/prost

`PROkaryote genome STatistics` (Prost): a system for the computation, storage and comparison of genomic data

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Prost

Prost is a system for the computation, storage and comparison of genomic data. The name derives from PROkaryote genome STatistics.

The core component of the system is a database, named ProstDB, which stores:

  • metadata about genome assemblies
  • attributes: any kind of information collected or computed, about all or some of the genome assemblies
  • computation tracing information
  • taxonomic data (a mirror of NCBI taxonomy)
  • phenotype data

ProstDB is implemented using the MariaDB database management system.

Furthermore, the system consists in programs, which allow to create, update, compute new attributes, interact with the database and analyse the data contained in it.

These are organized as follows:

  • ProstPy a library of Python scripts, with a command line interface, as well as a SnakeMake API, which support the operations on the ProstDB database and on genomic data

  • ProstPlugins plugins, written in Python, Nim and Rust that compute or collect data about the assemblies (attributes); each plugin computes one or multiple attributes; the user can write own plugins, according to the provided documentation (docs/prost_plugins.md); scripts for automatically checking the plugin interface are provided

  • ProstSnakes a collection of pipeline scripts, based on SnakeMake, which automatically download and keep uptodata data from external databases, setup ProstDB and store the downloaded data in it, perform attributes computations and store the data in ProstDB, perform comparison tasks based on the ProstPy library and more.

A number of features has been created in separate packages (installable using pip):

  • multiplug: a plugin system which allows to write plugins for Python programs in Nim, Python, Rust and Bash; this is the base of ProstPlugins
  • snacli: a system for creating scripts which can be run both from the command line (interactively) and from inside a Snakemake file; this is the base of the ProstPy interactive scripts
  • attrtables: a dynamic system for storing entity attributes spread across multiple tables, including computation tracing metadata; this is the base of the ProstDB attributes storage
  • prenacs: system for batch computing of entity attributes (using plugins based on multiplug) and results storage (based on attrtables) with provenance tracking; the library is used for the computation of genome assembly attributes and to store the results in the ProstDB
  • findconfig: look for a configuration file in several possible positions on the file system

Code organization

  • ProstPy executable scripts are included in scripts
  • code common to multiple ProstPy scripts is stored under scripts/lib
  • ProstDB schema modules and further code to interact with the database is stored under scripts/dbschema
  • ProstPlugins are stored under plugins
  • ProstSnakes are stored under snakes

Documentation

For further information, see the documentation under docs:

  • setup.md describes how to install and setup Prost on a new system, including how to create the database, download the data and load it into the database
  • data_update.md describes how to automatically update the data from external sources
  • prost_plugins.md describes how to implement a plugin for attribute computation

Acknowledgements

This software has been originally created in context of the DFG project GO 3192/1-1 “Automated characterization of microbial genomes and metagenomes by collection and verification of association rules”. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis.