BOL: Related items

Understanding HiFi Reads !

Rahul Nayak — Thu, 24 Mar 2022 19:48:11 -0500

While little public data is available for either of the new synthetic long read approaches, Illumina showed an example comparison earlier this year at the Festival of Genomics & Biodata conference (FoG 2022). In the IGV screenshot presented (below), synthetic Infinity reads – labeled “Longas” – are at the top, followed by standard Illumina short reads, and PacBio HiFi reads labeled “CCS” depicted at the bottom:

Address of the bookmark: http://pacb.com/blog/the-hifi-difference-true-long-reads-vs-synthetic-long-reads/

Trust But Verify: Sequencing Your Cell Lines Might Reveal an Uninvited Guest

LEGE — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 00:07:57 -0500

High-throughput sequencing has become indispensable in cell biology, enabling detailed insights into chromatin structure, gene expression, and regulatory dynamics. Yet, when faced with unexpectedly low mapping rates to the human genome, researchers often rush to troubleshoot technical parameters—sequencer quality, adapter trimming, or aligner settings.

Before you go down that path, consider this critical biological question:
Are you sequencing human cells—or bacterial contamination?

The Silent Saboteur: Mycoplasma in Cell Cultures

Mycoplasma contamination remains one of the most widespread and underdiagnosed issues in tissue culture work. Studies suggest that 15–35% of cell lines in use may be contaminated, often without visible signs. Unlike other microbial infections, Mycoplasma does not produce cloudiness, odor, or a change in pH. Many researchers won’t detect it unless they specifically test for it.

The consequences, however, are profound. Mycoplasma can significantly alter:

Host gene expression patterns
Cell proliferation rates
Epigenetic profiles and chromatin accessibility
Cytokine signaling and immune responses

In short, it can skew your results, compromise your biological conclusions, and invalidate weeks or months of research.

A Simple Diagnostic Step: Map Against Mycoplasma Genomes

If you encounter poor alignment rates to the human genome, consider mapping your reads to a Mycoplasma reference genome—or better yet, use a combined human + Mycoplasma reference. There have been cases where over half of all reads, initially assumed to be from human cells, were in fact bacterial in origin. This check is fast, easy, and could save your project.

How Contamination Happens—and Persists

Mycoplasma is small (0.1–0.3 μm), lacks a cell wall, and can pass through standard filters undetected. Common sources include:

Contaminated reagents (e.g., FBS)
Infected cell lines obtained from other labs
Poor aseptic technique or shared equipment

Once present, it spreads quickly between cultures and can persist for months, silently affecting results.

Why Treatment Is Difficult

While antibiotics such as Plasmocin or BM-Cyclin are sometimes used, they often offer only partial resolution and may themselves alter cell behavior. In many cases, the best course of action is to discard the contaminated culture and start with a fresh, verified stock.

Practical Recommendations for Researchers

Routinely test for Mycoplasma using PCR, qPCR, or fluorescence-based assays
Incorporate contamination screens into your sequencing QC pipeline
Use combined reference genomes when mapping ambiguous reads
Practice strict aseptic technique and monitor all incoming cell lines
Don’t ignore unexplained data anomalies—they might point to contamination

Closing Thought: Contamination Is a Biological Variable

It’s easy to view poor mapping as a technical issue, but sometimes the problem lies deeper—in the biology itself. Mycoplasma contamination doesn’t just interfere with sequencing; it interferes with science. As a research community, we must treat contamination not as an afterthought, but as a key variable to control.

So next time your reads won’t align, don’t just tune the aligner. Ask if your cells are telling the truth—or if they're hiding something.

PureCN: copy number calling and SNV classification using targeted short read sequencing

Jit — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 04:09:37 -0500

This package estimates tumor purity, copy number, and loss of heterozygosity (LOH), and classifies single nucleotide variants (SNVs) by somatic status and clonality. PureCN is designed for targeted short read sequencing data, integrates well with standard somatic variant detection and copy number pipelines, and has support for tumor samples without matching normal samples.

Author: Markus Riester [aut, cre], Angad P. Singh [aut]

Maintainer: Markus Riester

Citation (from within R, enter citation("PureCN")):

Riester M, Singh A, Brannon A, Yu K, Campbell C, Chiang D, Morrissey M (2016). “PureCN: Copy number calling and SNV classification using targeted short read sequencing.” Source Code for Biology and Medicine, 11, 13. doi: 10.1186/s13029-016-0060-z.

