BOL: Related items

Tools to access the quality of your assembled genome !

LEGE — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 23:31:18 -0500

FASTA VALIDATOR + SEQKIT RMDUP: FASTA validation
GENOMETOOLS GT GFF3VALIDATOR: GFF3 validation
ASSEMBLATHON STATS: Assembly statistics
GENOMETOOLS GT STAT: Annotation statistics
NCBI FCS ADAPTOR: Adaptor contamination pass/fail
NCBI FCS GX: Foreign organism contamination pass/fail
BUSCO: Gene-space completeness estimation
TIDK: Telomere repeat identification
LAI: Continuity of repetitive sequences
KRAKEN2: Taxonomy classification
HIC CONTACT MAP: Alignment and visualisation of HiC data
MUMMER → CIRCOS + DOTPLOT & MINIMAP2 → PLOTSR: Synteny analysis
MERQURY: K-mer completeness, consensus quality and phasing assessment

Early Genome Screening: The New Health Horoscope!

LEGE — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 19:44:36 -0600

In an era where precision medicine is reshaping healthcare, genome screening is emerging as the modern equivalent of a health horoscope. It offers insights into our biological "stars," unraveling predispositions to various conditions and empowering individuals with knowledge to navigate their health journeys proactively. But how reliable is this "horoscope," and how does it impact our lives?

Understanding Genome Screening

Genome screening involves analyzing an individual's DNA to identify genetic variations that may influence health and disease susceptibility. This can range from simple single-gene tests to comprehensive whole-genome sequencing. By peering into our genetic blueprint, we can uncover risks for conditions like cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and even rare genetic disorders.

The process is straightforward: a saliva or blood sample is collected, and advanced sequencing technologies decipher the genetic code. The results provide a personalized health map, guiding lifestyle modifications, preventive measures, or medical interventions.

A Shift from Reactive to Proactive Healthcare

Traditional healthcare often focuses on treating diseases after they manifest. Genome screening flips this model on its head, enabling a shift toward prevention and early intervention. For instance:

Cancer Risk Management: Individuals with BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutations can opt for enhanced screening programs or preventive surgeries to mitigate their risk of breast and ovarian cancers.
Cardiovascular Health: Genetic predispositions to conditions like familial hypercholesterolemia can prompt early cholesterol monitoring and lifestyle adjustments.
Rare Diseases: Identifying carriers of genetic disorders can aid in family planning and reduce the incidence of inherited conditions.

The Ethical and Practical Concerns

While genome screening offers incredible promise, it is not without challenges:

Accuracy and Interpretation: Genetic predisposition does not guarantee disease. Misinterpretation of results can lead to unnecessary anxiety or unwarranted medical interventions.
Privacy and Data Security: Genetic data is highly sensitive. Ensuring robust data protection measures is crucial to prevent misuse.
Accessibility and Equity: High costs and limited availability may restrict access to genome screening, exacerbating health disparities.

Balancing Science and Pseudoscience

The comparison of genome screening to horoscopes isn’t entirely unfounded. Both offer predictive insights, but the scientific foundation of genome screening distinguishes it from astrology. Unlike the alignment of celestial bodies, genetic predictions are based on rigorous data and evidence. However, the probabilistic nature of genetic predispositions underscores the importance of interpreting results in conjunction with clinical and lifestyle factors.

The Road Ahead

As genome screening becomes more affordable and integrated into routine healthcare, its potential to transform lives is immense. Policymakers, healthcare providers, and genetic counselors must collaborate to ensure ethical implementation, public awareness, and equitable access.

Imagine a future where your genetic "horoscope" is a trusted guide, not just a prediction. Early genome screening could help chart a healthier path for generations, making it a cornerstone of personalized medicine. After all, our genes might just hold the key to unlocking a future of better health and well-being.

HiTE: a fast and accurate dynamic boundary adjustment approach for full-length Transposable Elements detection and annotation in Genome Assemblies

LEGE — Sat, 20 Sep 2025 09:34:04 -0500

HiTE is a Python software that uses a dynamic boundary adjustment approach to detect and annotate full-length Transposable Elements in Genome Assemblies. In comparison to other tools, HiTE demonstrates superior performance in detecting a greater number of full-length TEs.

panHiTE

We have developed panHiTE, a comprehensive and accurate pipeline for TE detection in large-scale population genomes. It has been successfully applied to hundreds of plant population genomes, demonstrating its effectiveness and scalability.

