, how to read a research paper. I feel like I've had three versions of
this presentation by different people at different times at this point.
Started BS521 homework 5. A bit more confusing than the previous homeworks, and
it's been a week or so since I touched LaTeX so I once again have to fight it
every step of the way.
## 2023-10-11
HG545 this morning, about translation.
VA onboarding after that. Took a couple of hours, but I now finally have
a badge.
Been reading the GoG book during some spare free minutes here and there.
Skimming over a lot of the formalism, I still feel like this could be much
improved by showing some full examples with everything laid out.
Sketched out some answers to HG545 questions.
Finished BS521 homework 5, turned it in.
Cleaned up HG545 answers. Need to do one final pass tomorrow.
## 2023-10-12
BS521, started talking about two-distribution t tests.
Finally got around to swapping my search engine on my phone to Kagi. The
degoogling continues.
I really need to figure out a decent way to do proper pivot tables in Postgres.
From reading the docs it looks *surprisingly* janky for what I'd expect from
Postgres.
Read up on index operator classes, which was preventing Postgres from using an
index when searching for a prefix of a string, e.g. `SELECT name FROM foo WHERE
name LIKE 'pref%';`. Fixed by telling Postgres this index will be used with
text patterns by e.g. `CREATE INDEX i__foo__name ON foo(name
text_pattern_ops);`.
## 2023-10-13
HG545 discussion.
## 2023-10-14
Fall break.
## 2023-10-15
Did the BIOINF-500 homework on reference management/citation. Figured out how
to get Latex set up to do references. Lots of jank, but I think I've got it
working now. JabRef produces a `.bib` file as its database. Then in the Latex
document, add a preamble:
\usepackage[
backend=biber,
style=nature,
sorting=ynt
]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{sjl.bib}
Cite things with `\cite{foo}` and `\cite{bar,baz}`. Then `\printbibliography`
to put the references section into the paper there.
This is complicated by the fact that you have to run `biber` between runs of
`pdflatex`, so I kludged together a `mklatex` script that does something
horrifying like `pdflatex; biber; pdflatex; pdflatex` to actually make the damn
document. Gross.
I really need to get my latex stuff into a set of files, rather than
copy/pasting everything into every single document.
## 2023-10-18
Back from fall break. Time to get back into the swing of classes.
HG545 this morning, starting the section about transposable elements. The
professor put up slides, videos, and a narrative document in advance which is
really great — I was able to prepare and not be completely lost.
Read over animal ethics stuff for tomorrow. Need to consider if I want to
really do a rotation with animal subjects. I'm a little less sure now.
## 2023-10-19
BS521 this morning. The second half of the class has a different lecturer,
starting today. Talked about paired t-tests (which are essentially just doing
a one-sample t-test on the difference of the paired values) and ANOVA for
many-sample t-testing.
First PIBS503 discussion section. This is (I think) the only one that's in
person, and it's in the middle of goddamn nowhere on the North Campus.
I managed to find my way there, but dear god are these buildings confusing.
BISTRO at 4. Topic: HMMSTR, using HMMs for tandem repeat copy number detection
from ONT reads.
Need to remember to ask Alan if he has any suggestions on reading material
I should look at over the weekend before I start with him on Monday.
## 2023-10-20
HG545. More on transposable elements, this time about LTR retrotransposons.
Met with Bob about rotation paperwork.
Last day of my first rotation! I think it went well. Looking forward to trying
out more things in the next few rotations, but this one was great!
## 2023-10-21
Finished reading the HG545 paper, finally. It was long, but a lot more clear
than the other papers thanks to the supplementary material actually *explaining*
things. So even though it was a little tedious to get through with so many
abbreviations, I think I preferred it overall to the other papers so far.
Finally got around to hooking up a keyboard shortcut for `switch-yubikeys`
since I find myself actually using it a lot again, now that I'm not working from
home full time.
Sent my lab notebook to the PI, which is my last official act of the rotation.
Swapped out a fresh VM for my next rotation. Keeping the old one around for
a few weeks in case I end up needing anything from it. Glad I've got everything
scripted up around this — much easier to do it this time.
Started BS Lab 2. Not going to do the extra credit this time, I just don't have
the spare time at the moment. Too much going on all at once.
Installed Weechat+wee-slack and irssi on my laptop. Going to give irssi a try
for a while as an IRC client, which would let me reserve Weechat (which I don't
really like all that much) for Slack. Irssi config was a little janky, but
I think I got something dogfoodable for now.
Installed the Python lib for the next rotation on the VM in a venv.
## 2023-10-22
Finish BS lab 2. Didn't go the extra mile on this one either, still trying to
catch up from break. I'm getting there though.
Figured out some travel/break logistics for between semesters.
Finished BS homework 7. I should be all caught up on stuff for that class
(aside from reading, which goes quick) for a while now. Next big thing for it
is the exam on 11/02.
Got a couple of LaTeX snippets to remember after all the biostat stuff. First,
often worth making shortcuts for frequently used stuff in a given assignment:
\def\h0{\textbf{H}_0}
\def\hA{\textbf{H}_A}
\def\tstar#1{t^\star_\textit{#1}}
Adding spacing between equation lines with `\jot`:
\begin{equation*}
\setlength{\jot}{10pt}
\begin{split}
T & = \frac{\bar{X} - \mu_D}{s/\sqrt{n}} \\
& = \frac{-0.545 - 0}{8.887/\sqrt{200}} \\
& = \frac{-0.545}{0.6284058} \\
T & \approx -0.867 \\
\end{split}
\end{equation*}
Started HG545 homework, just sketching out notes. Burned out before getting too
far, will have to actually get a rough draft done tomorrow (then cleaned up on
Tuesday).
