scholarly journals Higher quality de novo genome assemblies from degraded museum specimens: a linked-read approach to museomics

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jocelyn P. Colella ◽  
Anna Tigano ◽  
Matthew D. MacManes

AbstractHigh-throughput sequencing technologies are a proposed solution for accessing the molecular data in historic specimens. However, degraded DNA combined with the computational demands of short-read assemblies has posed significant laboratory and bioinformatics challenges. Linked-read or ‘synthetic long-read’ sequencing technologies, such as 10X Genomics, may provide a cost-effective alternative solution to assemble higher quality de novo genomes from degraded specimens. Here, we compare assembly quality (e.g., genome contiguity and completeness, presence of orthogroups) between four published genomes assembled from a single shotgun library and four deer mouse (Peromyscus spp.) genomes assembled using 10X Genomics technology. At a similar price-point, these approaches produce vastly different assemblies, with linked-read assemblies having overall higher quality, measured by larger N50 values and greater gene content. Although not without caveats, our results suggest that linked-read sequencing technologies may represent a viable option to build de novo genomes from historic museum specimens, which may prove particularly valuable for extinct, rare, or difficult to collect taxa.

Author(s):  
Valentine Murigneux ◽  
Subash Kumar Rai ◽  
Agnelo Furtado ◽  
Timothy J.C. Bruxner ◽  
Wei Tian ◽  
...  

AbstractSequencing technologies have advanced to the point where it is possible to generate high accuracy, haplotype resolved, chromosome scale assemblies. Several long read sequencing technologies are available on the market and a growing number of algorithms have been developed over the last years to assemble the reads generated by those technologies. When starting a new genome project, it is therefore challenging to select the most cost-effective sequencing technology as well as the most appropriate software for assembly and polishing. For this reason, it is important to benchmark different approaches applied to the same sample. Here, we report a comparison of three long read sequencing technologies applied to the de novo assembly of a plant genome, Macadamia jansenii. We have generated sequencing data using Pacific Biosciences (Sequel I), Oxford Nanopore Technologies (PromethION) and BGI (single-tube Long Fragment Read) technologies for the same sample. Several assemblers were benchmarked in the assembly of PacBio and Nanopore reads. Results obtained from combining long read technologies or short read and long read technologies are also presented. The assemblies were compared for contiguity, accuracy and completeness as well as sequencing costs and DNA material requirements. Overall, the three long read technologies produced highly contiguous and complete genome assemblies of Macadamia jansenii. At the time of sequencing, the cost associated with each method was significantly different but continuous improvements in technologies have resulted in greater accuracy, increased throughput and reduced costs. We propose updating this comparison regularly with reports on significant iterations of the sequencing technologies.


PeerJ ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. e1839 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom O. Delmont ◽  
A. Murat Eren

High-throughput sequencing provides a fast and cost-effective mean to recover genomes of organisms from all domains of life. However, adequate curation of the assembly results against potential contamination of non-target organisms requires advanced bioinformatics approaches and practices. Here, we re-analyzed the sequencing data generated for the tardigradeHypsibius dujardini,and created a holistic display of the eukaryotic genome assembly using DNA data originating from two groups and eleven sequencing libraries. By using bacterial single-copy genes, k-mer frequencies, and coverage values of scaffolds we could identify and characterize multiple near-complete bacterial genomes from the raw assembly, and curate a 182 Mbp draft genome forH. dujardinisupported by RNA-Seq data. Our results indicate that most contaminant scaffolds were assembled from Moleculo long-read libraries, and most of these contaminants have differed between library preparations. Our re-analysis shows that visualization and curation of eukaryotic genome assemblies can benefit from tools designed to address the needs of today’s microbiologists, who are constantly challenged by the difficulties associated with the identification of distinct microbial genomes in complex environmental metagenomes.


Nature ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 592 (7856) ◽  
pp. 737-746 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arang Rhie ◽  
Shane A. McCarthy ◽  
Olivier Fedrigo ◽  
Joana Damas ◽  
Giulio Formenti ◽  
...  

