What is Genome Assembly?

Genome assembly involves piecing together short DNA sequence reads generated by sequencing platforms (e.g., Illumina, PacBio, Oxford Nanopore) into longer, contiguous sequences called contigs. This can be performed as:

• De Novo Assembly: Without a reference genome.
• Reference-Guided Assembly: Using a reference genome to guide the assembly process.

Step 1: Preparing Your Data

Before starting the assembly, ensure that your raw sequencing data is high quality.

1. Input Data

   • Short Reads: Illumina sequencing generates short, accurate reads ideal for scaffolding.
   • Long Reads: PacBio and Nanopore sequencing provide long reads for resolving repetitive regions.

2. Quality Control (QC)
   Use tools like FastQC or MultiQC to assess the quality of your reads:

   fastqc reads.fastq multiqc .

   Look for issues like low-quality bases, adapter contamination, or overrepresented sequences.

3. Read Trimming and Filtering
   Trim low-quality bases and adapters using Trimmomatic or Cutadapt:

   trimmomatic PE reads_R1.fastq reads_R2.fastq trimmed_R1.fastq trimmed_R2.fastq \ ILLUMINACLIP:adapters.fa:2:30:10 LEADING:3 TRAILING:3 SLIDINGWINDOW:4:20 MINLEN:36

Step 2: Choosing an Assembly Strategy

Select an assembly strategy based on your data type:

• Short-Read Assemblers:

  • SPAdes: Popular for microbial genomes.
  • Velvet: Fast for smaller genomes.

• Long-Read Assemblers:

  • Canu: Ideal for long-read datasets.
  • Flye: Versatile for small and large genomes.

• Hybrid Assemblers:

  • MaSuRCA: Combines short and long reads.
  • Unicycler: Optimized for bacterial genomes.

Step 3: Running the Assembly

3.1. SPAdes (Short-Read Assembly)

SPAdes is an excellent choice for small genomes, such as bacteria.

The output includes assembled contigs (contigs.fasta) and scaffolds (scaffolds.fasta).

3.2. Canu (Long-Read Assembly)

Canu is designed for high-error long reads from PacBio or Nanopore.

The output will be in canu_output/genome.contigs.fasta.

3.3. Hybrid Assembly with Unicycler

Unicycler combines short and long reads for improved assemblies.

Step 4: Assessing Assembly Quality

After assembly, evaluate its quality using the following tools:

1. QUAST
   QUAST generates assembly statistics, such as N50, genome size, and GC content:

   quast contigs.fasta -o quast_output

2. BUSCO
   BUSCO checks genome completeness by identifying conserved genes:

   busco -i contigs.fasta -o busco_output -l fungi_odb10 -m genome

3. Assembly Graph Visualization
   Visualize assembly graphs with Bandage:

   Bandage load assembly_graph.gfa

Step 5: Post-Assembly Steps

1. Polishing
   Improve assembly accuracy using tools like Pilon (for short reads) or Racon (for long reads).

   racon long_reads.fasta mapped_reads.sam contigs.fasta > polished_contigs.fasta

2. Scaffolding
   Link contigs into scaffolds using tools like SSPACE or Opera-LG if required.

3. Annotation
   Annotate the assembled genome using Prokka for prokaryotes or Maker for eukaryotes.

   prokka --outdir annotation_output --prefix genome contigs.fasta

Step 6: Sharing and Archiving

1. Submit to Public Repositories
   Share your assembly in databases like NCBI GenBank, ENA, or DDBJ.

2. Metadata Preparation
   Include detailed metadata for your submission, such as organism name, sequencing platform, and coverage.

Best Practices

• Always perform quality checks at each stage to ensure data integrity.
• Use multiple tools to cross-validate results when working with complex genomes.
• Document parameters and software versions for reproducibility.

