BOL: Related items

SqueezeMeta: a fully automated metagenomics pipeline, from reads to bins

BioStar — Sat, 06 Jul 2024 04:29:16 -0500

SqueezeMeta is a full automatic pipeline for metagenomics/metatranscriptomics, covering all steps of the analysis. SqueezeMeta includes multi-metagenome support allowing the co-assembly of related metagenomes and the retrieval of individual genomes via binning procedures. Thus, SqueezeMeta features several unique characteristics:

Co-assembly procedure with read mapping for estimation of the abundances of genes in each metagenome
Co-assembly of a large number of metagenomes via merging of individual metagenomes
Includes binning and bin checking, for retrieving individual genomes
The results are stored in a database, where they can be easily exported and shared, and can be inspected anywhere using a web interface.
Internal checks for the assembly and binning steps inform about the consistency of contigs and bins, allowing to spot potential chimeras.
Metatranscriptomic support via mapping of cDNA reads against reference metagenomes

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/jtamames/SqueezeMeta

mrFAST: Micro Read Fast Alignment Search Tool

Neel — Tue, 26 Apr 2016 03:50:06 -0500

mrFAST is a read mapper that is designed to map short reads to reference genome with a special emphasis on the discovery of structural variation and segmental duplications. mrFAST maps short reads with respect to user defined error threshold, including indels up to 4+4 bp. This manual, describes how to choose the parameters and tune mrFAST with respect to the library settings. mrFAST is designed to find 'all' mappings for a given set of reads, however it can return one "best" map location if the relevant parameter is invoked.

More at http://mrfast.sourceforge.net/manual.html

Address of the bookmark: http://mrfast.sourceforge.net/manual.html

LoRMA: a tool for correcting sequencing errors in long reads such those produced by Pacific Biosciences sequencing machines

Jit — Wed, 15 Jun 2016 17:18:36 -0500

LoRMA is a tool for correcting sequencing errors in long reads such those produced by Pacific Biosciences sequencing machines.

Publication:

L. Salmela, R. Walve, E. Rivals, and E. Ukkonen: Accurate selfcorrection of errors in long reads using de Bruijn graphs. Accepted to RECOMB-Seq 2016.

Download:

Address of the bookmark: https://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/lmsalmel/LoRMA/

ART: Set of Simulation Tools

Jit — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 08:28:25 -0500

ART is a set of simulation tools to generate synthetic next-generation sequencing reads. ART simulates sequencing reads by mimicking real sequencing process with empirical error models or quality profiles summarized from large recalibrated sequencing data. ART can also simulate reads using user own read error model or quality profiles. ART supports simulation of single-end, paired-end/mate-pair reads of three major commercial next-generation sequencing platforms: Illumina's Solexa, Roche's 454 and Applied Biosystems' SOLiD. ART can be used to test or benchmark a variety of method or tools for next-generation sequencing data analysis, including read alignment, de novo assembly, SNP and structure variation discovery. ART was used as a primary tool for the simulation study of the 1000 Genomes Project . ART is implemented in C++ with optimized algorithms and is highly efficient in read simulation. ART outputs reads in the FASTQ format, and alignments in the ALN format. ART can also generate alignments in the SAM alignment or UCSC BED file format. ART can be used together with genome variants simulators (e.g. VarSim) for evaluating variant calling tools or methods.

Address of the bookmark: http://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/software/biostatistics/art/

SpeedSeq

Jit — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 06:05:43 -0600

A flexible framework for rapid genome analysis and interpretation

C Chiang, R M Layer, G G Faust, M R Lindberg, D B Rose, E P Garrison, G T Marth, A R Quinlan, and I M Hall. SpeedSeq: ultra-fast personal genome analysis and interpretation. Nat Meth (2015). doi:10.1038/nmeth.3505.

http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmeth.3505.html

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/hall-lab/speedseq

Pacbio Long Reads Compatible Software and Tools

Archana Malhotra — Wed, 15 Mar 2017 14:19:01 -0500

The following software packages are known to be compatible with PacBio® data, in addition to PacBio's own SMRT® Analysis suite. All packages are believed to be open source or freely available for non-commercial use. See the individual project sites for up-to-date license information. A separate page lists commercial software.

Know of any other open source software for PacBio data? Email us.

Software categories:

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/PacificBiosciences/DevNet/wiki/Compatible-Software

Meraculous: De Novo Genome Assembly with Short Paired-End Reads

Jit — Tue, 07 Nov 2017 04:36:10 -0600

We describe a new algorithm, meraculous, for whole genome assembly of deep paired-end short reads, and apply it to the assembly of a dataset of paired 75-bp Illumina reads derived from the 15.4 megabase genome of the haploid yeast Pichia stipitis. More than 95% of the genome is recovered, with no errors; half the assembled sequence is in contigs longer than 101 kilobases and in scaffolds longer than 269 kilobases. Incorporating fosmid ends recovers entire chromosomes. Meraculous relies on an efficient and conservative traversal of the subgraph of the k-mer (deBruijn) graph of oligonucleotides with unique high quality extensions in the dataset, avoiding an explicit error correction step as used in other short-read assemblers. A novel memory-efficient hashing scheme is introduced. The resulting contigs are ordered and oriented using paired reads separated by ∼280 bp or ∼3.2 kbp, and many gaps between contigs can be closed using paired-end placements. Practical issues with the dataset are described, and prospects for assembling larger genomes are discussed.

Address of the bookmark: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3158087/

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.

Scallop: reference-based transcriptome assembler for RNA-seq

Rahul Nayak — Tue, 08 May 2018 04:23:27 -0500

Scallop is an accurate reference-based transcript assembler. Scallop features its high accuracy in assembling multi-exon transcripts as well as lowly expressed transcripts. Scallop achieves this improvement through a novel algorithm that can be proved preserving all phasing paths from reads and paired-end reads, while also achieves both transcripts parsimony and coverage deviation minimization.

Scallop paper has been published at Nature Biotechnology. The datasets and scripts used in this paper to compare the performance of Scallop and other assemblers are available at scalloptest.

Please also checkout the podcast about Scallop (thanks Roman Cheplyaka for the interview). It is available at both the bioinformatics chat and iTunes.

https://github.com/Kingsford-Group/scallop

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/Kingsford-Group/scallop