In case anyone ends up needing genBlastG, I found a solution. Seven years ago, Michael Paulini posted the genblastg_patch for WormBase on github. Whenever I tried to use this version or the versions available on conda, I got an error saying it could not find the blastall or formatdb files, or that genblastG was not a viable command. Last year, Guisen Chen posted a python version called genblastG_extension on github. However, it also failed because it was missing the alignscore.txt file, but it does have those other missing files. So I copied the files contained in genblastg_patch (which included alignscore.txt) into the genblastG_extension directory, and executed it without python, using the same syntax shown by Mensur Dlakic above. And it works!
Obviously this wouldn't be necessary if the original package had been maintained, likely a consequence of transient workers like grad students or postdocs creating something and never managing it thereafter. This may be the case with a new package called TGFAM-Finder, which is also meant to be a homology-based gene finder, because every time I tried to install it, I got an error saying "resource temporarily unavailable." It would be ideal to use GeMoMa for homology-based gene finding, but there too I got errors saying "there are gene annotations on chromosomes/contigs with missing reference sequences ..." and "Did not finish as intended." But GeMoMa is mainly developed for whole genome annotation anyway, with no tutorials on gene family analysis. The growing need to compare gene families among already-annotated genomes and newly annotated ones will probably lead to new packages in the coming years so that hacking a deprecated one won't be necessary.
Thank you both! I'm trying it now. It seems the default installation with bioconda is version 1.38, whereas 1.39 gives me an incompatibility "UnsatisfiableError" with libstdcxx-ng. But perhaps I can work around it...
As a follow-up, GenoMax and Mensur Dlakic, I was able to install both genblast packages with bioconda (thank you!) but I can't figure out how to execute them. I keep getting the dreaded "command not found" error for either one, despite ensuring to add the miniconda3 path and editing .bashrc, etc. This seems to be the problem someone experienced on this thread. Someone suggested activating the conda environment, but genblasta or genblastg aren't environments. (I tried it anyway, of course.) Any ideas on why this many be happening? I keep thinking I've set up conda wrong, but I was able to install and use GeMoMa via bioconda. Thanks again for any advice!
If you had simply done
then you need to
conda activate(i.e. activate the base environment)At this point you should be able to find the executable.
Ideally you should have created a new environment
Thanks for the reply! I did activate my conda environment and then installed genblastg. I called the environment something else, but I don't see why that should matter. I'll see if this works...
Unless the named environment (where you installed the program) is
activeyou will not be able to run the installed program. Simplyconda activateonly activates the base environment.Thanks! Yes, I had created a conda environment called opencv, activated opencv, and installed the genblast programs therein, but they would not run. I also tried another environment. It did not work until I used the genblast environment name that you and Mensur Dlakic recommended. I don't understand it, but it only worked for that environment.
To create an environment:
Activate:
Then type
genblastAorgenblastG, as needed:I'm very grateful to both you and GenoMax for your helpful advice! The programs appear to be functional now. The only issue I now have is that I get an error that says
So it seems that it requires a
blastdatabase, even though the documentation doesn't mention this input. If I specifywublast, the error says./xdformat: not foundinstead. I wonder if I could use a.blastxmlsearch database -- presumably for the target species not the query sequences from the reference species.