## 2023-10-23
HG545, about the L1 transposition assaying and Alu.
First day of the new lab rotation! Set up `black` on the laptop since I'll be
doing Python. Ended up installing it into a venv and symlinking to the binary,
which seems to have worked okay.
Need to figure out how to get Irssi to autoload scripts properly and set up
e.g. `/toggle awl_viewer` on startup so I don't have to do it by hand every
time.
Got a first draft of HW5 90% done. Will finish tomorrow.
Did some reading for BS521. Still have a little left for Thursday.
## 2023-10-24
BS521 today. Got another intuitive explanation of ANOVA (which was nice) and
talked about categorical CIs/hypothesis testing.
BI500. Presentations by faculty who are looking to recruit students:
1. Statistical/online bioinformatics.
2. Cell lineage trees via imaging + ML. If only there was a way to kludge
something into mitosis that would tag descendant genomes ala service request
ID tagging (or even just e.g. a plasmid that would mutate quickly as
a clock).
3. Head/neck cancer and ALS research via multiomics and large cohort studies.
4. How molecular/biological clocks work.
5. How cell cell signaling controls cell fate in human pluripotent stem cells.
6. Exercise, multiomics, and wearables, cell communications and differential
expression with ML.
7. Wearable and multiomics data to identify biomarkers for early
detection/prevention of disease.
Should also look into the additional ones who couldn't be fit into timeslots to
present.
Lunch at Maizie's.
PIBS 800 about grants, e.g.
<https://rackham.umich.edu/funding/rackham-graduate-student-research-grant/>
which can be done as a pre-candidate *and* candidate. I think I should get Cat
to explain this to me in idiot terms so I can figure out all the stuff I'm
missing.
Met with study group for HG545 homework. I feel like I understand everything
very well, but trying to fit a coherent explanation into the line limits of the
homework is absolutely miserable.
Finished HG545 homework. Walking unsteadily as I emerge from the prose-gutting
facility covered in texual viscera and stinking of article blood, my filleting
backspace key dull in its socket.
## 2023-10-25
HG545 discussion this morning. Chatted about a bunch of stuff, nothing too
groundbreaking.
Spent the rest of the day in the lab.
Put together my new table at home. Looks nice.
Reviewed the files for the next two 503 discussions this week. Nothing
really surprising here.
Did the BS521 reading for tomorrow.
## 2023-10-26
BS521 class this morning.
I've got the 503 discussion thing at 2, need to figure out a good place to take
that Zoom call. Maybe the study rooms at the top of THSL? Need to figure out
how to reserve those at some point.
PIBS 503 discussion class zoom meeting.
Started reading the next HG545 paper and glanced over the slides. I wish we had
lectures recorded like the last module.
## 2023-10-27
HG545 lecture. New module starts today, on replication.
There's more than just one DNA Polymerase. Three main ones are called α, δ, and
ε. Roughly, α starts, then hands off to δ. On the lagging strand, that's all
it has time for before it falls off and the process starts again for the next
Okazaki fragment. But on the leading strand, δ has time to hand off to ε, which
is much more stable and can continue along the strand.
Proofreading and mismatch repair are both very important. The initial
polymerization process has an error rate somewhere around 10⁻⁶. Mismatch repair
happens *in-line* with the replication process: DNA Pol doesn't like continuing
from a mismatch based, so most of the time it will pause for a bit and the
proofreading machinery that's also in the replication complex will chomp off the
bad base, then DNA Pol will continue. Mismatch repair happens separately: one
protein recognizes the mismatch and recruits another protein that excises the
match *and a big chunk of the downstream strand*, and that whole chunk gets
resynthesized.
Another PIBS 503 class discussion zoom meeting. 3 down, 4 to go.
## 2023-10-28
Started digging into the HG545 paper. I hate that we only have 2 classes for
this one, it feels far too rushed.
## 2023-10-29
Finished the second readthrough of the paper. I feel a little better now, but
am still not perfectly sure on the questions.
## 2023-10-30
HG545 class, mostly on DNA repair. Makes the case that a lot of DNA repair
reuses the same polymerases (e.g. δ) as replication (but not all, e.g.
single-base repair uses something else (I think β?)), and you can kind of think
of it as just another form of replication.
Another important point: replication is not deterministic, because it doesn't
have to be. As long as the whole genome (well, chromosome) gets replicated, it
doesn't matter precisely where that replication started. This is very different
from e.g. transcription, because starting in a different place would transcribe
a different gene.
Also important to define terms like lesion vs mutation: a lesion is detectable
DNA damage, which then get fixed into place (in the "use fixer on the photo
paper" sense, not the "repair" sense) by subsequent replication.
I think I'm feeling a little better about the homework questions now after
talking through it a bit. Need to get some rough drafts sketched out for when
I meet with the study group tomorrow.
## 2023-10-31
BS521. Chi-square test.
BI500. Senior student discussion panel. Each gave us advice:
* Find a mentor that works for you (specifically what *you* need, will be
different for everyone).
* Use these years as training, not 100% research.
* Take care of yourself, set boundaries. Marathon, not sprint.
* Take ownership of your time here, do things that'll help you grow.
* The novelty of a PhD will wear off, stick with it.
* Have hobbies.
* Keep a calendar.
* Talk with your peers a lot, don't keep everything to yourself.
PIBS800. Career planning.
Met with HG545 folks. This module was a bit better than the rest.
Finished and submitted HG545 homework.
Made BS521 note sheet for the exam Thursday.