Conclusion

Genome assembly is a powerful process that transforms raw sequencing data into a coherent representation of an organism’s genome. By following this step-by-step guide, you can successfully assemble genomes and uncover valuable biological insights. Whether you’re assembling a microbial genome or tackling the complexities of a eukaryotic genome, these tools and strategies will set you on the path to success.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/dhlbh/BASE

Awards of $5 million to four grantees have been made in fiscal year 2013 under the Genomic Sequencing and Newborn Screening Disorders research program. The program will be funded at $25 million over five years, as funds are made available.

"Hundreds of US babies will be pioneers in genomic medicine through a US$25-million programme to sequence their genomes soon after they are born."

Source:

http://blogs.nature.com/news/2013/09/scientists-to-sequence-hundreds-of-newborns-genomes.html

http://www.genome.gov/27554919

https://gold.jgi.doe.gov/

Address of the bookmark: https://gold.jgi.doe.gov/

Magic-BLAST incorporates within the NCBI BLAST code framework ideas developed in the NCBI Magic pipeline, in particular hit extensions by local walk and jump (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26109056), and recursive clipping of mismatches near the edges of the reads, which avoids accumulating artefactual mismatches near splice sites and is needed to distinguish short indels from substitutions near the edges.

Address of the bookmark: https://ncbi.github.io/magicblast/

ABySS Explorer

Interactive Java application that uses a novel graph-based representation to display a sequence assembly and associated metadata

http://www.bcgsc.ca/platform/bioinfo/software/abyss-explorer

BamView

Genome browser and annotation tool that allows visualization of sequence features, next-generation sequencing (NGS) data and the results of analyses within the context of the sequence, and also its six-frame translation

http://www.sanger.ac.uk/resources/software/artemis/

DNannotator 

Annotation web toolkit for regional genomic sequences

http://bioapp.psych.uic.edu/DNannotator.htm

JVM 

Java Visual Mapping tool for NGS reads

http://www.springer.com/cda/content/document/cda_downloaddocument/9789401792448-c2.pdf?SGWID=0-0-45-1487072-p176815501

LookSeq 

Web-based visualization of sequences derived from multiple sequencing technologies. Low- or high-depth read pileups and easy visualization of putative single nucleotide and structural variation

http://lookseq.sourceforge.net

MagicViewer 

Visualization of short read alignment, identification of genetic variation and association with annotation information of a reference genome

http://bioinformatics.zj.cn/magicviewer/

MapView 

Alignments of huge-scale single-end and pair-end short reads

http://omictools.com/mapview-s1367.html

MultiPipMaker

Computes alignments of similar regions in two DNA sequences. The resulting alignments are summarized with a ‘percent identity plot’ (pip)

http://pipmaker.bx.psu.edu/pipmaker/

PileLineGUI 

Handling genome position files in NGS studies

http://sing.ei.uvigo.es/pileline/pilelinegui.html

SAMtools tview 

Simple and fast text alignment viewer; NGS compatible

http://www.htslib.org/

SEWAL

Uses a locality-sensitive hashing algorithm to enumerate all unique sequences in an entire Illumina sequencing run

http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/sewal

STAR 

A web-based integrated solution to management and visualization of sequencing data

http://wanglab.ucsd.edu/star/browser

SVA 

Software for annotating and visualizing sequenced human genomes

http://www.svaproject.org

Viewer (IGV) 

Visualization of large heterogeneous datasets, providing a smooth and intuitive user experience at all levels of genome resolution

https://www.broadinstitute.org/igv/

ZOOM Lite 

NGS data mapping and visualization software

http://bioinfor.com/zoom/lite/

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/bcgsc/ARCS/

At present, some people have posted articles about the analysis process of WGD. I searched for the keyword "wgd pipeline" and found the following:

GenoDup: https:// github.com/MaoYafei/GenoDup-Pipeline
https://peerj.com/articles/6303/
WGDdetector: https:// github.com/yongzhiyang2 012/WGDdetector
https://bmcbioinformatics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12859-019-2670-3
wgd: https:// github.com/arzwa/wgd
https://bmcbioinformatics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12859-016-1142-2#Sec1
https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-017-0399-x
GeNoGAP https://bmcbioinformatics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12859-016-1142-2
https://bmcbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12915-017-0399-x
https://github.com/dfguan/purge_dups
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.24.917997v1

This article introduces the usage of wgd.

