BOL: Related items

China’s BGI says it can sequence a genome for just $100

Neel — Sat, 29 Feb 2020 04:49:43 -0600

Using technology originally acquired in the US, the Chinese gene giant BGI Group says it will make genome sequencing cheaper than ever, breaking the $100 barrier for the first time.

The Shenzhen company says the low cost will be possible with an “extreme” DNA sequencing system it plans to offer that is capable of decoding the genomes of 100,000 people a year.

Ref: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/615289/china-bgi-100-dollar-genome/

RefKA: A fast and efficient long-read genome assembly approach for large and complex genomes

Rahul Nayak — Fri, 01 May 2020 03:00:40 -0500

RefKA, a reference-based approach for long read genome assembly. This approach relies on breaking up a closely related reference genome into bins, aligning k-mers unique to each bin with PacBio reads, and then assembling each bin in parallel followed by a final bin-stitching step.

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/AppliedBioinformatics/RefKA

merqury: Evaluate genome assemblies with k-mers

Jit — Fri, 03 Jul 2020 19:29:34 -0500

Often, genome assembly projects have illumina whole genome sequencing reads available for the assembled individual. The k-mer spectrum of this read set can be used for independently evaluating assembly quality without the need of a high quality reference. Merqury provides a set of tools for this purpose.

More at https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.15.992941v1.full

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

HapSolo: An optimization approach for removing secondary haplotigs during diploid genome assembly and scaffolding.

Jit — Mon, 26 Oct 2020 21:23:36 -0500

Despite marked recent improvements in long-read sequencing technology, the assembly of diploid genomes remains a difficult task. A major obstacle is distinguishing between alternative contigs that represent highly heterozygous regions. If primary and secondary contigs are not properly identified, the primary assembly will overrepresent both the size and complexity of the genome, which complicates downstream analysis such as scaffolding.

More at https://github.com/esolares/HapSolo

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/esolares/HapSolo

Understanding kmer !

BioStar — Wed, 18 Aug 2021 04:27:51 -0500

What is a k-mer anyway? A k-mer is just a sequence of k characters in a string (or nucleotides in a DNA sequence). Now, it is important to remember that to get all k-mers from a sequence you need to get the first k characters, then move just a single character for the start of the next k-mer and so on. Effectively, this will create sequences that overlap in k-1 positions.

Address of the bookmark: https://bioinfologics.github.io/post/2018/09/17/k-mer-counting-part-i-introduction/

MitoZ: a toolkit for animal mitochondrial genome assembly, annotation and visualization

Neel — Tue, 30 Nov 2021 23:23:57 -0600

MitoZ, consisting of independent modules of de novo assembly, findMitoScaf (find Mitochondrial Scaffolds), annotation and visualization, that can generate mitogenome assembly together with annotation and visualization results from HTS raw reads.

https://academic.oup.com/nar/article/47/11/e63/5377471

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/linzhi2013/MitoZ

Short-read assembly using Spades !

Abhimanyu Singh — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 07:18:16 -0600

If we only had Illumina reads, we could also assemble these using the tool Spades.

You can try this here, or try it later on your own data.

Get data

We will use the same Illumina data as we used above:

illumina_R1.fastq.gz: the Illumina forward reads
illumina_R2.fastq.gz: the Illumina reverse reads

Assemble

Run Spades:

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

-1 is input file of forward reads
-2 is input file of reverse reads
--careful minimizes mismatches and short indels
--cov-cutoff auto computes the coverage threshold (rather than the default setting, “off”)
-o is the output directory

Results

Move into the output directory and look at the contigs:

infoseq contigs.fasta

Smudgeplot: Inference of ploidy and heterozygosity structure using whole genome sequencing data

Neel — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 04:42:09 -0600

This tool extracts heterozygous kmer pairs from kmer count databases and performs gymnastics with them. We are able to disentangle genome structure by comparing the sum of kmer pair coverages (CovA + CovB) to their relative coverage (CovB / (CovA + CovB)). Such an approach also allows us to analyze obscure genomes with duplications, various ploidy levels, etc.

Smudgeplots are computed from raw or even better from trimmed reads and show the haplotype structure using heterozygous kmer pairs. For example:

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/KamilSJaron/smudgeplot

GenomeQC: a quality assessment tool for genome assemblies and gene structure annotations

Neel — Thu, 19 May 2022 04:29:05 -0500

The GenomeQC web application is implemented in R/Shiny version 1.5.9 and Python 3.6 and is freely available at https://genomeqc.maizegdb.org/ under the GPL license. All source code and a containerized version of the GenomeQC pipeline is available in the GitHub repository https://github.com/HuffordLab/GenomeQC.

https://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-020-6568-2

Address of the bookmark: https://github.com/HuffordLab/GenomeQC

Bioinformatics tools for genome assembly !

BioStar — Mon, 24 Jul 2023 07:04:26 -0500

There are numerous genome assembly tools available, each with its strengths and weaknesses. Here is a list of some widely used genome assembly tools as of my last update in September 2021:

SPAdes: An assembler specifically designed for single-cell and multi-cell bacterial genomes, as well as small eukaryotic genomes.
ABySS: A parallelized assembler for large genomes that uses de Bruijn graphs.
Velvet: Another de Bruijn graph-based assembler optimized for short-read sequencing data.
SOAPdenovo: A de Bruijn graph-based assembler designed for short reads, widely used for assembling large and complex genomes.
MaSuRCA: A hybrid assembler that combines data from multiple sequencing technologies, such as Illumina and PacBio.
Canu: A long-read assembler optimized for PacBio and Oxford Nanopore sequencing data.
Flye: A long-read assembler suitable for bacterial and small eukaryotic genomes.
SMARTdenovo: An assembler designed for long reads, particularly suited for PacBio data.
SPAdes Long Read (SPAdesLR): An extension of SPAdes for long-read data, such as those from PacBio or Nanopore.
Minia: An assembler optimized for low memory consumption, suitable for small and medium-sized genomes.
Unicycler: A hybrid assembler that combines short and long reads for circular bacterial genome assembly.
wtdbg2: A de Bruijn graph assembler for long reads, efficient for very large genomes.
Shasta: A long-read assembler that uses the Overlap-Layout-Consensus approach, suitable for PacBio and Nanopore data.
Sparc: An assembler designed to handle noisy long reads from Nanopore sequencing.
CANA: An assembler for metagenomic data, particularly for complex and diverse microbial communities.
Ra Assembler: A metagenome assembler for long reads, designed for highly complex metagenomic samples.

Please note that the field of bioinformatics is constantly evolving, and new assembly tools may have emerged since my last update. Additionally, the performance of these tools can vary depending on the characteristics of the sequencing data and the genome being assembled. When selecting an assembly tool, consider the specific requirements of your project, the available data types, and the computational resources at your disposal. Always refer to the respective tool's documentation and publications for the most up-to-date information and recommendations.