Address of the bookmark: http://bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/html/PureCN.html

Recombination detection tool

Jit — Tue, 02 Feb 2016 10:11:14 -0600

A program to detect recombination hotspots using population genetic data.

More at https://github.com/auton1/LDhot

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/auton1/LDhot

RASTtk : algorithm for building custom annotation pipelines and annotating batches of genomes

Abhi — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 11:07:59 -0500

The RAST (Rapid Annotation using Subsystem Technology) annotation engine was built in 2008 to annotate bacterial and archaeal genomes. It works by offering a standard software pipeline for identifying genomic features (i.e., protein-encoding genes and RNA) and annotating their functions. Recently, in order to make RAST a more useful research tool and to keep pace with advancements in bioinformatics, it has become desirable to build a version of RAST that is both customizable and extensible. In this paper, we describe the RAST tool kit (RASTtk), a modular version of RAST that enables researchers to build custom annotation pipelines. RASTtk offers a choice of software for identifying and annotating genomic features as well as the ability to add custom features to an annotation job. RASTtk also accommodates the batch submission of genomes and the ability to customize annotation protocols for batch submissions. This is the first major software restructuring of RAST since its inception.

More at http://www.nature.com/articles/srep08365

Address of the bookmark: http://rast.nmpdr.org/

MOSAIK: A Hash-Based Algorithm for Accurate Next-Generation Sequencing Short-Read Mapping

Neel — Fri, 20 May 2016 18:53:49 -0500

MOSAIK is a stable, sensitive and open-source program for mapping second and third-generation sequencing reads to a reference genome. Uniquely among current mapping tools, MOSAIK can align reads generated by all the major sequencing technologies, including Illumina, Applied Biosystems SOLiD, Roche 454, Ion Torrent and Pacific BioSciences SMRT. Indeed, MOSAIK was the only aligner to provide consistent mappings for all the generated data (sequencing technologies, low-coverage and exome) in the 1000 Genomes Project. To provide highly accurate alignments, MOSAIK employs a hash clustering strategy coupled with the Smith-Waterman algorithm. This method is well-suited to capture mismatches as well as short insertions and deletions. To support the growing interest in larger structural variant (SV) discovery, MOSAIK provides explicit support for handling known-sequence SVs, e.g. mobile element insertions (MEIs) as well as generating outputs tailored to aid in SV discovery.

Address of the bookmark: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0090581

GAEMR

Jit — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 06:18:37 -0500

The Genome Assembly Evaluation Metrics and Reporting (GAEMR) package is an assembly analysis framework composed a number of integrated modules. These modules can be executed as a single program to generate a complete analysis report, or executed individually to generate specific charts and tables. GAEMR standardizes input by converting a variety of read types to Binary Alignment Map (BAM) format, allowing a single input format to be entered into GAEMR’s analysis pipeline, hence enabling the generation of standard reports.

GAEMR’s analysis philosophy is centered on contiguity, correctness, and completeness -- how many pieces in an assembly composed of, how well those pieces accurately represent the genome sequenced, and how much of that genome is represented by those pieces. By performing over twenty different analyses based on these principles, GAEMR gives a clear picture of the condition of a genome assembly.

Address of the bookmark: https://www.broadinstitute.org/software/gaemr/

HivePlot

Jit — Thu, 16 Feb 2017 11:39:34 -0600

The hive plot is a rational visualization method for drawing networks. Nodes are mapped to and positioned on radially distributed linear axes — this mapping is based on network structural properties. Edges are drawn as curved links. Simple and interpretable.

The purpose of the hive plot is to establish a new baseline for visualization of large networks — a method that is both general and tunable and useful as a starting point in visually exploring network structure.

More at http://www.hiveplot.com/

Address of the bookmark: http://www.hiveplot.com/

SVfinder: Tool for detecting genomic rearrangement form DNA-seq data

Robert M Willioms — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 15:51:40 -0600

SVfinder provides genome-wide detection of structural variants from next generation paired-end sequencing reads.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/cauyrd/SVfinder

GMOL: An Interactive Tool for 3D Genome Structure Visualization

Jit — Wed, 21 Mar 2018 12:25:20 -0500

GMOL was developed based upon our multi-scale approach that allows a user to scale between six separate levels within the genome. With GMOL, a user can choose any unit at any scale and scale it up or down to visualize its structure and retrieve corresponding genome sequences.

Address of the bookmark: https://www.nature.com/articles/srep20802