Wgd cannot be installed directly with bioconda at present, so it is a little troublesome to install, because it depends on a lot of software. wgd depends on the following software

BLAST
MCL
MUSCLE/MAFFT/PRANK
PAML
PhyML/FastTree
i-ADHoRe

But the good news is that most of the software it depends on can be installed with bioconda

conda create -n wgd python=3.5 blast mcl muscle mafft prank paml fasttree cmake libpng mpi=1.0=mpich
conda activate wgd

Here mpi=1.0=mpich is selected, because i-adhore depends on mpich. If openmpi is installed, an error will appear while loading shared libraries: libmpi_cxx.so.40: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

After that, the installation is much simpler

git clone https://github.com/arzwa/wgd.git
cd wgd
pip install .
pip install git+https://github.com/arzwa/wgd.git
For i-ADHoRe, you need to register at http:// bioinformatics.psb.ugent.be /webtools/i-adhore/licensing/Agree to the license to download i-ADHoRe-3.0

Since my miniconda3 installed ~/opt/, the installation path is so~/opt/miniconda3/envs/wgd/

tar -zxvf i-adhore-3.0.01.tar.gz
cd i-adhore-3.0.01
mkdir -p build && cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=~/opt/miniconda3/envs/wgd/
make -j 4
make insatall

Take the sugarcane genome Saccharum spontaneum L as an example. The genome is 8-ploid with 32 chromosomes (2n = 4x8 = 32)

Download the tutorial for CDS and GFF annotation files

mkdir -p wgd_tutorial && cd wgd_tutorial
wget http://www.life.illinois.edu/ming/downloads/Spontaneum_genome/Sspon.v20190103.cds.fasta.gz
wget http://www.life.illinois.edu/ming/downloads/Spontaneum_genome/Sspon.v20190103.gff3.gz
gunzip *.gz

First conda activate wgdstart our analysis environment, and then start the analysis

Step 1 : Use to wgd mclidentify homologous genes in the genome

wgd mcl -n 20 --cds --mcl -s Sspon.v20190103.cds.fasta -o Sspon_cds.out

Step 2 : Use to wgd ksdbuild Ks distribution

wgd ksd --n_threads 80 Sspon_cds.out/Sspon.v20190103.cds.fasta.blast.tsv.mcl Sspon.v20190103.cds.fasta

Step 3 : If the quality of the genome is good, then wgd syncollinearity analysis can be used . It can help us find the collinearity block in the genome and the corresponding anchor point

wgd syn --feature gene --gene_attribute ID \
-ks wgd_ksd/Sspon.v20190103.cds.fasta.ks.tsv \
Sspon.v20190103.gff3 Sspon_cds.out/Sspon.v20190103.cds.fasta.blast.tsv.mcl

 For more reading - There are 9 sub-modules in WGD

• kde: KDE fitting to the Ks distribution
• ksd: Ks distribution construction
• mcl: BLASP comparison of All-vs-ALl + MCL classification analysis.
• mix: Hybrid modeling of Ks distribution.
• pre: preprocess the CDS file
• syn: Call I-ADHoRe 3.0 to use GFF files for collinearity analysis
• viz: draw histogram and density plot
• wf1: Ks standard analysis procedure of the whole genome paranome (paranome), call mcl, ksd and syn
• wf2: Ks standard analysis procedure of one-vs-one homologous gene (ortholog), call wcl and kSD

Once a query gene has been entered, it is displayed in its genomic context in parallel to the genomic context of all its orthologous and paralogous copies in all the other sequenced metazoan genomes. Moreover, Genomicus stores and displays the predicted ancestral genome structure in all the ancestral species within the phylogenetic range of interest.

All the data on extant species displayed in this browser are from Ensembl.

Summary statistics of Genomicus version 105.01: (view species tree in pdf or newick)

Address of the bookmark: https://www.genomicus.bio.ens.psl.eu/genomicus-105.01/cgi-bin/search.pl