gapFinisher: A reliable gap filling pipeline for SSPACE-LongRead scaffolder output.

Kammonen JI ，Smolander OP ，Paulin L ，Pereira PAB ，Laine P ，Koskinen P ，Jernvall J ，Auvinen P ... -  《PLoS One》

Scaffolding pre-assembled contigs using SSPACE.

De novo assembly tools play a main role in reconstructing genomes from next-generation sequencing (NGS) data and usually yield a number of contigs. Using paired-read sequencing data it is possible to assess the order, distance and orientation of contigs and combine them into so-called scaffolds. Although the latter process is a crucial step in finishing genomes, scaffolding algorithms are often built-in functions in de novo assembly tools and cannot be independently controlled. We here present a new tool, called SSPACE, which is a stand-alone scaffolder of pre-assembled contigs using paired-read data. Main features are: a short runtime, multiple library input of paired-end and/or mate pair datasets and possible contig extension with unmapped sequence reads. SSPACE shows promising results on both prokaryote and eukaryote genomic testsets where the amount of initial contigs was reduced by at least 75%.

Boetzer M ，Henkel CV ，Jansen HJ ，Butler D ，Pirovano W ... -  《-》

Evaluation and Validation of Assembling Corrected PacBio Long Reads for Microbial Genome Completion via Hybrid Approaches.

Lin HH ，Liao YC 《PLoS One》

GAPPadder: a sensitive approach for closing gaps on draft genomes with short sequence reads.

Closing gaps in draft genomes is an important post processing step in genome assembly. It leads to more complete genomes, which benefits downstream genome analysis such as annotation and genotyping. Several tools have been developed for gap closing. However, these tools don't fully utilize the information contained in the sequence data. For example, while it is known that many gaps are caused by genomic repeats, existing tools often ignore many sequence reads that originate from a repeat-related gap. We compare GAPPadder with GapCloser, GapFiller and Sealer on one bacterial genome, human chromosome 14 and the human whole genome with paired-end and mate-paired reads with both short and long insert sizes. Empirical results show that GAPPadder can close more gaps than these existing tools. Besides closing gaps on draft genomes assembled only from short sequence reads, GAPPadder can also be used to close gaps for draft genomes assembled with long reads. We show GAPPadder can close gaps on the bed bug genome and the Asian sea bass genome that are assembled partially and fully with long reads respectively. We also show GAPPadder is efficient in both time and memory usage. In this paper, we propose a new approach called GAPPadder for gap closing. The main advantage of GAPPadder is that it uses more information in sequence data for gap closing. In particular, GAPPadder finds and uses reads that originate from repeat-related gaps. We show that these repeat-associated reads are useful for gap closing, even though they are ignored by all existing tools. Other main features of GAPPadder include utilizing the information in sequence reads with different insert sizes and performing two-stage local assembly of gap sequences. The results show that our method can close more gaps than several existing tools. The software tool, GAPPadder, is available for download at https://github.com/Reedwarbler/GAPPadder .

Chu C ，Li X ，Wu Y 《BMC GENOMICS》

LRScaf: improving draft genomes using long noisy reads.

The advent of third-generation sequencing (TGS) technologies opens the door to improve genome assembly. Long reads are promising for enhancing the quality of fragmented draft assemblies constructed from next-generation sequencing (NGS) technologies. To date, a few algorithms that are capable of improving draft assemblies have released. There are SSPACE-LongRead, OPERA-LG, SMIS, npScarf, DBG2OLC, Unicycler, and LINKS. Hybrid assembly on large genomes remains challenging, however. We develop a scalable and computationally efficient scaffolder, Long Reads Scaffolder (LRScaf, https://github.com/shingocat/lrscaf), that is capable of significantly boosting assembly contiguity using long reads. In this study, we summarise a comprehensive performance assessment for state-of-the-art scaffolders and LRScaf on seven organisms, i.e., E. coli, S. cerevisiae, A. thaliana, O. sativa, S. pennellii, Z. mays, and H. sapiens. LRScaf significantly improves the contiguity of draft assemblies, e.g., increasing the NGA50 value of CHM1 from 127.1 kbp to 9.4 Mbp using 20-fold coverage PacBio dataset and the NGA50 value of NA12878 from 115.3 kbp to 12.9 Mbp using 35-fold coverage Nanopore dataset. Besides, LRScaf generates the best contiguous NGA50 on A. thaliana, S. pennellii, Z. mays, and H. sapiens. Moreover, LRScaf has the shortest run time compared with other scaffolders, and the peak RAM of LRScaf remains practical for large genomes (e.g., 20.3 and 62.6 GB on CHM1 and NA12878, respectively). The new algorithm, LRScaf, yields the best or, at least, moderate scaffold contiguity and accuracy in the shortest run time compared with other scaffolding algorithms. Furthermore, LRScaf provides a cost-effective way to improve contiguity of draft assemblies on large genomes.

Qin M ，Wu S ，Li A ，Zhao F ，Feng H ，Ding L ，Ruan J ... -  《BMC GENOMICS》