MotifLab Bug Alert!Last updated: 2014-02-03A critical bug was recently discovered in MotifLab versions 1.07 and earlier (and also beta releases of v2.0). The bug affects local caching of Region Datasets that are downloaded from web servers. The caching functionality was introduced to speed up retrieval of feature datasets by storing all data downloaded from external servers on the user's local disc. Whenever the user requests to download a feature track for a set of sequences that may have been analyzed before, MotifLab will check if some or all of the requested data is already available in the local cache before contacting any external data servers. The discovered bug comes into play when a user downloads data for sequences that partially overlap with sequences that already exist in the cache. For example, if the cache contains "RepeatMasker" data for the genomic segment "chr20:100000-102000" and the user wants to download data for the sequence "chr20:100500-102500", MotifLab will obtain data for the segment "chr20:100500-102000" from the cache and then contact the original data source in order to obtain the data for the segment "chr20:102001-102500". However, when storing data for this new segment in the cache, the discovered bug relocates the regions, so that the next time the user requests RepeatMasker data for a sequence overlapping with "chr20:102001-102500", the locations of these regions will have shifted (or they could also be missing altogether). It is recommended that users upgrade to MotifLab 1.08 to fix this issue, or else turn off the caching functionality entirely by opening up the "Options" dialog found under the "Configure" menu and deselecting the "Cache feature data" option under the "Cache" tab. Read about other known problems in MotifLab |