• paired-end (PE) and/or mate-pair libraries (NGS-based mode)
• long reads (NGS-based mode)
• synteny to the genome of some related species (reference-based mode)

Scaffolding 

In reference-based mode, pyScaf uses synteny to the genome of closely related species in order to order contigs and estimate distances between adjacent contigs.

Contigs are aligned globally (end-to-end) onto reference chromosomes, ignoring:

• matches not satisfying cut-offs (--identity and --overlap)
• suboptimal matches (only best match of each query to reference is kept)
• and removing overlapping matches on reference.

In preliminary tests, pyScaf performed superbly on simulated heterozygous genomes based on C. parapsilosis (13 Mb; CANPA) and A. thaliana (119 Mb; ARATH) chromosomes, reconstructing correctly all chromosomes always for CANPA and nearly always for ARATH (Figures in dropbox, CANPA table, ARATH table).
Runs took ~0.5 min for CANPA on 4 CPUs and ~2 min for ARATH on 16 CPUs.

Important remarks:

• Reduce your assembly before (fasta2homozygous.py) as any redundancy will likely break the synteny.
• pyScaf works better with contigs than scaffolds, as scaffolds are often affected by mis-assemblies (no de novo assembler / scaffolder is perfect...), which breaks synteny.
• pyScaf works very well if divergence between reference genome and assembled contigs is below 20% at nucleotide level.
• pyScaf deals with large rearrangements ie. deletions, insertion, inversions, translocations. Note however, this is experimental implementation!
• Consider closing gaps after scaffolding.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/lpryszcz/pyScaf

http://neufeldserver.uwaterloo.ca/~apmasell/pandaseq_man1.html

Address of the bookmark: http://neufeldserver.uwaterloo.ca/~apmasell/pandaseq_man1.html

https://salzberg-lab.org/

Further information about fragScaff, including source code, is available at:https://sourceforge.net/projects/fragscaff/files.

Manuscript describing fragScaff was published as: Adey A, Kitzman JO, Burton JN, Daza R, Kumar A, Christiansen L, Ronaghi M, Amini S, L Gunderson K, Steemers FJ, Shendure J#. In vitro, long-range sequence information for de novo genome assembly via transposase contiguity. Genome Research 2014 Dec;24(12):2041-9. doi: 10.1101/gr.178319.114. PubMed PMID: 25327137.

Address of the bookmark: https://sourceforge.net/projects/fragscaff/files/

A recent study published in Genome Biology (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13059-026-04280-y) addressed this challenge by introducing dicast (https://github.com/burgshrimps/dicast), a machine-learning approach for detecting structural variants in short-read sequencing data. Structural variants, such as large deletions, insertions, duplications, and inversions, can have significant biological and clinical implications, yet they are challenging to identify with short-read technologies. Because different detection methods frequently yield divergent results, researchers commonly employ consensus calling, considering a variant valid only if multiple tools detect it. While this approach reduces false positives, it relies on the potentially flawed assumption that the majority is always correct.

The researchers explored the impact of evaluating the supporting evidence for each variant, rather than simply tallying the number of algorithms that identified it. To establish a ground truth, they analyzed nine genomes using multiple sequencing technologies and 15 detection methods, initially identifying approximately 35 million potential variants. Through extensive filtering, evidence integration, and manual review of over 11,500 variants, they developed a robust benchmark comprising more than 236,000 structural variants. The findings underscored the complexity of the problem: short-read methods detected fewer than half of deletions and less than 10 percent of insertions, with performance declining markedly in repetitive genomic regions. In contrast, long-read technologies demonstrated superior detection capabilities. However, replacing the substantial volume of existing short-read data in clinical and research settings is not immediately feasible. Consequently, the researchers questioned whether short-read data might harbor more information than conventional analytical pipelines currently extract.

This line of inquiry led to the development of dicast. Rather than merely confirming agreement among multiple tools, dicast identifies patterns in sequencing data, including split and clipped reads, discordant read pairs, alignment characteristics, and the surrounding genomic context. An XGBoost machine-learning model evaluates which combinations of these signals are indicative of genuine structural variants. Thus, the approach shifts from tallying algorithmic consensus to interpreting the underlying evidence.

The researchers subsequently conducted a targeted evaluation by examining structural variants detected by only a single short-read tool, which are typically missed by consensus-based approaches. dicast successfully recovered approximately 81% of these single-caller deletions, insertions, and duplications. The signals for these variants were present in the data, but conventional filtering methods failed to integrate them effectively.

