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  • Archive for the 'Bioinformatics' Category

    Bioinformatics is a general term which refers to using computers and computational/math methods in applications to biology.

    Avoiding out of memory fatal error when using HTTP_Client or HTTP_Request

    6th September 2006

    If you fetch large amounts of data (e.g. over 2MB per request) using HTTP_Client (or HTTP_request), you may get "out of memory" fatal errors, especially if:

    1. memory_limit is set to default 8M, and
    2. you process multiple pages using single non-reset instance of HTTP_Client object.

    This problem can manifest itself by producing fatal error after a couple of cycles of successful page retrieval - but always, if run with the same parameters, after some constant or only slightly variable number of cycles.

    In my case the problem was that HTTP_Request (a dependancy of HTTP_Client) was holding in memory all the previously fetched pages of the current session (the 'history' feature). To force HTTP_Request to hold only the most recent page, you need to 'disable' history after creating the HTTP_Client or HTTP_Request object instance:

    PHP:
    1. $req = &new HTTP_Client($params, $headers);
    2. // disable history to save memory
    3. $req->enableHistory(false);

    Hope this helps you.

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    Posted in Bioinformatics, PHP, Programming, Science | No Comments »

    How to compare promoter structure of several genes

    16th August 2006

    I needed to find out common transcription factor (TF) binding sites (TFBS) in the structure of the promoters of interferon-regulated genes. I tried several different approaches - starting from the simplest sequence-sequence comparisons using BLAST, ClustalW alignments, and searching each of the promoters for transcription factor binding sites - to compare and find common.

    But the easiest way was to use Genomatix's "Gene2Promoter" tool. With it, the whole procedure is extremely simple:
    Read the rest of this entry »

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    Posted in Bioinformatics | No Comments »

     
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