BOL: Related items

Illumina Smartphone Chip !!!

Robert M Willioms — Tue, 30 Dec 2014 23:19:54 -0600

Illumina, the company that claims it brought human genome sequencing down to $1000 prices, has now turned its attention to a consumer product - a chip that you can plug into your smartphone and have it read your genetic information.

The biggest challenge ahead of Illumina is simplifying the process of genetic sequencing. Currently, Illumina’s DNA sequencers are gigantic machines that use techinques like colorimetry to work, but while the core technology is computational, it takes some 30 steps to extract genetic data and run it through. This process will likely have to be hugely simplified on mobile devices, given the fact that some studies require extracting 10 mililiters of blood. Illumina researchers are also working on finding the optimal technology for this on-chip DNA sequencing - be it electrical, optical, or other.

Illumina is one of the most prominent names in genetics, often said to be the Intel of genetic sequencing, as just like Intel it provides the algorithms, the processing brain that runs a DNA reading task.

In other recent smartphone-related biotech news, drug company Pfizer launched its REMOTE project, a new type of clinical trial that does not require going to a hospital for checks - targeted at patients with overactive bladder problems, the FDA-approved REMOTE project allowed to gather data from patients from over 10 states remotely, via mobile devices.

This is indeed the Illumina answer to Apple's Health app, HealthBook, Google HealthFit.

Trimmomatic: A flexible read trimming tool for Illumina NGS data

Jit — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 05:58:53 -0500

Paired End:

java -jar trimmomatic-0.35.jar PE -phred33 input_forward.fq.gz input_reverse.fq.gz output_forward_paired.fq.gz output_forward_unpaired.fq.gz output_reverse_paired.fq.gz output_reverse_unpaired.fq.gz ILLUMINACLIP:TruSeq3-PE.fa:2:30:10 LEADING:3 TRAILING:3 SLIDINGWINDOW:4:15 MINLEN:36

This will perform the following:

Remove adapters (ILLUMINACLIP:TruSeq3-PE.fa:2:30:10)
Remove leading low quality or N bases (below quality 3) (LEADING:3)
Remove trailing low quality or N bases (below quality 3) (TRAILING:3)
Scan the read with a 4-base wide sliding window, cutting when the average quality per base drops below 15 (SLIDINGWINDOW:4:15)
Drop reads below the 36 bases long (MINLEN:36)

More at http://www.usadellab.org/cms/?page=trimmomatic

Address of the bookmark: http://www.usadellab.org/cms/?page=trimmomatic

QuorUM: An Error Corrector for Illumina Reads

Jit — Wed, 08 Nov 2017 11:40:41 -0600

Illumina Sequencing data can provide high coverage of a genome by relatively short (most often 100 bp to 150 bp) reads at a low cost. Even with low (advertised 1%) error rate, 100 × coverage Illumina data on average has an error in some read at every base in the genome. These errors make handling the data more complicated because they result in a large number of low-count erroneous k-mers in the reads. However, there is enough information in the reads to correct most of the sequencing errors, thus making subsequent use of the data (e.g. for mapping or assembly) easier. Here we use the term “error correction” to denote the reduction in errors due to both changes in individual bases and trimming of unusable sequence. We developed an error correction software called QuorUM. QuorUM is mainly aimed at error correcting Illumina reads for subsequent assembly. It is designed around the novel idea of minimizing the number of distinct erroneous k-mers in the output reads and preserving the most true k-mers, and we introduce a composite statistic π that measures how successful we are at achieving this dual goal. We evaluate the performance of QuorUM by correcting actual Illumina reads from genomes for which a reference assembly is available.

QuorUM is distributed as an independent software package and as a module of the MaSuRCA assembly software. Both are available under the GPL open source license at http://www.genome.umd.edu.

Address of the bookmark: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0130821

SViper: Swipe your Structural Variants called on long (ONT/PacBio) reads with short exact (Illumina) reads.

Neel — Sun, 22 Dec 2019 03:48:28 -0600

Call sviper

~$ ./sviper -s short-reads.bam -l long-reads.bam -r ref.fa -c variants.vcf -o polished_variants

This will output a polished_variants.vcf file, that contains all the refined variants.

Sometimes it is helpful to look at the polished sequence, e.g. with the IGV browser. In that case you want SViper to output the polished and aligned sequences in a bam file via the option --output-polished-bam:

~$ ./sviper -s short-reads.bam -l long-reads.bam -r ref.fa -c variants.vcf -o polished_variants --output-polished-bam

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/smehringer/SViper

Protocol for De novo Genome Assembly using Illumina Reads

BioStar — Sat, 16 Jan 2021 21:42:11 -0600

In this protocol, we address and describe the de novo assembly method for small to medium-sized genomes.

What is de novo genome assembly?
The method of taking a large number of short DNA sequences and placing them back together to create a reflection of the original chromosomes from which the DNA originated relates to genome assembly. No previous knowledge of the source DNA sequence length, structure or composition is inferred by De novo genome assemblies. The DNA of the target organism is split up into millions of tiny parts and read on a sequencing computer in a genome sequencing experiment. Depending on the sequencing system used, these "reads" range from 20 to 1000 nucleotide base pairs (bp) in length. Usually, length reads of 36 - 150 bp are produced for Illumina style short read sequencing. These reads can be either “single ended” as described above or “paired end.”

Why genome assembly?
In basic research into why and how they live, as well as in applied topics, identifying the DNA sequence of an organism is useful. Awareness of a DNA sequence may be useful in virtually any biological research because of the relevance of DNA to living things. For example, it may be used in medicine to classify, diagnose and eventually improve genetic disorder therapies. Similarly, pathogens study can lead to treatments for infectious diseases.