The utility of dicast was further demonstrated in cohorts with rare diseases, including congenital limb malformations, atrial fibrillation, and neuromuscular disorders. In one instance, dicast achieved a deletion recall rate of approximately 0.96, compared to 0.74 using consensus calling. The median number of variants requiring manual review was 29 per sample. Among 31 experimentally validated variants that standard filters would have missed, dicast identified 12, whereas consensus calling detected only one.

Overall, dicast identified approximately 20 percent more potential disease-causing deletions than consensus-based methods. While a 20 percent increase may appear modest, in clinical genomics such improvements can have significant practical implications. Missing a deletion may leave a case unresolved, whereas detecting a structural variant can provide critical diagnostic insights.

The study does not claim that machine learning has rendered short-read sequencing superior to long-read approaches. Instead, the results underscore the effectiveness of long-read sequencing for structural variant detection. However, dicast highlights a more nuanced perspective: substantial biological information may still be recoverable from the extensive short-read datasets already available.

The principal lesson extends beyond the detection of structural variants. For many years, bioinformatics pipelines have relied on threshold-based criteria, such as minimum coverage, quality scores, or support from multiple tools. While these rules are useful, biological phenomena do not always conform to rigid checklists; multiple weak signals, when considered collectively, can provide compelling evidence.

This perspective prompts consideration of the solitary variant: one algorithm identifies it, while several others do not. Traditional consensus techniques might have dismissed it, yet machine learning approaches evaluate the available evidence to determine whether the variant is plausible.

Occasionally, the most significant variant within a genome is the one that is almost universally overlooked.

Read more at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13059-026-04280-y

1. Duplication level
2. kmer profile
3. per base GC content
4. per base N content
5. per base quality
6. per base sequence content
7. per sequence GC content
8. per sequence quality
9. sequence length distribution

More at http://www.bioinformatics.babraham.ac.uk/projects/fastqc/Help/3%20Analysis%20Modules/

Address of the bookmark: http://www.bioinformatics.babraham.ac.uk/projects/fastqc/Help/3%20Analysis%20Modules/

WiseScaffolder is a stand-alone semi-automatic application for genome scaffolding of pre-assembled contigs using mate-pair data. It also produces editable scaffold maps, allowing either to build gapped scaffolds or usable as a common thread for the manual improvement of scaffolds.

Description 

WiseScaffolder includes 4 subcommands: dumpconfig generates a configuration file that notably specifies the average insert size of the mate-pair library preprocess allows the detection and correction of chimerae, the estimation of contigs copy number and produces valuable outputs for the manual improvement of scaffolds scaffold constitutes the central scaffold-builder and comprises two modules:

i) the interative_scaffold_extender, which works with big, unambiguous contigs, or when they run out, single copy contigs, and

ii) the small_contig_inserter, which inserts the small contigs within scaffolds buildfasta converts the scaffold(s) map(s) into Fasta sequences.

Address of the bookmark: http://abims.sb-roscoff.fr/wisescaffolder

A very nice book by Winston Chang for R ethusiast. The R code presented in these pages is the R code actually used to produce the Figures in the book. There will be differences compared to the code chunks shown in the text of the book, but in most cases the differences will be that these pages contain additional code to lay out multiple plots on a single "page".

The code presented for each figure is self-contained, i.e., all code required to produce the figure is included. This means that there is sometimes considerable overlap of code between several figures  In some cases, it may be necessary to install an add-on package from CRAN to get the code to run.

More books at http://www.e-reading.club/bookreader.php/137370/C486x_APPb.pdf

The source code can be downloaded here. 

If you use E-MEM, please cite:

• N. Khiste, L. Ilie, E-MEM: Efficient computation of Maximal Exact Matches for very large genomes, Bioinformatics 31(4) (2015) 509 -- 514.

For any questions, please contact Lucian Ilie: ilie@uwo.ca 

Address of the bookmark: http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~ilie/E-MEM/

PEAR evaluates all possible paired-end read overlaps and without requiring the target fragment size as input. In addition, it implements a statistical test for minimizing false-positive results. Together with a highly optimized implementation, it can merge millions of paired end reads within a couple of minutes on a standard desktop computer.

Address of the bookmark: http://sco.h-its.org/exelixis/web/software/pear/doc.html