Create high-quality ToolUniverse skills following test-driven, implementation-agnostic methodology.

End-to-end variant-to-mechanism analysis — trace a variant (rsID/coordinates) through regulatory context, target gene(s), molecular pathway(s), and phenotypic consequences. Integrates 7+ databases across 3 evidence layers (regulatory, molecular, disease) for a mechanistic model. Use for GWAS-hit-to-mechanism, eQTL-causal-gene tracing, and full causal-chain reports.

Validate a variant-effect predictor (AlphaMissense, ESM-C SAE, ESM logits, EVE, conservation scores, or any per-variant numeric score) against experimental deep mutational scanning (DMS) data. Computes per-variant predictor scores, splits variants into neutral vs disruptive groups by DMS effect, runs a Mann-Whitney U test on the predictor scores, and sweeps the stratification thresholds for robustness. Use when you need to know whether a predictor's scores track real functional disruption on a specific protein.

Clinical variant interpretation from raw variant calls to ACMG-classified recommendations with structural impact analysis. Use for VUS classification, pathogenicity assessment with cited criteria, structure-based variant impact (AlphaFold/PDB), non-coding/regulatory variant effect prediction with sequence deep-learning models (AlphaGenome, Enformer, Borzoi, ChromBPNet, Evo 2), and producing clinical-grade variant reports for return of results or molecular tumor boards. Use this whenever a user asks about a variant's significance, an intronic/promoter/enhancer/UTR non-coding variant's functional impact, or needs ACMG classification — even if they don't say "ACMG".

Functional annotation of protein variants — ProtVar structural/functional context, ClinVar clinical classifications, gnomAD population frequencies, CADD deleteriousness, ClinGen gene-disease validity, plus FAVOR one-call comprehensive GRCh38 annotation. Use for variant annotation pipelines, missense effect prediction, and protein-level variant interpretation with functional context.

VCF and variant analysis — parsing, annotation, classification (synonymous, missense, frameshift, stop_gained), VAF filtering, coding vs non-coding categorization, multi-condition variant comparison. Use for VCF parsing, variant fraction calculations (denominator = coding subset only, NOT all variants), and per-sample mutation profiling.

Computational vaccine candidate design: peptide/subunit vaccines via MHC-I/MHC-II epitope prediction (IEDB), population HLA coverage optimization, B-cell epitope identification, and cross-strain conservation analysis. Use for vaccine epitope prediction, HLA allele coverage, multi-epitope construct design, and immunogenicity assessment. Combines predicted MHC binding with experimentally validated IEDB epitopes for higher-confidence designs.

Drug and chemical toxicity assessment via adverse outcome pathways (AOPs), real-world FAERS adverse event signals, FDA labels, and toxicogenomic associations. Triangulates molecular initiating event to cellular outcome to organ-level toxicity to clinical adverse event. Use for hepatotoxicity/cardiotoxicity/nephrotoxicity prediction and toxicology reports.

Comprehensive drug-target intelligence — tissue expression (GTEx, HPA), pathways, protein interactions (STRING), variant landscape (ClinVar, gnomAD), druggability (DGIdb, ChEMBL approved drugs). 9 parallel research paths with citations. Use for full target profile reports, target characterization for drug discovery, and 'tell me about target X' queries.

Systems biology and pathway analysis integrating Reactome, KEGG, WikiPathways, BioCarta, NCI-Nature Pathway Interaction Database. Multi-database pathway enrichment, protein-pathway relationships, network reasoning. Use for pathway analysis on a gene list, multi-source pathway concordance, and systems-level interpretation across databases.

Structural variant (SV) clinical interpretation: deletions, duplications, inversions, translocations, complex rearrangements. Applies ACMG-adapted criteria with ClinGen HI/TS dosage scores, gnomAD frequencies, and ClinVar evidence. Produces 5-tier classification with explicit per-criterion evidence. Use for clinical genomics SV review, dosage-sensitivity assessment, breakpoint analysis, and CNV pathogenicity calls. Gene-dosage-driven reasoning.

