Address of the bookmark: https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/article/38/2/344/6375939

The performance of the Jaeger workflow can be significantly increased by utilizing GPUs. To enable GPU support, the CUDA Toolkit and cuDNN library must be accessible to conda.

# setup bioconda
conda config --add channels defaults
conda config --add channels bioconda
conda config --add channels conda-forge
conda config --set channel_priority strict

# create conda environment and install jaeger
mamba create -n jaeger -c nvidia -c conda-forge cuda-nvcc "python>=3.9,<3.12" pip jaeger-bio


# activate environment
conda activate jaeger

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/MGXlab/Jaeger

This blog provides a comprehensive step-by-step guide to detect piRNAs using bioinformatics tools and workflows.

Step 1: Prepare Your Data

1. Obtain RNA Sequencing Data
   Acquire raw small RNA-seq data in FASTQ format. Datasets can be sourced from repositories like NCBI SRA, EMBL-EBI, or specific small RNA sequencing projects.

2. Quality Control (QC)
   Use FastQC to assess the quality of raw reads:

   fastqc reads.fastq

   Evaluate the per-base quality, adapter content, and overrepresented sequences.

3. Trimming and Adapter Removal
   Use tools like Cutadapt or Trim Galore! to remove adapters and low-quality bases:

   cutadapt -a TGGAATTCTCGGGTGCCAAGG -o trimmed_reads.fastq reads.fastq

   Ensure the remaining reads are of high quality for downstream analysis.

Step 2: Map Reads to the Genome

Mapping reads to the reference genome is crucial for identifying piRNA loci.

1. Reference Genome Preparation
   Download the genome assembly of your organism from databases like Ensembl, UCSC Genome Browser, or NCBI.

2. Align Reads
   Use Bowtie or STAR for small RNA alignment:

   bowtie -v 1 -k 1 --best genome_index trimmed_reads.fastq -S aligned_reads.sam
   • -v 1: Allows one mismatch.
   • -k 1: Reports the best alignment.

3. Convert SAM to BAM
   Convert and sort alignments using SAMtools:

   samtools view -Sb aligned_reads.sam | samtools sort -o sorted_reads.bam

Step 3: Identify Small RNAs

piRNAs are characterized by their size (24–32 nt) and strand bias.

1. Extract Reads by Size
   Use tools like BEDtools or custom scripts to filter reads between 24 and 32 nt:

   bedtools bamtofastq -i sorted_reads.bam -fq all_reads.fastq seqkit seq -m 24 -M 32 all_reads.fastq > piRNA_size_reads.fastq

2. Check for Sequence Bias
   piRNAs often have a strong bias for a uridine at the 5’ end (1U bias). Use tools like WebLogo to visualize sequence motifs.

Step 4: Detect Ping-Pong Signature

The ping-pong amplification loop is a hallmark of piRNA biogenesis, characterized by a 10 nt overlap between piRNAs on opposite strands.

1. Generate Overlap Statistics
   Use the piPipes tool or custom scripts to calculate overlap:

   python ping_pong_overlap.py sorted_reads.bam

2. Visualize Overlap Distribution
   Plot the distribution of overlaps to confirm the presence of the 10 nt ping-pong signature.

Step 5: Annotate piRNA Clusters

piRNAs are often generated from genomic clusters.

1. Cluster Identification
   Use tools like proTRAC or PIRANHA to identify piRNA-producing clusters:

   proTRAC.pl -s sorted_reads.bam -g genome.fa -o clusters

2. Annotate Genomic Regions
   Annotate the identified clusters using gene annotation files (GTF/GFF). Tools like BEDtools intersect can help associate piRNA clusters with genes or transposable elements:

   bedtools intersect -a clusters.bed -b genome_annotation.gtf > annotated_clusters.bed

Step 6: Functional Analysis

Functional analysis of piRNAs can uncover their targets and regulatory roles.