Raw NGS data
Reads can be saved as a Fasta file as text or in a FastQ file with their attributes. FastQ is the most common read file format since this is what the Illumina sequencing pipeline creates. This will henceforth be the subject of our conversation.

In a nutshell the protocol:
Get the sequence file(s) read from the sequencing machine (s).
Look at the readings - have an idea of what you have and what the standard is like.
If required, raw data cleanup/quality trimming.
Choose an adequate parameter set for assembly.
Assemble the data into scaffolds/contigs.
Examine the assembly performance and determine the efficiency of the assembly.

Read Quality Control:
Check the qualiy with fastQC.
Script
https://bioinformaticsonline.com/snippets/view/42540/install-fastqc-using-conda

Quality trimming/cleanup of read files.
This function trims adapters, barcodes and other contaminants from the reads.
Script
https://bioinformaticsonline.com/snippets/view/42542/trimmomatic-command

Genome Assembly:
The object of this portion of the protocol is to explain the method of assembling the reads trimmed by quality into draft contigs.

spades.py -1 illumina_R1.fastq.gz -2 illumina_R2.fastq.gz --careful --cov-cutoff auto -o result_of_spades_assembly_all_illumina

A significant range of short-read assemblers are available. Everyone with strengths and disadvantages of their own.
Some of the assemblers available include:
Velvet
SOAP-denovo
MIRA
ALLPATHS

Next step is to assess the suitability and what to do with a draft package of contiguous details for the remainder of the study now. Few stuff you can note about the contigs you just created: They're the draft Contigs. Any mis-assemblies can occur.

Mis-assembly checking and assembly metric tools:
QUAST - Quality assessment tool for genome assembly http://bioinf.spbau.ru/quast
Mauve assembly metrics - http://code.google.com/p/ngopt/wiki/How_To_Score_Genome_Assemblies_with_Mauve
InGAP-SV - https://sites.google.com/site/nextgengenomics/ingap and http://ingap.sourceforge.net/
inGAP is also useful for finding structural variants between genomes from read mappings.

Genome finishing tools:
Semi-automated gap fillers:
Gap filler - http://www.baseclear.com/landingpages/basetools-a-wide-range-of-bioinformatics-solutions/gapfiller/

IMAGE (V2) - http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/image2/index.php?title=Main_Page

Genome visualisers and editors:
Artemis - http://www.sanger.ac.uk/resources/software/artemis/
IGV - http://www.broadinstitute.org/igv/

Automated and semi automated annotation tools:
Prokka - https://github.com/tseemann/prokka
RAST - http://www.nmpdr.org/FIG/wiki/view.cgi/FIG/RapidAnnotationServer
JCVI Annotation Service - http://www.jcvi.org/cms/research/projects/annotation-service/

Frequent command use for the analysis are at:

https://bioinformaticsonline.com/blog/view/38765/list-of-tools-frequently-used-while-genome-assembly
https://bioinformaticsonline.com/pages/view/42275/frequent-parameters-for-bioinformatics-tools

World of Omics

Rahul Agarwal — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 17:11:48 -0500

How many variants of "omics" techniques presently in use ?

Should you get sequenced? Not all bad genes predict disease

Rahul Agarwal — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 15:10:53 -0500

“What we really don’t know yet is whether the predictive aspects of the genome are going to turn out to be beneficial or potentially harmful”

“As we roll out genomic medicine we are fighting against this society-wide misconception that having the bad gene means you’re going to get the disease. That’s only true in a very few cases.”

Source:Today Health

Address of the bookmark: http://www.today.com/health/should-you-get-sequenced-not-all-bad-genes-predict-disease-8C11017154

Comparison of Short Read De Novo Alignment Algorithms

Rahul Agarwal — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 07:56:01 -0500

Excellent article to introduce different sequencing methods along with tools for de novo assembly of sequencing reads and their relevant references.

Title: Comparison of Short Read De Novo Alignment Algorithms

Author: Nikhil Gopal

Address of the bookmark: http://biochem218.stanford.edu/Projects%202011/Gopal%202011.pdf

Latest paper on comparison of mapping tools

Rahul Agarwal — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 18:00:38 -0500

A. Hatem, D. Bozdag, A. E. Toland, U. V. Catalyurek "Benchmarking short sequence mapping tools" BMC Bioinformatics, 14(1):184, 2013.

http://bmi.osu.edu/hpc/software/benchmark/

http://bmi.osu.edu/hpc/software/pmap/pmap.html

Other similiar papers:

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/cmb.2012.0022

http://bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org/content/28/24/3169

Some new Mapping tool links:

GSNAP

http://research-pub.gene.com/gmap/

RMAP

http://rulai.cshl.edu/rmap/

mrsFAST

http://mrsfast.sourceforge.net/Home

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mrsfast/files/mrsfast-ultra-3.1.0/

BFAST

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/bfast/index.php?title=Main_Page

SHRiMP (for AB SOLiD color-space reads)

http://compbio.cs.toronto.edu/shrimp/

RazerA 3

http://www.seqan.de/projects/razers/

Address of the bookmark: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/14/184

Largest Genome Sequenced

Rahul Agarwal — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 13:57:19 -0500

The enormous size of the loblolly pine genome having 22 billion base pairs compared to only 3 billion in the human genome. In other words, it is seven times larger than a human’s and also the largest and the most complete conifer genome ever sequenced.

Related Paper:

http://genomebiology.com/2014/15/3/R59/abstract

Address of the bookmark: http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=10859