AbstractHigh-quality and complete reference genome assemblies are fundamental for the application of genomics to biology, disease, and biodiversity conservation. However, such assemblies are available for only a few non-microbial species1–4. To address this issue, the international Genome 10K (G10K) consortium5,6 has worked over a five-year period to evaluate and develop cost-effective methods for assembling highly accurate and nearly complete reference genomes. Here we present lessons learned from generating assemblies for 16 species that represent six major vertebrate lineages. We confirm that long-read sequencing technologies are essential for maximizing genome quality, and that unresolved complex repeats and haplotype heterozygosity are major sources of assembly error when not handled correctly. Our assemblies correct substantial errors, add missing sequence in some of the best historical reference genomes, and reveal biological discoveries. These include the identification of many false gene duplications, increases in gene sizes, chromosome rearrangements that are specific to lineages, a repeated independent chromosome breakpoint in bat genomes, and a canonical GC-rich pattern in protein-coding genes and their regulatory regions. Adopting these lessons, we have embarked on the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP), an international effort to generate high-quality, complete reference genomes for all of the roughly 70,000 extant vertebrate species and to help to enable a new era of discovery across the life sciences.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian T. Fiddes ◽  
Joel Armstrong ◽  
Mark Diekhans ◽  
Stefanie Nachtweide ◽  
Zev N. Kronenberg ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTThe recent introductions of low-cost, long-read, and read-cloud sequencing technologies coupled with intense efforts to develop efficient algorithms have made affordable, high-quality de novo sequence assembly a realistic proposition. The result is an explosion of new, ultra-contiguous genome assemblies. To compare these genomes we need robust methods for genome annotation. We describe the fully open source Comparative Annotation Toolkit (CAT), which provides a flexible way to simultaneously annotate entire clades and identify orthology relationships. We show that CAT can be used to improve annotations on the rat genome, annotate the great apes, annotate a diverse set of mammals, and annotate personal, diploid human genomes. We demonstrate the resulting discovery of novel genes, isoforms and structural variants, even in genomes as well studied as rat and the great apes, and how these annotations improve cross-species RNA expression experiments.


Author(s):  
Arang Rhie ◽  
Shane A. McCarthy ◽  
Olivier Fedrigo ◽  
Joana Damas ◽  
Giulio Formenti ◽  
...  

AbstractHigh-quality and complete reference genome assemblies are fundamental for the application of genomics to biology, disease, and biodiversity conservation. However, such assemblies are only available for a few non-microbial species1–4. To address this issue, the international Genome 10K (G10K) consortium5,6 has worked over a five-year period to evaluate and develop cost-effective methods for assembling the most accurate and complete reference genomes to date. Here we summarize these developments, introduce a set of quality standards, and present lessons learned from sequencing and assembling 16 species representing major vertebrate lineages (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, teleost fishes and cartilaginous fishes). We confirm that long-read sequencing technologies are essential for maximizing genome quality and that unresolved complex repeats and haplotype heterozygosity are major sources of error in assemblies. Our new assemblies identify and correct substantial errors in some of the best historical reference genomes. Adopting these lessons, we have embarked on the Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP), an effort to generate high-quality, complete reference genomes for all ~70,000 extant vertebrate species and help enable a new era of discovery across the life sciences.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom O Delmont ◽  
A. Murat Eren

High-throughput sequencing provides a fast and cost effective mean to recover genomes of organisms from all domains of life. However, adequate curation of the assembly results against potential contamination of non-target organisms requires advanced bioinformatics approaches and practices. Here, we re-analyzed the sequencing data generated for the tardigrade Hypsibius dujardini using approaches routinely employed by microbial ecologists who reconstruct bacterial and archaeal genomes from metagenomic data. We created a holistic display of the eukaryotic genome assembly using DNA data originating from two groups and eleven sequencing libraries. By using bacterial single-copy genes, k-mer frequencies, and coverage values of scaffolds we could identify and characterize multiple near-complete bacterial genomes, and curate a 182 Mbp draft genome for H. dujardini supported by RNA-Seq data. Our results indicate that most contaminant scaffolds were assembled from Moleculo long-read libraries, and most of these contaminants have differed between library preparations. Our re-analysis shows that visualization and curation of eukaryotic genome assemblies can benefit from tools designed to address the needs of today’s microbiologists, who are constantly challenged by the difficulties associated with the identification of distinct microbial genomes in complex environmental metagenomes.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Govinda M. Kamath ◽  
Ilan Shomorony ◽  
Fei Xia ◽  
Thomas A. Courtade ◽  
David N. Tse