1. Predict piRNA Targets
   Use tools like IntaRNA or RNAhybrid to predict interactions between piRNAs and potential target mRNAs:

   RNAhybrid -t target_transcripts.fa -q piRNAs.fa > piRNA_targets.txt

2. Enrichment Analysis
   Perform GO or KEGG enrichment analysis of target genes using tools like g:Profiler or DAVID.

Step 7: Validation and Visualization

1. Validate piRNA Candidates
   Cross-check the identified piRNAs against known piRNA databases, such as piRBase or piRNAdb.

2. Visualize Results

   • Use IGV (Integrative Genomics Viewer) to visualize piRNA alignment and clusters on the genome.
   • Generate heatmaps or circos plots to present piRNA distributions.

Step 8: Share and Publish Findings

1. Archive Data
   Submit sequencing data to public repositories like SRA or GEO with metadata specifying piRNA-related experiments.

2. Publish Results
   Share findings in journals or conferences, emphasizing novel piRNA candidates, target genes, or regulatory mechanisms.

Conclusion

Detecting piRNAs involves a combination of computational and analytical methods to identify these unique small RNAs and their roles in gene regulation and transposable element suppression. By following this step-by-step guide, you can confidently navigate the complexities of piRNA detection and contribute to the growing understanding of their biological significance.

2. Parallel sequencing lives, or what makes large sequencing projects successful https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/article/6/11/gix100/4557140?login=false

3. Common-sense approaches to sharing tabular data alongside publication https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666389921002300

4. A Reproducible Data Analysis Workflow with R Markdown, Git, Make, and Docker https://psyarxiv.com/8xzqy/

5. Practical Computational Reproducibility in the Life Sciences https://www.cell.com/cell-systems/fulltext/S2405-4712(18)30140-6

6. A video by Dr.Keith A. Baggerly from MD Anderson [The Importance of Reproducible Research in High-Throughput Biology](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gYIs7uYbMo) highly recommended.

7. Ten Simple Rules for Reproducible Computational Research http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003285)

8. Good Enough Practices in Scientific Computing http://arxiv.org/abs/1609.00037 

9. Best Practices for Scientific Computing https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001745

10. A Quick Guide to Organizing Computational Biology Projects http://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/journal.pcbi.100042  A must read for computational biologists!

11. Reproducibility of computational workflows is automated using continuous analysis https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.3780

12. Five selfish reasons to work reproducibly https://genomebiology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13059-015-0850-7

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/isovic/graphmap

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/marbl/MashMap

Detail paper at https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-017-3927-8

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/VicugnaPacos/ALPACA

How to use TAREAN:

• Install a local instance of the pipeline using its source code available from bitbucket repository.
• Use  public Galaxy-based server at https://repeatexplorer-elixir.cerit-sc.cz/. The server is provided in frame of the Elixir CZ project and is maintained by CESNET and CERIT-SC. Simple registration is required to use this service.

Development of TAREAN was supported by ELIXIR CZ research infrastructure project (MEYS Grant No: LM2015047).

References

Novak, P., Avila Robledillo, L., Koblizkova, A., Vrbova, I., Neumann, P., Macas, J. (2017) – TAREAN: a computational tool for identification and characterization of satellite DNA from unassembled short reads. Nucleic Acids Res., doi:10.1093/nar/gkx257

Address of the bookmark: https://bitbucket.org/petrnovak/repex_tarean

Here is how I use the blasr to align PacBio reads to the contigs (target.fasta). The “target.fasta.sa” is the suffix array from “target.fasta” generated by sawriter.

blasr query.fa ./target.fasta -sa ./target.fasta.sa -bestn 40 -maxScore -500 -m 4 -nproc 24 -out target.m4 -maxLCPLength 15

the output format option “-m 4″ generate the alignment coordinate. Not fully documented, but I can explain that to you. 

I use a 24 cores / 48G ram server for the alignment. It took about 2 to 3 hours aligning 3G PacBio Reads to 10^6 sequences of short read contigs with a mean 3.5kbp length.

Address of the bookmark: http://bix.ucsd.edu/projects/blasr/

Porechop also supports demultiplexing of Nanopore reads that were barcoded with the Native Barcoding Kit, PCR Barcoding Kit or Rapid Barcoding Kit.

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