For detailed instructions, please refer to the panHiTE tutorial.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/CSU-KangHu/HiTE

Unicycler: Hybrid assembly pipeline for bacterial genomes

Jit — Fri, 10 Nov 2017 03:58:27 -0600

Unicycler is an assembly pipeline for bacterial genomes. It can assemble Illumina-only read sets where it functions as a SPAdes-optimiser. It can also assembly long-read-only sets (PacBio or Nanopore) where it runs a miniasm+Racon pipeline. For the best possible assemblies, give it both Illumina reads and long reads, and it will conduct a hybrid assembly.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/rrwick/Unicycler

HapCUT2: robust and accurate haplotype assembly for diverse sequencing technologies

Jit — Tue, 15 May 2018 07:35:26 -0500

HapCUT2 is a maximum-likelihood-based tool for assembling haplotypes from DNA sequence reads, designed to "just work" with excellent speed and accuracy. We found that previously described haplotype assembly methods are specialized for specific read technologies or protocols, with slow or inaccurate performance on others. With this in mind, HapCUT2 is designed for speed and accuracy across diverse sequencing technologies, including but not limited to: NGS short reads (Illumina HiSeq) clone-based sequencing (Fosmid or BAC clones) SMRT reads (PacBio) Oxford Nanopore reads 10X Genomics Linked-Reads proximity-ligation (Hi-C) reads high-coverage sequencing (>40x coverage-per-SNP) using above technologies combinations of the above technologies (e.g. scaffold long reads with Hi-C reads) See below for specific examples of command line options and best practices for some of these technologies. NOTE: At this time HapCUT2 is for diploid organisms only. VCF input should contain diploid variants. If you use HapCUT2 in your research, please cite: Edge, P., Bafna, V. & Bansal, V. HapCUT2: robust and accurate haplotype assembly for diverse sequencing technologies. Genome Res. gr.213462.116 (2016). doi:10.1101/gr.213462.116

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/vibansal/HapCUT2

transrate: Understanding your transcriptome assembly

Neel — Fri, 13 Jul 2018 07:49:26 -0500

Transrate is software for de-novo transcriptome assembly quality analysis. It examines your assembly in detail and compares it to experimental evidence such as the sequencing reads, reporting quality scores for contigs and assemblies. This allows you to choose between assemblers and parameters, filter out the bad contigs from an assembly, and help decide when to stop trying to improve the assembly.

Address of the bookmark: http://hibberdlab.com/transrate/index.html

ALLHiC: Phasing and scaffolding polyploid genomes based on Hi-C data

BioStar — Thu, 20 Dec 2018 12:03:32 -0600

The major problem of scaffolding polyploid genome is that Hi-C signals are frequently detected between allelic haplotypes and any existing stat of art Hi-C scaffolding program links the allelic haplotypes together. To solve the problem, we developed a new Hi-C scaffolding pipeline, called ALLHIC, specifically tailored to the polyploid genomes. ALLHIC pipeline contains a total of 5 steps: prune, partition, rescue, optimize and build.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/tangerzhang/ALLHiC/wiki

SvABA: Genome-wide detection of structural variants and indels by local assembly

Abhimanyu Singh — Mon, 21 Jan 2019 17:58:56 -0600

SvABA is a method for detecting structural variants in sequencing data using genome-wide local assembly. Under the hood, SvABA uses a custom implementation of SGA (String Graph Assembler) by Jared Simpson, and BWA-MEM by Heng Li. Contigs are assembled for every 25kb window (with some small overlap) for every region in the genome. The default is to use only clipped, discordant, unmapped and indel reads, although this can be customized to any set of reads at the command line using VariantBam rules. These contigs are then immediately aligned to the reference with BWA-MEM and parsed to identify variants. Sequencing reads are then realigned to the contigs with BWA-MEM, and variants are scored by their read support.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/walaj/svaba

NextDenovo: string graph-based de novo assembler for TGS long reads

Jit — Sun, 05 Jan 2020 04:08:29 -0600

NextDenovo is a string graph-based de novo assembler for TGS long reads. It uses a "correct-then-assemble" strategy similar to canu, but requires significantly less computing resources and storages. After assembly, the per-base error rate is about 97-98%, to further improve single base accuracy, please use NextPolish.

NextDenovo contains two core modules: NextCorrect and NextGraph. NextCorrect can be used to correct TGS long reads with approximately 15% sequencing errors, and NextGraph can be used to construct a string graph with corrected reads. It also contains a modified version of minimap2 for adapting input and output and producing more sensitive and accurate dovetail overlaps, and some useful utilities (see here for more details).

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/Nextomics/NextDenovo

MEC: Contig Misassembly Correction

BioStar — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 23:40:49 -0600

MEC, to identify and correct misassemblies in contigs. Firstly, MEC takes fragment coverage as the feature to detect the candidate misassemblies. Then, it can distinguish a large number of false positives from the candidate misassemblies based on the distribution of paired-end reads and the statistical analysis of GC-contents. We apply MEC to four real contig datasets, and carry out experiments to analyze the influence of MEC on scaffolding results, which shows that MEC can reduce misassemblies effectively and result in quantitative improvements in scaffolding quality. MEC is publicly available for download at https://github.com/bioinfomaticsCSU/MEC.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/bioinfomaticsCSU/MEC