ABSTRACTLong-read sequencing technologies have the potential to produce gold-standard de novo genome assemblies, but fully exploiting error-prone reads to resolve repeats remains a challenge. Aggressive approaches to repeat resolution often produce mis-assemblies, and conservative approaches lead to unnecessary fragmentation. We present HINGE, an assembler that seeks to achieve optimal repeat resolution by distinguishing repeats that can be resolved given the data from those that cannot. This is accomplished by adding "hinges" to reads for constructing an overlap graph where only unresolvable repeats are merged. As a result, HINGE combines the error resilience of overlap-based assemblers with repeat-resolution capabilities of de Bruijn graph assemblers. HINGE was evaluated on the long-read bacterial datasets from the NCTC project. HINGE produces more finished assemblies than Miniasm and the manual pipeline of NCTC based on the HGAP assembler and Circlator. HINGE also allows us to identify 40 datasets where unresolvable repeats prevent the reliable construction of a unique finished assembly. In these cases, HINGE outputs a visually interpretable assembly graph that encodes all possible finished assemblies consistent with the reads, while other approaches such as the NCTC pipeline and FALCON either fragment the assembly or resolve the ambiguity arbitrarily.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Di Genova ◽  
Elena Buena-Atienza ◽  
Stephan Ossowski ◽  
Marie-France Sagot

The continuous improvement of long-read sequencing technologies along with the development of ad-doc algorithms has launched a new de novo assembly era that promises high-quality genomes. However, it has proven difficult to use only long reads to generate accurate genome assemblies of large, repeat-rich human genomes. To date, most of the human genomes assembled from long error-prone reads add accurate short reads to further polish the consensus quality. Here, we report the development of a novel algorithm for hybrid assembly, WENGAN, and the de novo assembly of four human genomes using a combination of sequencing data generated on ONT PromethION, PacBio Sequel, Illumina and MGI technology. WENGAN implements efficient algorithms that exploit the sequence information of short and long reads to tackle assembly contiguity as well as consensus quality. The resulting genome assemblies have high contiguity (contig NG50:16.67-62.06 Mb), few assembly errors (contig NGA50:10.9-45.91 Mb), good consensus quality (QV:27.79-33.61), and high gene completeness (BUSCO complete: 94.6-95.1%), while consuming low computational resources (CPU hours:153-1027). In particular, the WENGAN assembly of the haploid CHM13 sample achieved a contig NG50 of 62.06 Mb (NGA50:45.91 Mb), which surpasses the contiguity of the current human reference genome (GRCh38 contig NG50:57.88 Mb). Providing highest quality at low computational cost, WENGAN is an important step towards the democratization of the de novo assembly of human genomes. The WENGAN assembler is available at https://github.com/adigenova/wengan


Author(s):  
Tom O Delmont ◽  
A. Murat Eren

High-throughput sequencing provides a fast and cost effective mean to recover genomes of organisms from all domains of life. However, adequate curation of the assembly results against potential contamination of non-target organisms requires advanced bioinformatics approaches and practices. Here, we re-analyzed the sequencing data generated for the tardigrade Hypsibius dujardini using approaches routinely employed by microbial ecologists who reconstruct bacterial and archaeal genomes from metagenomic data. We created a holistic display of the eukaryotic genome assembly using DNA data originating from two groups and eleven sequencing libraries. By using bacterial single-copy genes, k-mer frequencies, and coverage values of scaffolds we could identify and characterize multiple near-complete bacterial genomes, and curate a 182 Mbp draft genome for H. dujardini supported by RNA-Seq data. Our results indicate that most contaminant scaffolds were assembled from Moleculo long-read libraries, and most of these contaminants have differed between library preparations. Our re-analysis shows that visualization and curation of eukaryotic genome assemblies can benefit from tools designed to address the needs of today’s microbiologists, who are constantly challenged by the difficulties associated with the identification of distinct microbial genomes in complex environmental metagenomes.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2014 ◽  
pp. 1-4 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mingming Liu ◽  
Zach N. Adelman ◽  
Kevin M. Myles ◽  
Liqing Zhang

With the rapid development of high throughput sequencing technologies, new transcriptomes can be sequenced for little cost with high coverage. Sequence assembly approaches have been modified to meet the requirements for de novo transcriptomes, which have complications not found in traditional genome assemblies such as variation in coverage for each candidate mRNA and alternative splicing. As a consequence, de novo assembly strategies tend to generate a large number of redundant contigs due to sequence variations, which adversely affects downstream analysis and experiments. In this work we proposed TransPS, a transcriptome post-scaffolding method, to generate high quality, nonredundant de novo transcriptomes. TransPS shows promising results on the test transcriptome datasets, where redundancy is greatly reduced by more than 50% and, at the same time, coverage is improved considerably. The web server and source code are available.


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