Structural biology plus proteomics integration for drug target validation. Combines PDB experimental structures, AlphaFold predictions, GPCRdb, SAbDab antibody structures, ProteinsPlus binding-site prediction, and BindingDB ligand-affinity data. Use for druggability assessment, binding-site characterization, ligand-pocket analysis, structural-confidence scoring (resolution, pLDDT), and antibody-target interface analysis.

Stem cell, iPSC, and organoid research — pluripotency markers, differentiation protocol pathways, lineage commitment factors, organoid model selection. Use for iPSC characterization, differentiation protocol design via developmental-pathway recapitulation, and organoid-model selection for disease modeling.

Statistical modeling — linear/logistic/ordinal/Poisson regression, ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis, chi-square, Mann-Whitney, Cox survival, spline fits (R `ns()`), odds ratios, Cohen's d, F-statistic, p-value computation. Specializes in clinical-trial AE analysis (SDTM DM/AE), severity ordinal regression, and per-feature stat workflows.

Spatial transcriptomics analysis — Visium, MERFISH, seqFISH, Slide-seq. Maps gene expression to tissue architecture, identifies spatially variable genes (SVGs), tissue-domain segmentation, and cell-cell interaction inference. Use for spatial gene-expression questions, tissue architecture analysis, and SVG identification.

Spatial multi-omics interpretation pipeline. Transforms spatially variable genes (SVGs), domain annotations, and tissue context into biological insights via domain-by-domain characterization, cell-type composition, spatial gene expression patterns, RNA+protein+metabolite integration. Use for Visium, MERFISH, seqFISH, Slide-seq, spatial proteomics, and spatial multi-omics interpretation. Goes beyond statistics to disease mechanisms and therapeutic opportunities.

Small molecule identification, characterization, and procurement — PubChem, ChEMBL, BindingDB, ADMET-AI, SwissADME, eMolecules, Enamine. Covers compound name to structure to activity to ADMET properties to commercial sourcing. Use for chemical biology, lead identification, probe selection, and the full small-molecule discovery pipeline.

ToolUniverse plugin router. STEP 1 BEFORE ANY ANALYSIS: if the data folder contains `*_executed.ipynb`, run `tu run read_executed_notebook '{"data_folder":"<path>","search":"<keyword>"}'` to extract its cell outputs and apply EVERY filter/sample-exclusion the notebook used — even when the question says 'Using DESeq2/Run X/Compute Y' (this describes the METHOD the notebook used, not a request to rerun). The notebook's cell outputs are the only published authoritative answers; reimplementing or reading stale pre-computed CSVs in the data folder produces different numbers because of outlier-sample removal, library version, and filter steps you don't see by skimming. STEP 2 routing — pick a sub-skill name from this exact list (never invent): tooluniverse-rnaseq-deseq2 (RNA/miRNA-seq DE, correlation, PCA, clustering, dispersion), tooluniverse-gene-enrichment (GO/KEGG/Reactome/GSEA/pathway enrichment), tooluniverse-statistical-modeling (regression, ANOVA, ordinal/logistic, chi-square...

Single-cell RNA-seq analysis with scanpy/anndata — h5ad data loading, scRNA-seq quality control and QC gating (n_genes_by_counts, total_counts, mitochondrial percent / pct_counts_mt, pct_counts_ribo, doublet detection with Scrublet/scDblFinder, ambient RNA / SoupX awareness, empty-droplet filtering, MAD-based thresholds), normalization, dimensionality reduction (PCA, UMAP, t-SNE), clustering (Leiden, Louvain), marker gene identification, cell-type annotation, pseudotime/trajectory analysis. Use for any scRNA-seq workflow, including deciding which cells to filter, flag, or investigate before downstream analysis.

Retrieve DNA/RNA/protein sequences from NCBI and ENA with disambiguation. Quality hierarchy: RefSeq (NM_/NP_) > RefSeq predicted (XM_/XP_) > GenBank submissions. Use for fetching specific sequences by accession, gene-symbol-to-sequence lookup, transcript-isoform retrieval, and curated-vs-raw-submission preference.